ABSTRACT
Bargaining is a form of reciprocal control among leaders. Social pluralism makes some bargaining necessary in all polyarchies. Bargaining is made necessary, possible, and profitable by social pluralism-interdependence-disagreement against a background of basic agreement. Political support for the economizing process presupposes an identification that in practice turns out to be one of the weakest in our society: the consumer. The classical and neo-classical economists developed a body of theory that projected onto the whole economy the goals of a rational consumer. Bargaining is made necessary, possible, and profitable by social pluralism-interdependence-disagreement against a background of basic agreement. Both social pluralism, with its tendencies to disagreement, and basic agreement are necessary to polyarchy. Roughly two alternatives are open to a polyarchal society. Relying on social pluralism, it may minimize prescribed checks and balances in its constitutional arrangements.
