Modern Pluralism

Pluralism is among the most vital intellectual movements of the modern era. Liberal pluralism helped reinforce and promote greater separation of political and religious spheres. Socialist pluralism promoted the political role of trade unions and the rise of corporatism. Empirical pluralism helped legitimate the role of interest groups in democratic government. Today pluralism inspires thinking about key issues such as multiculturalism and network governance. However, despite pluralism's importance, there are no histories of twentieth-century pluralist thinking. Modern Pluralism fills this gap. It explores liberal, socialist, and empirical ideas about diversity in Britain and the United States. It shows how pluralists challenged homogenous nations and sovereign states, often promoting sub-national groups as potential sites of self-government. In it, intellectual historians, political theorists, and social scientists collectively explore the historical background to present institutions and debates. The book serves to enrich our understanding of the history of pluralism and its continuing relevance.

"In ten essays, the scholars disentangle and explain theoretical development and the contemporary social impact of these strands of liberalism on the liberal polities of Great Britain and the US. The diversity of pluarlism's challenges to liberalism are carefully dissected, with special attention to the nuances and idiosyncrasies of key thinkers...This collection of well-reasoned, well-argued essays is not for the theoretically timid." -J.R. Pottenger, University of Alabama in Huntsville, CHOICE

Mark Bevir is a Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. His publications include The Making of British Socialism (2011), Democratic Governance (2010) and Markets in Historical Contexts: Ideas and Politics in the Modern World edited with Frank Trentmann (2004, 2007).