ABSTRACT
Three paradigms of the relations between the state and the society in industrialized capitalist democracies can be labeled pluralist, elite, and class. The pluralist paradigm assumes that diverse groups and interests intermittently present demands to political parties and other elite coalitions that in turn aggregate and represent those demands to leaders and officials. The elite paradigm assumes that large-scale complex organizations tend to form in almost every sphere of social life in these societies: factories, universities, government agencies, labor unions, and political parties. The class paradigm views neither the debates and decisions occurring in pluralistic political arenas nor the battles of organizational elites to maintain their control over material and human resources as exhausting the crucial facts about the relations between the state and the society. The pluralist paradigm focuses upon the conditions of mobilization of particular groups and individuals for political action and upon the strategies of influence and the outcomes of action in particular situations.
