ABSTRACT
For almost two centuries, we hotly discussed what government should do. We almost never asked what government can do. Now increasingly the limits and function of government will be the issue. And government is no longer, as political and social theory still postulate, the only power centre. In the developed countries both society and polity have become pluralist again, in startling reversal of the trends which prevailed since the end of the Middle Ages. These new pluralisms are very different from anything known earlier. The pluralism of society is one of apolitical, performance-focused, single-task institutions. The pluralism of the body politic is that of the new ‘mass movements’: small, highly organized minorities, single cause or single interest in their focus, and totally political.
