El pasado presente del pluralismo político

Abstract

The article describes the “pluralist conception of the state” whose main defenders and theoreticians were H. Laski and G. D. H. Cole during the second decade of the twentieth century. It argues in favor of the recovery of its main ideas, which are still useful to reform and transform the “modern” state and whose actual inability to move away from the merely representative parliamenttary thesis has had profound and negative effects on the governing process itself. A new model of government needs to be designed to include aspects of the economy that have been left behind by conventional political Theory, and pluralism has specific proposals on the administration and the reforms that the economy needs. The article finishes outlining the recent retrieval of pluralism by P. Hirst, and the new aspects that he develops and calls “associative democracy”.