Progressive pluralism?

Abstract

In this article, a recent volume of pluralist political theory is taken as expressive of the state of the pluralist tradition, and subjected to critical examination. Whether couched in terms of empirical democratic theory, associationalist social democracy, global multi‐nodal politics, or multiculturalism, both separately and together these contemporary articulations of pluralist thinking are shown to be problematical. Overall, the suggestion is that pluralism in social and political theory has become, in Lakatos’s terms, a ‘degenerating’ rather than a ‘progressive’ research programme, and that inconsistencies within pluralism are indicative of the need to develop post‐pluralist perspectives and visions.

Keywords:

• pluralism
• social democracy
• globalization
• multiculturalism
• post‐pluralism

Notes