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This classic analysis challenges America's complacency about its political system.

In the modern, extant world of practical history, the dominant "democratic" tradition splits sharply into three, often hostile strands. These strands are liberal democracy, social revolutionary democracy, and participatory democracy. Especially for analytical purposes, it is important to see these strands as distinct sharing only the vaguest general commitment to government by and for broad reaches of the population (thedemos). However, the three strands, for all their differences—and hostilities—should be seen historically as standing in profound and significantdialecticalrelationship with each other. In this light, liberal and social revolutionary democracy are opposites in an antithetical tension that is increasingly extreme. Participatory democracy will then appear as a third term, a still emerging synthetical response arising out of attempts to resolve the tension between the two earlier democratic variants, and clearly showing marks of its inheritance from them.

Can philosophically inclined political scientists, as well as quantifying behavioralists, use diagrams? Of course … and have at least since Plato depicted Socrates drawing lines in the sand below the walls of Athens. Nothing will more quickly or comprehensively convey the relationships between the elements within a complex idea than a carefully constructed, skillfully rendered schematic diagram.A few years back, I published a book on American politics (Roelofs 1992b). Some readers found it interesting, but others seemed unable to credit—much less to critique— its central claim: to have presented a detailed, integrated, and comprehensive account of the American political system as a conceptual whole. Apparently, for these readers, my argument was so extended, the elements to be connected within it so numerous (and sometimes individually so strange), they simply lost sight of my overall intent.In a phenomenological perspective, the American political system, viewed comprehensively, is an Idea, extraordinarily complex, and filled with ingenious devices as well as major contradictions and paradoxes. Yet it is still a single system, as the diagram I have now developed to illustrate the argument of my book (Figure 1) attempts to show.