Earlier this month, I conversed with Joe Schuman about my recently published book, The Twenty-Eighth Amendment? Beyond Abolishing the Electoral College.  Joe is Editor-in-Chief of Divided We Fall (https://dividedwefall.com/), a non-profit news publication providing bipartisan dialogue to the politically engaged.   This discussion was published on October 28, 2020.

Joe Schuman: Thanks for joining us, Professor Schumaker. In the 21st century, we have seen two Presidents win the electoral college but lose the popular vote. As a result, we have heard increasing demand to abolish the electoral college. Let’s put aside the debate on whether or not we should abolish the electoral college and focus on how abolishing the electoral college would actually be done. What would it take to abolish the electoral college?

Paul Schumaker: My book “The Twenty-Eighth Amendment?” is more about the institutions and procedures that should ideally be adopted to replace the Electoral College than it is about overcoming the barriers to changing the Constitution in practice.  The question of “how?” is a formidable one to answer.  As I discuss in the book, over 700 proposals to abolish the College have been considered by Congress and none has ever passed. Even if Congress passed such a Constitutional Amendment, the obstacles to its passing in three-quarters of the states, as required by Article 5 of the Constitution, are formidable.  In the end, these proposed reforms have been defeated by power politics—by persons using their institutional resources to secure what they think are their own interests, the interests of their party, or the interests of their states.

What my book tries to do is undermine power politics by making the moral case for changing the system.  What I have tried to do throughout my career is to suggest that, at least sometimes, “ethics matter” in politics.  In other words, some issues can be seen as so morally obvious and compelling that a consensus emerges that pricks the moral consciousness of both (power oriented) politicians and (politically apathetic) citizens.  Ending slavery, having progressive taxes, having basic social security, extending civil rights, and ending certain wars are historical examples. Dealing with structural racism seemed to moving along this path this summer.  I make the moral case for moving beyond the Electoral College.

To do that, I first point out the questionable power-based motivations that supporters of the Electoral College hold.  First, I challenge the widespread assumption that the Electoral College serves the interests of our least populated states. Second, I suggest the dubiousness of the widespread assumption that the College protects Republican interests.  In the book, I develop both of these arguments in order to undercut the motivations of those who have long used their power to undermine reforms that would serve democratic ideals.

But the heart of the book is to make a positive moral argument. Rather than basing my argument on complex philosophical analysis (this is a book for the general public!), my argument appeals to norms that are widespread in American culture.  One part of the moral argument is based on the ideal that all voters should be treated as equals. To have voter equality, candidates should have incentives to consider the well-being of all citizens, regardless of their race, gender, place of residence, etc. The second part of the moral argument is that voters need to be community-minded when they vote. They should put aside their own ideology, partisanship, and even policy concerns and cast their votes on the basis of the qualifications, values, and trustworthiness of the candidates and their track record of pursuing the common good on behalf of all people in the nation. Politics works much better when voters set aside the question of who do I want in the presidency because he/she claims to reflect my ideology, my identity, and my policy preferences? Instead they should vote with a different question in mind: which of the candidates do we most trust to do what is good and right when juggling various ideological, partisan, and policy orientations.

Joe: In “The Twenty-Eighth Amendment?” you say that a Constitutional Amendment is unlikely. But you describe two potential factors that could “tip the scale.” One has to do with generational change and the other has to do with a constitutional crisis. Can you explain?

Paul: I believe passage of a constitutional amendment to reform the Electoral College system will require a communitarian democratic movement. Such a movement would resemble the civil rights movement of the 1950-60s but be geared toward the common good of all citizens rather than the equal rights of certain oppressed citizens. We saw elements of this type of movement during the pandemic, economic shutdown, and racial protest this year.  Many younger citizens have long had such moral outlooks, perhaps due to their fear of inheriting uninhabitable environments. Thus, I suspect receptivity to communitarian democracy will increase over time, as younger people join the electorate and acquire positions where they can implement their more communitarian ideals.

A constitutional crisis could speed up the formation and success of a communitarian democratic movement that results in electoral reform.  We have observed that the mere disconnect between the results of a national popular vote and outcome in the Electoral College is insufficient to spark a constitutional crisis.  Both the Bush victory in 2000 and the Trump victory in 2016 did not prompt massive protests against the College.  That is a good thing, because in a democracy people must abide by the rules in play, and the Electoral College provides the most basic of the current rules governing presidential elections.

But there are elements of the Electoral College system that might produce a constitutional crisis.  Despite the decision by the Supreme Court on July 6, 2020 that curbed “rogue” voting by electors in the College, there remain opportunities for electors to dismiss popular votes and engage in “corrupt bargains” that most citizens would view as illegitimate.  If no one won a majority in the Electoral College and a House contingency election were to be needed to select a president, the legitimacy of the person named president and the system that resulted in such an outcome could be the spark of a constitutional crisis. In my book, I provide a number of these scenarios.

Joe: You criticize the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact in your book. What is the probability that this act would be passed? Currently, states representing 36% of the total electoral votes have signed up while states representing another 12% of total votes currently have bills pending in state Houses. Most Blue states are already signed on while Red states will likely not. Meanwhile, swing states are going to be needed to push the total over the edge, but these are exactly the states that benefit from increased attention as a result of the Electoral College. NPVIC doesn’t seem very probable then, does it?

Paul: The NPVIC is not only improbable but, I think, undesirable. The fifteen states that have signed on are the “low hanging fruit,” mostly larger and/or Democratic states that feel marginalized by the way the Electoral College works.  As I discuss in my book, the November election could actually make the NPVIC more likely. If Biden wins narrowly in 2020, Democrats would worry that during the next election the College could again put into the presidency a person who lost the national popular vote.  In this scenario, six states that I project as going “blue” in November but have not yet signed the NPVIC – Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Maine, and Virginia – could sign on to the compact in 2021, enabling this compact to take effect. In this event, the electors from all 21 of the signatory states would be required to cast all their electoral votes as determined by the outcome of a national popular plurality election.

I think such an outcome would produce widespread howls of illegitimacy.  Worse, it could allow future elections to be won by a candidate having a weak plurality in the national popular vote.  If it were widely understood that the NPVIC would determine the next president, we would have lots of candidates coming out of the woodwork seeking just enough national votes to win.  Under the NPVIC (or any system determined by a national popular plurality election), a person who had a small but unrepresentative base get could enough votes to win in a multi-candidate election, and then govern in a way that was unacceptable to most Americans.

Joe: You argue that the NPVIC should not pass because it will “engender widespread confusion and distrust” and will be “inadequate protection against the rise of ideological demagogues”. Can you explain? Is the latter point not a defense of the electoral college?

Paul: Given the problems that underlie the question you ask, I think the Electoral College would probably be better than the NPVIC. But because of the moral deficiencies of the College, we need yet a different system. My proposal is intended to be better than either the current system or the one envisioned by the NPVIC.

Joe: You proposed a new and creative solution: an “instant run-off” system with a “preliminary national election” narrowing a field of 20 or 25 aspirants to a final group of perhaps five, from which voters, returning to the polls in November, would then declare their preferences in ranked order. What are the benefits and drawbacks of this system? Do you think it would have a chance to pass? Would this change be politically neutral?

Paul: My proposal provides for a two-stage national vote. In the first preliminary stage, people would either approve or disapprove candidates from a long list including those nominated by party leaders (rather than through the messy primary stem currently in place), insurgents (those like Bernie Sanders who are passed over by party leaders), third-party candidates, independents, etc. Rather than selecting the one candidate who one most prefers (based on such things as ideology or “fandom”), voters could approve of each person on the list who they thought sufficiently qualified and trustworthy to be among the finalists in the general election.  They could also indicate their disapproval of anyone who they thought unqualified and /or untrustworthy.  To be one of the five or so finalists, a candidate would have to be more approved than disapproved and they would have to be among those having the greatest net approval.  Such a preliminary approval election would eliminate those candidates having only a small base.

In the second general election, voters would rank-order the five or so winners from the preliminary election.  At this stage, voters would rank candidates not just on the basis of their qualifications and trustworthiness but on the basis of their values.  If no one received a majority of first-place votes (which of course would be likely), votes would be transferred from those dropped from consideration (given their low number of first-place votes) to voter’s next ranked candidates.  This would prompt candidates to seek to get transferred votes by appealing to those beyond their immediate and partisan base.  The idea is to get a more consensual outcome and a more inclusive President.  And it would seek to have a President whose values most coincide with those that are widely held by citizens as a whole.

So is this system neutral?  In the book, I show it has no Republican or Democratic bias (in the illustration of how my system would work, a Republican other than Trump prevails).  But it would penalize either major party that failed to nominate a widely acceptable candidate and that continued to practice the politics of polarization. Parties that did these things could not long prevail under my system and they would likely be replaced by better, more consensual, parties in the future.

Joe: You also talk about a constitutional amendment for Congress to create legislation regarding all aspects of national elections (e.g. voter registration, campaign financing, voter identification) and for a National Election Commission. Why do you think these are necessary? Do you think these are possible?

Paul: The big problem with the Electoral College system is that it is excessively state-centric.  It was developed in part to make the states-qua-states have out-sized roles in the selection of Presidents. But the President and Vice President are the only national leaders whose constituents include each and every voter.  Every American as an individual is subject to presidential actions.  While federalism is very important in American democracy, presidential elections are not appropriate settings to further federal values and to delegate to the states as collective entities important roles in presidential elections.  Thus, the things you mention should be part of national rules for presidential elections.  A constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College and implementing national popular elections as just described, should also give national institutions the authority to do such things as provide presidential campaign financing rules. The amendment I propose would allow various Congressional authorizations and National Election Commission implementations–such as a national mail balloting during a pandemic–that the Supreme Court could not annul on grounds that they are not authorized by the Constitution.

Joe: Unsurprisingly, the American public is divided along political lines on this issue. According to Pew, 58% of Americans support a national popular vote whereas only 40% support the electoral college. When you divide by party lines, 81% of Democrats support abolishing the electoral college versus only 32% of Republicans. As with so many other issues in our country, how might we break out of our bubbles and come to a consensus on this issue?

Paul: You are right that this is a very partisan issue. I view a major theme of my book as being an attempt to get Republicans, and to a lesser extent Democrats, to be less partisan and polarizing.  I have many friends and have had many students who are Republicans, and many of them want their party to be more pluralistic–to work with Democrats to solve urgent national problems, to move away from sole reliance on Trump’s narrow base, and to embrace reforms that would make our country a better pluralist democracy.

I provide Republicans many good reasons why they should give up their wrong-headed allegiance to the Electoral College.  And, of course, I alert Democrats that trying to get a national popular-plurality election through a NPVIC is also wrong-headed.  I want a system that would undermine the polarized partisan Republican-Democratic duopoly that has failed to provide adequate democratic elections and good government for too long.  Under my system, if the Republican or Democrats persist in their overly partisan manners, they could more easily be replaced by new parties who better represent the diversity of views and identities that currently constituent the American political community.

Perhaps Donald Trump will seek to retain the presidency by contesting the results of the November election, but the more direct and obvious means toward that end is to once again prevail in the state-centric Electoral College. To do that, he need only undermine democratic processes and norms in a few closely contested states. 

Recent research by the eminent historian Alexander Keyssar confirms that the framers of the Constitution devised the Electoral College to give Southern states disproportionate power in the selection of presidents, thereby enticing them to join the Union by securing their slave-based economies and societies. Even after slavery was abolished, the College has facilitated the suppression of voting rights of minorities not only in the South but in “toss up” states where structural racism exists (which we increasingly recognize as being everywhere). Restrictive voter registration and identification requirements, withholding voting rights of former felons, and limiting vote by mail are current examples of how state officials can reduce minority voting rights while denying racist motivations for doing so. If the President and his supporters succeed in reducing minority voting influence in just a handful of states, the outcome in the Electoral College could tip toward Trump.

Giving states major roles in presidential elections including the capacity to curtail minority voting rights is a misapplication of federal principles. The president is the only American leader whose singular exercise of governmental authority impacts each and every citizen. Presidents should therefore be equally accountable to all voters, whatever their race and place of residence.

 To reform this blemish on American democracy, reformers have long called for a constitutional amendment to elect the president by using a national popular-plurality election.  More recently, reformers have sought to create an Interstate Compact that achieves a de facto national popular-plurality presidential election while avoiding the need for a Constitutional amendment. Either of these popular-plurality systems is likely to have the unintended consequence of encouraging a wide array of presidential candidates who appeal to various narrow interests and identities, voters dispersing their votes widely, and the election of a president having a very small base. The vast majority of citizens could regard the resulting governing regime as unrepresentative, untrustworthy, and illegitimate.

To eliminate the ills of the Electoral College and popular-plurality alternatives, we need a constitutional amendment that nationalizes all aspects of presidential elections including provisions enabling everyone to vote by mail or by the Internet and to have other uniform voting requirements. It should replace the state-centric primaries with a preliminary national election using approval ballots to identify those aspirants trusted by most citizens. It should remove the Electoral College of its archaic role in the general election and give citizens everywhere equal opportunities to rank-order the most trusted candidates, thereby ensuring that the president is not only widely supported but also has values closely aligned with those of most Americans.

The ballots currently used in both primary and general elections require citizens to vote for a single candidate, prompting us to think in terms of which candidate best represents our particular interests, principles, and/or identities. But under the proposed amendment, voters would soon ask themselves whom among these various candidates do we as a community of citizens trust because of their experiences and qualifications?  Under this reform, citizens and politicians could stop thinking about politics as our most brutal national sport in which there are only winners and losers and begin to see politics as community-wide endeavor aimed at having qualified and trusted leaders in the presidency, people who would focus on solving our collective problems instead of pursuing their personal interests and appeasing their narrow partisan bases.

The current Electoral College rules and ballots give us little choice other than to vote for either Trump or Biden, but we can still base our votes on which candidate is well qualified, widely trusted, and oriented toward the values sought by most citizens.

When conducting the research for Critical Pluralism during the 1980s, I conceived it as my Lawrence Power Structure Study: an investigation into democratic performance in my hometown. For those readers interested in the politics of Lawrence, Kansas, I will conclude this new preface with my impressions of whether the fairly positive assessments I reached thirty years ago are still operative. But I will first address the academic audience for whom this book was primarily intended.

The working title of this book, as it was being written in 1989 and 1900, was Pluralism III, but that title was abandoned because it seemed both too vague (it did not adequately convey the sort of pluralism that was being addressed) and too trendy (it seemed to mimic sequels to popular movies like Superman, Aliens, and Back to the Future that had used roman numerals to designate where in the sequence of sequels the current version resided). Nevertheless, I thought—and still think—that Pluralism III did an admirable job of designating the themes of this book to those political scientists and sociologists studying community power.

From the early 1950s through the 1980s, the distribution of community power was the central concern of scholars who were interested in the politics of local communities, cities, and urban areas. Such scholars understood pluralism as an approach to studying communities that examined a wide variety of actors who sought to influence the public policies of municipal corporations, school districts, and other institutions that played roles in governing local communities. Inspired by Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (1961), Robert A. Dahl’s seminal study of New Haven, Connecticut, political scientists understood pluralism as a theory that held that policy decisions reflected the interests of these various actors and the power (and power resources) that such actors had and/or applied as they sought to advance their interests. Pluralists used a “decisional approach” that emphasized scientifically sound methods for measuring the attitudes and behaviors of various types of actors and related these inputs to the policy outputs of key issue areas in various local communities. Pluralists generally found that those involved in community politics were fairy representative of all citizens, that power resources were broadly distributed among various actors, and that local political processes were thus basically democratic. This theory, method, and set of conclusions became known as orthodox pluralism, and it was offered to political scientists studying not only local but also state, national, and even international politics as a possible paradigm for the academic study of politics.

Orthodox pluralism never attained paradigmatic status. Its most hostile opponents were elite theorists who claimed that the decisional approach could not detect the hidden power of capitalists, corporate CEOs, and other economic forces and agents but instead could only observe the involvements of those who were puppets of economic elites.

In response to such critics, Dahl and other scholars revised pluralism, and these revisions were collectively known as Pluralism II. This sequel was not as tidy as orthodox pluralism, and there is still no common understanding of its precise storyline, but for our purposes it is sufficient to say its many chapters continued to stress the involvement of many actors in community issues and to regard the interests and power of these actors as the most important causes of community policies. Those involved in producing the various chapters of Pluralism II doubted that some forms of power could remain hidden and removed from scientific inquiry, and they developed other methods than the decisional method to uncover and theorize such power. In general, Pluralism II contested Pluralism I’s conclusion that power is widely or democratically distributed, as can be illustrated by three major contributions to this revised form of pluralism.

John Logan and Harvey Molotch’s Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place (1987) had pointed out that most key community issues are initiated by a “growth machine” comprised of actors like developers, real estate brokers, banks, and even local newspapers whose primary goal was economic development. Such actors do not exercise influence in response to existing issues; rather, their projects become the community issues to which public officials respond. The growth machine recruits mayors, councilmembers, urban planners, and other public officials into their “machine” that dominates city politics. Growth-machine initiatives sometimes spark opposition—such as by activists in displaced neighborhoods. From this perspective, the power of the growth machine is extensive and even dominant, but it does not always succeed.

Paul Peterson’s book City Limits (1981)—sometimes denoted as the “economistic perspective” or as “domain theory”—stressed that capital accumulation is an imperative for everyone in the community, not only those involved in the growth machine but also those involved in providing various community amenities like educational, cultural, and recreational facilities. Without the greater resources provided by economic growth, communities stagnant and lose their capacity to attract mobile wealth. Given economic imperatives, generators of wealth and jobs have disproportional (elite) power, but there are domains of community decision-making, such as the provision of basic community services, where elites are little involved and the provision and allocation of such services reflects a broader dispersion of power.

Clarence Stone’s Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946–1988 (1989) can also be seen as within the Pluralist II tradition, but it claimed that urban officials are not merely responsive to the preferences of the growth machine or to economic imperatives but are themselves moral agents who have their own ideals about the common good and social justice. These officials recruit various kinds of people from the private sector within the community to participate in broad public-private coalitions—or various kinds of urban regimes—to generate public policies. From this perspective power is not the ability to control (or at least influence) policy outcomes (as conceived by both elite theorists and pluralists); instead, power is the capacity to get things done. Subsequent regime theorists have pointed out that communities form various types of policymaking regimes, some having more dispersed distributions of power while others have more concentrated power structures.

While orthodox pluralism was normally interpreted as providing a grand theory or general paradigm of politics, contributions to Pluralism II can be seen as “middle-range theories” concerned with important but limited aspects of community power. Scholars contributing to this perspective described and theorized specific departures from adequate democratic performance.

While I conceived Pluralism III as advancing a third generation of studies in the pluralist tradition, I primarily envisioned its III as representing three critical democratic norms—standards for evaluating democratic performance that were sometimes achieved, sometimes partially achieved, and sometimes sorely underachieved. I conceptualized these ideals as occupying different ideological spaces along the democratic continuum. In In Defense of Politics, Bernard Crick (1962) had stressed that conservatives, liberals, and socialists are the primary “friends” of democratic pluralism and that they can remain on friendly terms within a pluralist community as long as these friends recognize the legitimacy of each other’s main goals and as long as their own main democratic aspirations are not persistently or egregiously violated.

In this formulation, the central goal of conservatives is to have political leaders who are skilled at the art of governing in ways that uphold traditional cultural values or norms. Such norms are not universal but are particular to local communities, and so enduring local cultural principles must be identified to determine whether political leaders have succeeded in resolving local issues in ways that are consistent with principles that are predominant in the local culture. I called this conservative ideal principle-policy congruence.

The central ideal of liberals is upholding liberal democracy. From a liberal perspective, elected representatives—not economic elites—should be the primary policymakers of communities, but they are expected to be responsive to citizen preferences or at least accountable to citizens. Liberals believe that representatives can form and follow independent judgments about the resolution of policy issues, but the threat of electoral defeat must discourage them from wandering too far from public opinion. I called this liberal ideal responsible representation.

The central goal of (democratic) socialists is the removal of illegitimate inequalities such that lesser-advantaged segments of the community are dominated, exploited, suppressed, and marginalized by the more advantaged segments of the community. Insofar as communities exhibit such inequalities in policy benefits, these inequalities should, at least overall and in the long run, have legitimate explanations and serve everyone’s interests. I called this socialist ideal complex equality.

Beyond theorizing these ideals, I devised methods for measuring the extent to which they are generally achieved in particular communities, theorized some of the processes and conditions that enhanced (or undermined) their attainment, and sought to lay the foundations for future longitudinal and cross-community studies that could enable political scientists to identify the factors that lead to higher democratic performances on these three democratic ideals. I believe that Critical Pluralism was more successful at measuring and theorizing responsible representation and complex equality than it was at accessing principle-policy congruence. By using a comparative-issues approach that sampled not only key or controversial issues but also more routine issues and nonissues and by using extensive interviews and survey research to measure the preferences of various actors and the policy changes on these issues, I was able to estimate the direct and indirect influence of representatives and citizens as well as the lesser power of economic elites, bureaucrats, group leaders (mobilizers), and individual activists. I was also able to measure class, gender, racial, and various other forms of conflict on community issues. I was able to show that cleavages frequently occurred, especially among participants and that advantaged segments usually dominated their counterparts, but that these inequalities had, at least arguably, legitimate explanations. Since these findings seemed rather apologetic for existing power arrangements, some readers and reviewers questioned entitling the book Critical Pluralism. My response to such queries was and continues to be that that the book provides a theoretical perspective and a methodology that can provide critical evaluations by exposing shortcoming in three dimensions of democratic performance, even if these deficiencies were relatively minor in Lawrence during the 1980s.

Measuring principle-policy congruence proved more difficult because of the many competing values within local cultures and because making causal inferences between cultural norms and outcomes proved difficult. But I think Critical Pluralism at least suggested that broad cultural norms are important supplements to specific policy preferences and the power brought to bear on behalf of such preferences as factors affecting the policy outcomes of communities. Much of my subsequent work in community politics thus focused on understanding how community norms—how principles of justice and morality held by various actors—affect community politics. My subsequent work on community politics examined how and when “ethics matter” in community politics and sought to enlarge pluralism as a political perspective by bringing attention not only to the dispersion of political power but also to the diversity of normative ideals that political participants bring to community politics. Readers interested in my efforts to wed pluralist political science with the work of such pluralistic political philosophers as Michael Walzer (1983) and John Rawls (1993) can consult other articles and books on this website

It would be lovely to look back at the thirty years that have passed since the publication of Critical Pluralism and to my subsequent efforts to integrate moral pluralism and political pluralism as having a significant influence on community power studies but, alas, that has not happened.

While elements of pluralism continue to be incorporated into political research and theory at the community level, interest in pluralism as an overarching theoretical and methodological approach has pretty much vanished. As the most general explanation for this I would offer that political science is simply no longer interested in any paradigm. If and when a paradigm exists, it is, by definition, disciplinary, because a paradigm seeks consensus within a scholarly discipline about what should be studied (e.g., the distribution of power), how to study it (e.g., the decisional method), and what constitutes disciplinary knowledge (e.g., theoretical findings that are consensually held by experts in the field). Political scientists no longer think that such consensus is possible or desirable. In the postmodern age we live in, political scientists prefer to let a thousand voices speak.

As interest in pluralism has receded, scholarship on more focused agendas has expanded. Community politics scholars now research and write impressively on many policy topics: urban economic development and redevelopment, policing strategies, dealing with homelessness, promoting affordable housing, resolving culture war issues (such as expanding LBGTQ rights), instituting voucher programs for schools, pursuing local contributions to alleviating environmental problems, providing local sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants, curtailing human trafficking, and other such current and recurring issues. Such work has been produced even if scholars regard grand theories like pluralism as irrelevant to their concerns. Researching and theorizing such matters strikes many urban scholars as more urgent than disciplinary concerns for advancing pluralism or any other disciplinary paradigm.

While political scientists have turned away from pluralism as a paradigm for studying community politics, my casual observations lead me to believe that Lawrence has advanced as a pluralist democracy. It is not just that Lawrence is a “blue island” in the “red ocean” that comprises the state of Kansas. After all, pluralism is a more general political philosophy than any ideological perspective such as the brand of liberalism that is currently dominant in Lawrence. Because I have not conducted in-depth studies of Lawrence issues since the publication of Critical Pluralism, I have only impressions of how its key issues have been resolved. Here is a brief list of how some of its key issues have been addressed and (at least partially) resolved.

Women now constitute majorities on the Lawrence City Commission, the Douglas County Commission, and the Local School Board. The community has selected Black people to be chief of police and superintendent of schools.

The various “suburban” mall projects that have threatened downtown both during and after my study have been rejected, enabling downtown to be transformed into a vibrant mixed-use “heart of the community.” Some downtown retailers have closed shop, but they are more than adequately replaced by a host of dining and drinking establishments, by loft apartments, and by professional offices. The community has also built a downtown “cultural triangle” consisting of a new public library, a new public arts center, and a renovated and expanded historical museum.

After decades of community conflict over a Southern Bypass to relieve traffic congestion and to facilitate economic development, not only has this trafficway been built but also the impacted Baker Wetlands has been preserved and expanded and recreational amenities have been achieved by incorporating bike paths into the project. Those from the adjacent Haskell Indian Nations University were the most outspoken opponents of this project, and they would probably critically assess the outcome of this issue as a violation of complex equality.

During the 1990s, the community supplemented its older private country clubs with a public golf course. More recently, other recreational facilities have been built, sometimes in cooperation with nonprofit organizations such as those supporting youth soccer, and sometimes in cooperation with the University of Kansas, such as Rock Chalk Park and the Lawrence Sports Pavilion.

After years of resistance to building a second high school, for fears of spreading more thinly the city’s athletic talent and ending Lawrence High School’s domination in state championships, Free State High School not only sprung into existence but also, with city acceptance, the school district was able to locate it in a place intentionally intended to address racial and class balance between the two schools.

The city resisted efforts by HCA, a national for-profit hospital chain, to locate in Lawrence, ensuring that the nonprofit Lawrence Memorial Hospital would not only continue to serve all residents (the affluent as well as the less well-off) but also be able to vastly expand its services, including into more extensive mental-health treatment.

The city began public transportation (T-bus) services designed primarily to serve lower-income residents and integrated this municipal system into an expanded university bus system for KU students. Taxpayers approved increased sales taxes to fund such facilities.

A curbside recycling program, banning smoking in public places, and passing a living-wage ordinance are among the other programs and policies that the city has adopted since the publication of Critical Pluralism.

In short, community issues have continued to arise and be resolved in ways that have resulted in many public improvements in Lawrence. I believe that such outcomes have been consistent with broad community goals and norms. They have occurred without problematic elite, bureaucratic, and special-interest domination. And they have been resolved with less community conflict than was observed during the 1980s and without persistent and unjustified inequalities. But because I have not bothered to study these issues with the care of earlier issues discussed in this book, I must admit that I can provide no evidence derived from adequate political science to support this belief. Nor has it been possible to study how Lawrence has so far – and will in the near future – handle local political decisions arising from the crises of 2020: the pandemic, the economic shutdown, and the anti-racist protests arising from police brutality. Critical Pluralism provided a 10-year snap-shot of one community’s politics during the 1980s, but community politics keep changing.  New studies and theories will always be needed.