1 Two other particularly interesting, though very different, contributions to that debate are made by Antony Black, State, Community and Human Desire: a group-centred account of political values, Hemel Hempstead, Harvester/wheatsheaf, 1988, and McLennan, Gregor, Marxism, Pluralism and Beyond: classical debates and new departures, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1989 Google Scholar.

2 This title is surprisingly similar to that of the only other book devoted to English pluralism published in almost half a century, Nicholls’s, David The Pluralist State, London, Macmillan, 1975 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The latter also includes, as an appendix, one of Laski’s essays selected by Hirst, ‘The Pluralistic State’.

3 The Pluralist Theory of the State, p. 22.

4 W. N. E., The Guildsman, no. 40, April 1920, p. 7.

5 The Pluralist Theory of the State, p. 1.

6 Valuable methodological critiques of rational choice theory, which are compatible with pluralist theory, have been advanced by Hirst’s one-time collaborator, Barry Hindess. See his Choice and Rationality in Social Theory, London, Unwin Hyman, 1988, and Political Choice and Social Structure: an analysis of actors, interests and rationality, Aldershot, Edward Elgar, 1989.

7 A number of Hirst’s recent essays are collected in Hirst, Paul Q., Representative Democracy and its Limits, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1990 Google Scholar.