Robert A. Dahl
32 quotes
Biography
"One of the difficulties that confronts anyone who attempts to answer the question, "Who rules in a pluralist democracy?" is the ambiguous relationship of leaders to citizens."
"People can be deceived by appeals intended to destroy democracy in the name of democracy. Dissenters who believe in the democratic creed may unwittingly advocate or legitimists may insist on preserving rules of the game destined to have unforeseen and unintended consequences disastrous to the stability and perhaps the survival of the democracy."
"That democratization has never closely approached its theoretical limits, either in the government of the state or in the government of other institutions, is revealed in the three great historical movement toward democratizing the state."
"The democratic process in governing a country is not necessarily enhanced by democratizing subsidiary parts of the process."
"Even in a democratic country, it appears, nondemocratic forms of authority might sometimes be tolerable, perhaps actually desirable."
"Democracy in the sense of political equality and majority rule is by no means the most desirable, that is, optimal solution for all kinds of associations."
"If a matter is best dealt with by a democratic association, seek always to have that matter dealt with by the smallest association that can deal with it satisfactorily."
"In considering whether a larger association would be more satisfactory, do not fail to consider its extra costs, including a possible increase in the sense of individual powerlessness."
"Many of the criticisms of capitalism advanced by socialists were essentially correct. Capitalism is persistently at odds with values of equity, fairness, political equality among all citizens, and democracy."
"In doing so, socialist, labor, and social democratic parties contributed to -- though they were not the sole authors of -- the development of the mixed economies that exist in advanced countries today. If these mixed economies are a far cry from the centralized systems that were created in Eastern Europe under Leninist rulers, they are also very far from the classical liberal model of a self-regulating market economy. If we look to the most advanced economies for guidance, then we should not allow ourselves to be misled by dogma about "free markets.""
"In addition, a century or more of efforts to arrive at a feasible and politically acceptable mix of market and nonmarket elements has not produced a definitive, stable, or uniform solution."
"The experience of the democratic countries with the most advanced economies also tells us that no single pattern, or even a dominant one, has emerged; and what has emerged is a product of the special characteristics and the unique history of each country."
"Actual practices in the advanced democratic countries are, then, far too diverse and complex to be captured by ideologies."
"It seems obvious, then, that the search for solutions to the problems generated by a predominantly privately owned market-oriented society has been and will continue to be a major element in the political agenda of every democratic country."
"Because intelligent choices of public policies require both technical understanding and sensitivity to the values involved, in modern democratic countries a form of specialized intellectual activity has evolved that tends to combine both aspects of policy."
"I have stressed inequalities in wealth and incomes because they reveal how far this country falls short not only of an ideal but of an actual condition of equality that was taken for granted by democrats like Jefferson and Madison in the early years of the Republic. But there is another important reason for particularly stressing incomes. When we attempt to compensate for gross inequalities in incomes by means other than providing income itself, the result is likely to be a patchwork of irritating regulations enforced by bureaucratic agencies."
"It would be more realistic to think of all economic enterprise as a public service. Thought of in this perspective, a private economy is a contradiction in terms. Every economy is a public or social (not socialist) economy."
"In a magic show, mystification is a good thing, but it is hardly to be commended in an economic program."
"Probably nothing strengthened the impetus of socialists toward bureaucratic centralization more than their implacable rejection of economic controls in general and the market in particular."
"I cannot stress too strongly the importance of external controls, both governmental and economic. I do not see how economic enterprises can be operated satisfactorily in a modern economy, capitalist, mixed, socialist or whatever, without some strategic external controls over the firm."
"To what extent do the views of Madison justify the specific constitutional arrangements that came out of the Convention together with the political practices and doctrine that followed? I am now inclined to think that the connection was much looser than l indicated in my chapter on Madisonian Democracy."
"Does Madison's belief that separation of powers is necessary to prevent tyranny necessarily require a presidential system or even judicial review? As I pointed out, this reading makes Madison silly, or at least a casualty of historical developments, since almost all other democratic countries have rejected the first and some the second. Of course, like all others of his time Madison had to make judgments about constitutional arrangements with very little directly relevant historical experience to go on. Hindsight gives us the advantage of nearly two centuries of later experience, during which most of the stable democracies adopted a parliamentary system, only a few chose a presidential system, and none adopted the American presidential system."
"I concluded also that Madison had more confidence in majorities than I gave him credit for; or more accutely, that he was somewhat less distrustful and hostile to majority rule than I had supposed."
"Every attempt to develop systematic democratic theory has to confront the elementary fact that democracy can be, and in practice has been, interpreted as an ideal political system, perhaps (or probably, or certainly) unattainable in full, and also as an actual, historically existing system, a set of political institutions or processes that are attainable at least under some limiting conditions."
"If the Madisonian democratic republicans had been able to foresee the later experience with constitutions in democratic countries, including the experience of the United States, would they have made the choices they made in 1787? I very much doubt it."