any other. None gets its way to the exclusion of others to a disproportionate
extent. In this respect pluralists are building upon traditional ideas of liberal
democracy and the role of the state, though rather than focus on the individ-
ual as the unit of analysis they are focusing on groups. They see society as
consisting not of atomized individuals – the egotistical rational person seek-
ing their own interests in a society which the state has a duty to preserve – but
of groups and associations. Only by co-operating with similarly placed and
like-minded people can individual interests be protected. Complex modern
societies produce such associations for the articulation of political interests.
Pluralism is a key attribute of modern society for functionalists
(Coleman, 1960a, p. 535). Pluralists believe there will be an equilibrium in
terms of the power of different groups partly because of cross-cutting loyal-
ties. No group will have an interest in pushing its demands excessively to
the exclusion of other groups in society because individuals are members of
a multiplicity of groups and associations. As producers our demands for
higher incomes from wages will not be pushed to an excessive degree
because we are also consumers who have to pay the price of those increased
costs of production. Attachments and loyalties cut across other groups as
well. There is not only a balance of competing forces but there is also mul-
tiple membership of different and sometimes overlapping groups. This
serves to reduce the extremism of the demands of interest groups.
In the context of poor and developing societies the pluralist view of the
state assumes that as pre-capitalist social structures and economic arrange-
ments are replaced by capitalism and industrialization so the authoritarian
political institutions associated with the pre-capitalist era, especially feudal-
ism, will also be swept aside. They will be replaced by the institutions of the
liberal democratic state, perhaps in the form of a parliamentary democracy in
which interests are protected by freely formed associations, freely competing
electoral alliances, and freely articulated ideas about public policy preserved
and protected by civil and political rights such as freedom of speech and
association, universal suffrage and freedom of the press (Carnoy, 1984).
Such an approach to the state is also likely to see a sharp distinction
between society and polity. It does not reveal how much state intervention
there will be. Those on the extreme Right of the liberal democratic spectrum
of ideas will reduce the role of the state to the minimum. Those at the social
democratic end will allow a considerable role for the state. But the extent of
intervention will be an outcome of the interaction between competing groups.
It will be the result of the success that some groups have in protecting their
interests via publicly funded state interventions as opposed to the success that
other groups have in protecting their interests by maintaining levels of state
110 Understanding Third World Politics