The book “Who Governs?” by Robert Dahl analyzes and evaluates the role of the political elite in city government and the impact on interest groups and community power of governance. The book advances the theoretical argument and opens new issues related to city governance and political power in modern America. Dahl underlines that the problem of power is reduced, in the modern state, to the control of specific acts of some powers. Today, the role of power is not one problem but many problems; for there is no one abuse of power. The book does not reflect one particular issue but discusses a complex problem of power in Atlanta using the Decisional method of analysis. Dahl claims that the book is important to read because it helps citizens and interest groups to understand the structure and functions of power in a city environment. Dahl quests for solutions to the problems generated by the multiple powers. Following Dahl, abuses of power must be drawn between those associated with the acquisition of power and political powers resulting from how that power, once acquired, is exercised. The book consists of 6 parts (Books) devoted to different social and political problems of the region.
The author makes his case using the decisional method of analysis. In the first instance, the fundamental concept is the usurpation of the legal power itself, the acquisition of political power by unconstitutional or wrongful means. In the second issue, political and local power is exercised not so much because it is acquired illegitimately but because a government acts oppressively. “The distinction between the ritual of power and the realities of power is frequently obscure” (Dahl 89). Dahl underlines that to speak of justice or the unwarranted deprivation of rights, however, is to raise certain difficulties, for these are matters of disputation, and they are likely to remain so. Rights, for Dahl, have most usually been held to be those claims guaranteed to men by the urban system under which they live or by the moral code to which they give or ought to give their loyalty. These two sources of local powers are not necessarily connected. They may be essentially opposed. The author has two views of urban power: one that looks to how the political leader acquires his domination, the other to how he exercises it. And it is to this twofold aspect of the abuse of power that writers on politics, with but rare exceptions have generally addressed themselves. Thus, when local political leaders argued in favor of a particular form of local community governance, based on democratic principles, they did so on both of these grounds. They asserted, first, that the power of urban politics rests on a right principle of authority, that is, on the freely rendered consent of the governed; and secondly, that it provides a political instrument which tends to prevent, or at least to alleviate, abuses of power by enabling the ruled to recall the leader should he get out of hand (Dahl 43).
Dahl has based the book on interviews and opinions of important people and neighborhood rank residents. He analyzes public documents and statistical information. Democratic governments, on the other hand, are not tyrannical by nature; for by resting on the theoretically determined will of the people, they validate their first claim to authority. But they remain potentially oppressive in their actions; for in pluralism (no less than in oligarchy) different interests and different conceptions of justice exist and vie for power, and in the way of that political leaders may sometimes engage in practices and promulgate ideas that are difficult to settle with the principles of their political system. in urban communities and small states, pluralism is not a utopia. Within democratic powers conflicts of interest are neither eliminated nor still. They are rather transferred to a different battlefield and the contenders are supplied with different tools. Where, in oligarchic states, the area is restricted to a select group that commands the instruments of coercion in sufficient degree to forestall effective opposition to the promotion of its interests, in democratic states that arena is thrown open to all men and all interests, and the instruments of persuasion are, or ought to be, sufficiently undisturbed as to permit that interest or coalition of interests which can marshal the support of a majority of the people to prevail. Thus, while all men are equal and the interests of all are, in principle, given an equal opportunity to be heard, not all can expect equal satisfaction. So long as there is a conflict of interests–and some interests, though not all, inevitably conflict– pluralism, like an oligarchy, can do no more than striving to protect the interests of some and not of all men. Unlike oligarchy, however, the democratic state makes it possible to secure the interests of the many, or at least of the majority, rather than the interests of a privileged few (Dahl 72).
The main arguments presented in the book are the tremendous role of local powers in city governance and rivals of the powerful leaders, inequalities that existed in communities, and economic exploitation of the local communities. Dahl writes that democratic governments are not oppressive by nature; for by resting on the empirically determined (rather than assumed or fraudulently determined) will of the people they validate their first claim to legitimacy. But they remain potentially tyrannical in their actions; for in democracy (no less than in oligarchy) diverse interests and diverse conceptions of justice still exist and vie for power, and in the course of that struggle men may sometimes engage in practices and promulgate ideas that are difficult to reconcile with the principles of their political system. Democracy, it must be remembered, is not a utopia. Within it, conflicts of interest are neither eliminated nor still. They are rather transferred to a different battleground and the contenders are supplied with different weapons. Where, in oligarchical States, the arena is restricted to a select group that commands the tools of coercion in sufficient degree to efficient opposition to the promotion of its interests, in democratic urban areas that arena is thrown open to all men and all interests, and the tools of persuasion are, or ought to be, adequately undisturbed as to permit that interest or coalition of interests which can marshal the support of a majority of the people to prevail. Thus, while all citizens are equal and the interests of all are, in principle, given an equal opportunity to be heard, not all can expect equal authority. So long as there is a conflict of interests–and some interests, though not all, unavoidably conflict democracy, like an oligarchy, can do no more than struggle to protect the interests of some and not of all men. Unlike oligarchy, the democratic power in urban communities makes it possible to protect the interests of the many, or at least of the majority, rather than the interests of the privileged elite.
The arguments presented by Dahl do not fit with traditional urban politics as they criticize and unmask real states of political affairs in urban politics. A necessary and important requirement must be entered here, for what makes such conflicts of interest achievable, what sustains the state under whose guidance they occur, is a broad and underlying agreement on the fundamentals of the social order. No state least of all a democratic state–can expect to stay alive where the masses of the people are not united on and attached to those necessary principles, and in this respect, there is a widespread interest at the heart of, and that is furthered by democratic governments. There are many things e.g., the defense of the peace, the maintenance of the vital liberties, the advancement of learning, the cultivation of the arts, and the like which are valuable and (avowedly at least) of concern to all; and the promise to such common values overrides and makes tolerable the lesser conflicts of separate and dividing interests. Yet, those political interests remain, and their proponents struggle (sometimes bitterly) for power. Majorities even if but temporary and changing majorities are formed over against the opinion of minority citizens. And in the pursuit of their powers, aggravated at times by the heat of political fervor, majorities and, where they can, minorities too resort now and again to random and cruel measures. It is not surprising that local political leaders and representatives of and responsible to those majorities should serve as tools through which such oppressive actions can be successfully imposed.
The book is successful as it proposes to readers clear and well-developed arguments about the politics in local communities and problems caused by oppressive power relations. It is easy enough for a state to accept those ideas which endorse the principles of the recognized order and which are critical save for secondary matters only of opposing systems. It requires a quite different temperament, and a considerably greater degree of confidence in the validity of its principles, for a state not only to accede to a life of continuous conflict in ideas but to make that conflict the very basis of its existence. The book allows readers to look differently at urban politics and understand the causes of financial and social problems faced by local communities. This is not to say that pluralism any more than oligarchy gives dissenters a right to act contrary to laws. It is one of the marks of pluralism, however, that it, alone of the forms of state, makes it a primary principle that those who disagree with the fundamentals of the political system or with the policies of a government in urban power have the right both to appeal for a change in that local political system or its policies to articulate in opposition to the laws and to manage into appropriate political associations in order more efficiently to press for the removal of that government, or for the modification or dissolution of the urban political system itself.
Works Cited
Dahl, R. Who Governs?: Democracy and Power in the American City. Yale University Press, 1990.