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The Manipulation of Popular Impulse: Graham Wallas Revisited
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
Extract
When Graham Wallas published his Human Nature in Politics, just over fifty years ago, it was already becoming apparent that the machinery of representative democracy was not working as smoothly as its liberal creators had intended. The successful operation of its institutions, which implied the existence of a society of rational well-intentioned individuals, was being frustrated by oligarchic party structures, self-interested pressure groups, the apathy and ignorance of the mass of the population, and the power of irrational persuasion. As the gulf between the theory and the practice of democracy became more obvious, there resulted a disillusionment which led many to a complete rejection of the democratic thesis. It was this setting that led Ostrogorski, Michels, and others to prophesy the collapse of democratic political machinery.
But to prove that the institutions set up by men to achieve a certain ideal are inadequate for that purpose is not the same as to prove the worthlessness of the ideal. Such was the essence of Graham Wallas' thesis. The founders of democratic theory believed they had discovered the means for a fuller expression of human dignity and a more complete development of the individual's potential. An unfortunate over-emphasis on the role of reason in political activity, however, made impossible the realization of their ideal through the machinery they had established, especially the machinery for the election of representatives. Democracy, nevertheless, remained an ideal that might still be attainable if some adjustments were made to account for previously neglected facts about human nature.
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- Information
- Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , May 1959 , pp. 165 - 173
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1959
References
1 Wallas, , Human Nature in Politics (London, 1908), 240.Google Scholar The page references given in the text refer to this edition.
2 As illustrative of this trend, see Lasswell's, Power and Personality (New York, 1948)Google Scholar, with its stress on the “social psychiatry of society.”
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13 Ibid., March 28, 1958, 14. The quotations are from a full-page advertisement for the Conservative party.
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