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A Defense of Participatory Democracy
Joel D. Wolfe
In order to defend participatorydemocracy in large-member voluntary or-
ganizations, Michels's challenge to traditional democratic theory must be an-
swered. By arguing that the technical, sociological, and psychological processes
of modern organizations invariably result in leaders dominating members, Mi-
chels questioned democratic theorists' assertions that participation is self-
reinforcingand that participation produces popular control. Defending partici-
patory democracy, then, involves showing how the problems of participation
and popular control can be overcome in formallyrepresentativeorganizations.
The answer proposed is that collective solidarityor communityformedby those
reacting to injustice and committed to egalitarian social relations provides the
motivation for mass participation and the basis for popular control in modern
union and party organizations.
370
PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY 371
PARTICIPATORY CONTROL
IMPLICATIONS
CONCLUSION
NOTES
C. George Benello and Dimitrios Roussopoulis, eds., The Casefor Partici-
patoryDemocracy (New York: Grossman, 1971); Terrance Cook and Patrick Mor-
gan, Participatory Democracy(San Francisco: Canfield Press, 1971); Ronald M.
Mason, Participatory and Workplace Democracy:A Theoretical Development in Critique
of Liberalism(Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982); Tony
Benn, ArgumentsFor Socialism (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1980);
Martin Carnoy and Derek Shearer, EconomicDemocracy (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E.
Sharpe, 1980); Benjamin R. Barber, StrongDemocracy:Participatory PoliticsFor a
New Age (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984);
Philip Green, Retrieving Democracy: In Searchof CivicEquality(Totowa, N.J.: Row-
man & Allenheld, 1985).
2 Carole Pateman,
Participationand DemocraticTheory(Cambridge: Cam-
bridge UniversityPress, 1970), pp. 42-43
3 Ibid., chap. 2.
4 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (London: J. M. Dent and Son,
1973).
5 John Stuart Mill, Considerations on RepresentativeGovernment,ed. H. B. Ac-
ton (London: J. M. Dent and Son, 1977), chaps. 1-3.
6
Pateman, Participation and DemocraticTheory,p. 29.
7 Ibid., pp. 35-42; G. D. H. Cole, Social Theory(New York: Frederick A.
Stokes, 1920), chap. 6
8 Robert Michels, PoliticalParties.-A SociologicalStudyof theOligarchicalTenden-
cies of ModernDemocracy(New York: The Free Press, 1961). Restatements and
assessments of Michels's theory include S.M. Lipset's introduction, in Political
Parties,pp. 15-39; J. Linz, "Robert Michels," in the International Encyclopediaof
theSocial Sciences(New York: Macmillan, 1968), 10: pp. 265-72; C. W. Cas-
sinelli, "The Law of Oligarchy": AmericanPoliticalScienceReview,47 (1953), 773-
84; G. Hand,"Robert Michels and the Study of Political Parties,"BritishJournal
of PoliticalScience,1 (1971), 155-72; J. D. May, "Democracy, Organization, Mi-
chels,"AmericanPoliticalScienceReview,59 (1965), 417-84; R. T. McKenzie, Brit-
ish PoliticalParties(New York: Praeger, 1963); Peter Y. Medding, "A Framework
of Power in Political Parties,"PoliticalStudies,18 (1970), 1-17; David Beetham,
"From Socialism to Fascism: The Relation Between Theory and Practice in the
Work of Robert Michels. I. From Marxist Revolutionary to Political Sociolo-
gist,"PoliticalStudies,25 (1977), 3-24; and David Beetham, "Michels and His
Critics,"Archives Europeanesde Sociologie,22 (1981), 81-99.
9 Michels, PoliticalParties,p. 61.
10 Ibid., p. 50
1 See Edward S. Greenberg, "Industrial Self-Management and Political
Attitudes,"AmericanPoliticalScienceReview,75 (1981), 29-42.
12
J. Schumpeter, Capitalism,Socialism, and Democracy, 3rd ed. (New York:
Harper and Row, 1950), pp. 278-83. Restatements of Schumpeter can be found
in S. M. Lipset, "The Political Process in Trade Unions," in his PoliticalMan
388 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960), chapter 12 and Giovanni Sartori, "Anti-
Elitism Revisited," Government and Opposition,13 (1978), 58-80.
13 S.M. Lipset, M. Trow, and J. S. Coleman, UnionDemocracy:The Internal
Politicsof theInternationalTypographical
Union (New York: Free Press, 1956); J.
David Edelstein, "An Organizational Theory of Union Democracy" American
SociologicalReview,32 (1976), 19-39; J. David Edelstein and Malcolm Warner,
ComparativeUnion Democracy(New York: Halsted Press, 1976); Roderick Mar-
tin, "Union Democracy: An Explanatory Framework" Sociology,2 (1968), 205-
220; Roderick Martin, "The Effectsof Recent Changes in Industrial Conflict
on the Internal Politics of Trade Unions: Britain and Germany,"in C. Crouch
and A. Pizzorno, eds., The Resurgence of Class Conflictin Western
Europe since
1968, vol. 2 (London: Macmillan, 1978), 110-22;John Hemingway,Conflict
and Democracy:Studies in Trade Union Government
(Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1978). Also see, R. A. Dahl, Who Governs?
(New Haven: Yale UniversityPress,
1961).
14
S. M. Lipset, "Introduction" p. 33-34.
15 Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz, "The Two Faces of Power,"Ameri-
can PoliticalScienceReview,56 (1962), 947-52.
16
Ralf Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflictin IndustrialSociety(Stanford:
Stanford UniversityPress, 1959).
S Steven Lukes, Power:A Radical View(London: Macmillan, 1974), p. 34.
17
8 Dennis H. Wrong, Power: Its Forms,Bases and Uses (New York: Harper
and Row, 1979), p. 196.
19 William E. Connolly, "On 'Interests' in Politics," Politics and Society2
(1972), 459-77.
20 This point is evident in Gaventa's Powerand Powerlessness: and Re-
Quiescence
bellionin an AppalachianValley(Urbana: Universityof Illinois Press, 1980), chap.
7.
21 G. Duncan and S. Lukes, "The New Democracy," Political Studies, 11
tain criteria of ultimate ends. . ." to the evaluation of the outcome of economic
activity.Max Weber, Economyand Society,G. Roth and C. Wittich, eds. (New
York: Bedminster Press, 1968), Vol. 1, p. 85. Also see, Joyce Rothschild-Whitt,
"The Collectivist Organization: An Alternative to Rational-Bureaucratic
Models" AmericanSociologicalReview,44 (1979), 512.
29 Jiirgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975), pp.
8-12.
30 Jane J. Mansbridge, BeyondAdversary Democracy (New York: Basic Books,
1980), chaps. 1,2.
31 Mancur Olson, Jr., The Logic of CollectiveAction(New York: Schocken
Books, 1968).
32 W. Brown, ed., The ChangingContours of BritishIndustrialRelations(Ox-
ford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), chap. 5; M. Mann, "Industrial Relations in Ad-
vanced Capitalism and the Explosion of Consciousness," in T. Clarke and L.
Clements, eds. TradeUnions UnderCapitalism,p. 298.
13 S. Hill, "Norms, Groups, and Power: The Sociology of Workplace In-
dustrial Relations," BritishJournalofIndustrialRelations12 (1974), 218-22.
34 L. Sayles, Behavior in Industrial WorkGroups (New York: John Wiley,
1958), chap. 3.
35 T. Lupton, On theShop Floor(Oxford: Pergamon, 1963), chap. 13.
36 M. Kalecki, "Political Aspects of Full Employment" in E. K. Hunt and