William E. Connolly: Resuming the pluralist tradition in American political science

William Connolly has made important interventions in political theory over a period of four decades, and the past few years have seen a surge in recognition of his contribution. Those who are familiar with Connolly’s ideas will know the role that continental theorists-especially Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze-have played in the development of his thought, and more recently the uses he has made of advances in the natural sciences, for example in complexity theory, in the work of the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, and the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Ilya Prigogine. With reference to these innovations, a consensus has emerged in recent discussions, that there is a basic discontinuity between Connolly’s “postmodern” theory of pluralism and the “old” pluralism of the generation of post-war political scientists. By way of contrast, in this essay I outline the congruity between Connolly’s ideas and earlier iterations of pluralism. I trace the essential continuities between Connolly and the leading post-war writers, especially Robert Dahl, Charles Lindblom, David Truman, and David Easton, and also his proximity to a tradition of pluralism that flourished in the early part of the twentieth century and was exemplified in the work of Arthur Bentley. Indeed, I make the case that Connolly’s work is best understood as the resumption and enhancement of a distinct canon of pluralism in American political thought.