Robert A. Dahl was one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century, best known for his foundational work on pluralist democracy and the concept of "polyarchy." A Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University, Dahl advanced empirical approaches to political science and reshaped understandings of democratic theory through both descriptive and normative lenses. He argued that political power in democracies is distributed among multiple interest groups rather than centralized in a single elite, a view he expounded in seminal works such as A Preface to Democratic Theory (1956) and Who Governs? (1961), the latter based on a case study of New Haven, Connecticut. His concept of polyarchy described modern representative democracies as systems characterize ...Read More