Pluralists

There are two aspects to pluralism that Domhoff identifies in his book. Pluralism, in general, is that power is widely dispersed throughout society. This means that there is no one person, group, or groups in power. The first aspect of pluralism is that power is held by the general public through public opinion and voting. The second aspect of pluralism is demonstrated in the weakness of cohesion between the various companies to make them a dominant class. They also claim that businesses often cater to the liberal groups on specific issues, and that business dominated coalition actually lose the battles sometimes.

Domhoff puts forth that, although there may specific issues where the power elite may agree with liberal, however, on the fundamental issues (labour unions, high taxes, and government regulation) there are rarely lapses of class-wide cohesion. And finally, where business dominated coalitions fail, this is usually the result of another business up against it. Where businesses are concerned, Domhoff states, the government is left to sort out the pieces.

Arguments to support Domhoff's view against the pluralist outlook is visible in the chapter ``The Policy Formation Network.'' He states that many pluralists overlook the policy formation network; they continue to claim that the corporate rich haven't a way to develop solid policies. Hence, they only really act through Washington based lobbying and lawyers on varying narrow banded political issues. In addition, ``The Role of Public Opinion'' shows that public opinion has little or no influence on major policies. The opinion of the majority has differed from those of elected officials for many years without direct effect on public policy. I'll look into this with a bit more detail in the next section.