Pluralist Interest Intermediation

Ulrich von Alemann

Modern democracies are determined by a great number of diverse interests. That is why structures and actors that show and assert individual social interests are necessary. Nevertheless, although interests can be articulated individually, a collective and organized representation of interests, called interest intermediation, promises greater success. Because of this, organized interest intermediation plays an increasingly decisive role in the political process. It belongs to democracy “like the piston belongs to the cylinder” (Ralf Kleinfeld, 2007, p. 7), because without organized aggregation and articulation of interests, modern societies and democratic forms of government would not be able to act. Modern democracies show very different structures of interest intermediation. Corporate and pluralistic systems of interest intermediation can be distinguished. The interest of political science in this process lies, in particular, in the identification of regular patterns of interest intermediation and conflict resolution. However, before the process of interest intermediation is dealt with ...

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