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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 3 page summary and analysis of Robert A. Dahl's classic study of the political processes in a typical American town (New Haven, Connecticut) which is detailed in Dahl's book, "Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City." No additional sources cited.
Page Count:
3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khdahlwg.doc
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
this particular research study. Dahl explains that by thoroughly researching how the political system in this one typical American city operated-its past and its present-he, and his colleagues, attempted
to discern how social inequalities affect the political equality that is a fundamental presumption of the American system. Dahl presents to the reader the questions that he attempted to
answer. For example, one of the questions he seeks to answer is whether or not the way that "political resources are distributed encourage oligarchy or pluralism" (Dahl 7). As Dahl
develops his ideas from historical background material, these initial questions evolve into specific hypotheses. These are: 1) only a small proportion of the citizens will have much direct influence on
decisions in the sense of directly initiating proposals; 2) citizens with relatively great direct influence will have a corps of subleaders to aid them with their tasks; and 3)
because a democratic creed is widely subscribed to, the overt relationships between leaders and subleaders will often be clothed in rituals of "democratic" control (Dahl, 1961, p. 102).
To put it another way, the normative premise in this book refers to the historical background of the country and the fundamental principles of equality that are assumed to be
the bedrock of the American political system. However, the empirical premises examine the reality of this assumption and how social inequalities affect the presumption of equal political representation. The data
that Dahl uses to form his conclusions was gathered from a variety of sources, using a number of different methods. Primarily, however, the most single useful source of information, according
to the author, was a set of lengthy interviews that were conducted between 1957 and 1958 with close to fifty individuals who had taken an active role in one or
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