Define liberal pluralist
Define liberal pluralist
Introduction
In political science, liberal pluralism refers to the belief that power in liberal democracies is distributed among a number of economic and ideological interest groups rather than being held by a single elite or coalition of elites. Pluralism believes that diversity is good for society and that different functional or cultural classes, such as religious institutions, labor unions, professional organizations, and ethnic minorities, should have autonomy.
Liberal Pluralism was advocated most vehemently in England during the early twentieth century by a group of writers including Frederic Maitland, Samuel G. Hobson, Harold Laski, Richard H. Tawney, and George Douglas Howard Cole, who were responding to what they saw as the individual's isolation under unrestrained capitalism. They argued that the person must be integrated into a social framework that provides him with a sense of belonging, citing the medieval system of guilds, chartered towns, villages, monasteries, and universities as an example of such a society. Pluralists argued that economic and administrative decentralization could mitigate some of the negative aspects of modern industrial society.
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