Neopluralism: The Evolution of Political Process Theory. By
Andrew S. McFarland. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004. 208p.
$35.00 cloth, $16.95 paper.
Pluralism and its advocates once dominated the study of American
politics. And by staking out a strong positivist position on the
fundamental issue of political power in their battle with elite
theorists, pluralists also influenced the discipline of political
science as a whole. Yet, in contemporary American politics, pluralism
is rarely invoked as a theoretical guide, and when it is discussed, it
is often as a foil for some alternative conceptual approach. So what
happened to pluralism? In Neopluralism, Andrew McFarland seeks
to explain what happened and to restore pluralism to a place of
prominence in American politics and within the discipline of political
science.