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Reflections on Opposition in Western Democracies*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Robert A. Dahl
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Extract

To one who believes in the essential worth of a democratic polity, how much opposition is desirable, and what kinds? What is the best balance between consensus and dissent ? Even among democrats there is not much agreement on the answers to these questions.

It is easy to see why. These questions seem to demand nothing less than a complicated assessment of democracy itself. Or to put the matter more precisely, one can judge the desirability of different patterns of political opposition only by employing a number of different criteria that would be used if one were appraising the extent to which a political system as a whole achieves what are usually considered democratic goals or values.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , 01 October 1965 , pp. 7 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1965

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References

1 Cf. Bagehot, who refers to ‘one of the mental conditions of Parliamentary Government, by which I do not mean reasoning power, but rather the power of hearing the reasons of others, of comparing them quietly with one’s own reasons, and then being guided by the result’. The English Constitution, p. 4. See also p. 280.

2 The notion of ‘unfreedom’ is defined in Oppenheim, Felix E., Dimemiom of Freedom, New York, 1961 Google Scholar, Chap. 4, ‘Unfreedom’.

3 Cf. the discussion in Dahl, R. A. and Lindblom, C. E., Politics, Economics, and Welfare, New York, 1953, pp. 82ffGoogle Scholar and the much more highly developed theory in C.E. Lindblom and D. Braybrooke, A Strategy of Decision, Glencm, Ill., 1963, Chap. 5, ‘The Strategy of Disjointed Incrementalism’, and Chap. 6, ‘Why Analysts Use The Strategy’.

4 March, James G. and Simon, Herbert A., Organizations, New York, 1958, pp. 129ffGoogle Scholar.

5 L’Art de la Conjecture, Monaco, 1964, p. 82.