Democracy and Dissent: Strauss, Arendt, and Voegelin in America

During the 1930s American democratic government underwent a paradigmatic transformation from republican to pluralist democracy a movement away from relying on white AngloSaxon male values of the common good and toward a more open and inclusive form of democracy Pluralist democracy achieved hegemony during the postWorld War II era as the correct theory and practice of government but it did not go unchallenged European emigres such as Leo Strauss Hannah Arendt and Eric Voegelin all of whom had escaped from Nazi Germany in the 1930s raised the most persistent oppositional views This Article is about those contemporaries who experienced and perceived the paradigm change but nonetheless opposed it Part I explores the views of Strauss Arendt and Voegelin as they dissented from pluralist democracy Part II discusses their influences on politics political theory and law Given how Strauss Arendt and Voegelin will influence subsequent political and theoretical development their contemporaneous reactions to the emergence of pluralist democracy provide an unparalleled and invaluable glimpse inside a paradigm shift central to the American futur