Studies in Government and Public Policy

2 total works

Cooperative Pluralism

by Andrew S McFarland

Published 12 November 1993

National business and political leaders, President Clinton included, are urging greater consultation among conflicting interest groups and government to come up with cooperative solutions to serious problems of economic development and international-trade competition.

Such negotiations, Andrew McFarland contends, can lead to surprisingly successful results. But, he warns, mediations that exclude government officials responsible for enacting and enforcing public policy will fail.

To illustrate his argument, McFarland investigates the National Coal Policy Project, an endeavor that started in the right direction but ultimately fizzled because the negotiators--business executives and environmentalists--excluded politicians and executive branch officials from the debates.

Following negotiations, the NCPP, financially supported by business, the federal government, and private foundations, produced a report dealing with strip mining and air pollution regulations, the simplification of licensing procedures, and the promulgation of public policies such as the deregulation of transportation. Although it had received some encouragement from the federal government, the NCPP never received official sanction or a promise that any agreements would be enacted into law. As a result, only a small part of NCPP's policy recommendations did become law, while 90 percent were ignored.

Despite its shortcomings, McFarland contends, the NCPP can be viewed as a building block for future negotiations. By learning from its successes and failures, he shows, settlements can be transacted through 'cooperative pluralism," the process of negotiation between the government and two opposing interest groups.

Neopluralism

by Andrew S McFarland

Published 19 April 2004

Many of the basic issues of political science have been addressed by pluralist theory, which focuses on the competing interests of a democratic polity, their organization, and their influence on policy. Popular in the 1960s, pluralism gradually lost favor and nearly became obsolete when political scientists began to challenge its fundamental assumptions. Andrew McFarland shows, however, that this approach still provides a promising foundation for understanding the American political process. Neopluralism draws on pluralism's foundational logic to synthesize its various strands into a single paradigm that addresses three key, interrelated questions: Who has power? How is policy made? What do interest groups do? McFarland reexamines the major concepts and findings of the most influential advocates of pluralism from the 1950s and 1960s, then traces developments in American political science which have either contested or built upon these concepts. Demonstrating that the work underlying the original pluralist paradigm has been improved upon by subsequent generations of scholars, he proposes an original synthesis that combines elements of classical pluralist theory with more recent theoretical developments, including work on social movements, political development, and corporatism. By demonstrating the degree to which much recent scholarship shares an unstated allegiance to the process theory of politics, McFarland shows how new studies can be designed that can contribute to this theoretical perspective. He also suggests how process theory continues to develop and is likely to expand into the fields of comparative politics, international relations, and social movement studies. Summarizing fifty years of research on political power, public policymaking, and interest groups, Neopluralism offers a fresh overview of current thinking in political science. Because it makes a strong case for revisiting an abandoned paradigm, it is essential reading for all scholars who wish to solidify their understanding of interest group behavior, public policy, and American politics in general.