The paradox of American democracy (Chap. 1), by John B. Judis

Résumé du document

John B. Judis is a senior editor at The New Republic, where he is working since 1982. He graduated at the University of California at Berkeley in 1965 and taught philosophy there later on. He was an active leftist activist during the 60es and founded the leftwing journal The Socialist Revolution in 1969. In his book The Paradox of American Democracy, Elites, Special Interests, and the Betrayal of Public Trust, Judis focuses principally on how conservative forces succeeded in gaining power, through the establishment of interest groups and right-wing foundations. He cultivates a sort of nostalgia for the years in which progressive movements began to emerge before being counterattacked by the business-classes.

Extraits

[...] The Paradox of American Democracy (Chap. by John B. Judis John B. Judis is a senior editor at The New Republic, where he is working since 1982. He graduated at the University of California at Berkeley in 1965 and taught philosophy there later on. He was an active leftist activist during the 60es and founded the leftwing journal The Socialist Revolution in 1969. In his book The Paradox of American Democracy, Elites, Special Interests, and the Betrayal of Public Trust, Judis focuses principally on how conservative forces succeeded in gaining power, through the establishment of interest groups and right-wing foundations. [...]

[...] They defend a rational and equal representation of the “major groups” in society, mainly the business and the labor. Finally the Populists and the Marxist analysts think, that the major political decisions are prepared and highly influenced by small groups of the business, military and political called by the Populist the “power elite” (Wright Mills) and by the Marxists, the ruling class. And yet, in Judis's opinion, these views don't contradict each other as some political scientists may have put it. [...]

[...] The role of government The role that one awaited from the American government changed a lot during the 20th Century. The Federalists and the Jacksonians for example, didn't agree on the relevance of a skilled and educated elite, that could promote the public interest. With time, the government became a sort of passive referee whose role is essentially to negotiate among interest groups. It is in regard of this failure in the fostering of equality between business and civic aspirations that the liberals and the progressives insisted on the existence of a great elite, that could back the “public-labor- consumers” in order to counterbalance their impotence towards the business groups. [...]

[...] It is combination of all three” that may be effective. Interest groups for example had a huge importance in the 1920es and the 1980es ; elites instead were significant in the Progressive Era and in the 1960es, whereas voters had a certain power during the New Deal. As Judis himself summarizes it: “Just as different political periods are distinguished by their prevailing view of government, they have also been marked by the relative importance of the different realms of political activity”. [...]

[...] Independent foundations which aimed at counterbalancing the business power were created like the Ford and the Brookings Institutions for example. They brought the political world into a new logic: the “power elite”. Elites The so-called Marxists and Populists school of thought were a great deal influenced by Wright Mills' Power Elite (1956). Mills' argument is to point out the fact that there is an “intricate of set of overlapping cliques” that may be military, economic and political leaders and who constituted a world apart called the “Power elite”. [...]