''Who Governs?: Democracy and Power in an American City'' is a book in American

political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...

Robert Dahl Robert Alan Dahl (; December 17, 1915 – February 5, 2014) was an American political theorist and Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University. He established the pluralist theory of democracy—in which political outcomes are ...

. It was published in 1961 by

Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous. , Yale Universi ...

. Dahl's work is a case study of political power and representation in

New Haven New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,023 ...

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...

. It is widely considered one of the great works of empirical political science of the twentieth century. ''Who Governs?'' is Dahl's claim as the leader of the pluralistic approach to politics: he argues that many interest groups compete in the political sphere, the government's role being to act as the mediator between the groups. The central question that Dahl asks is who actually governs in a system where every adult may vote but where knowledge, wealth, social position, access to officials and other resources are unequally distributed? Dahl contends that New Haven is a democratic community, where most residents are entitled to vote. However, there is an unequal distribution of the resources that can be used to influence voters. One answer is that competing parties govern with the consent of voters through competitive elections. Another theory is that interest groups govern. A third theory is that beneath the facade of democracy, the elite actually govern. Dahl critiques these theories for failing to recognize the power of leaders. He proposes that in a democracy, the masses and leaders govern together. ''Who Governs?'' is an influential contribution to scholarship on the concept of power. Dahl conceptualizes power as the ability of A to make B do something that B would not otherwise do. Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz criticized Dahl's concept of power, arguing that it omitted agenda-setting powers and veto powers. Steven Lukes added that power may also entail that A influences B to the extent that B's preferences become altered to be consistent with A's preferences.

References

1961 non-fiction books American political books Books about democracy Yale University Press books {{polisci-book-stub