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20 Associative Principles and Democratic Reform

yoluntary associations in order to do so. Associations must, there* fore. be protected by a public power that can enforce the rule of law and also, where necessary, be funded by the public through taxation.

Associationalism seeks to combine the individual choice of liberalism and the public provision of collectivism. It is by no means a substitute form of collectivism. Collectivism is opposed because a fundamental contention of associationalist writers like Figgis or Laski is that modem societies are pluralistic, they are composed of different partial societies with distinct objectives and beliefs, and those diverse ends cannot be accommodated by uniform methods of compulsory provision through the State. Associationalists were opposed to the collectivistic schemes of Fabian writers like the Webbs for this very reason. Collectivism is rejected as such, and not just in its totalitarian form in Soviet-style socialism. Associationalism attempts to construct a political framework within which individuals and the groups they create through voluntary association, one with another, can pursue different public goods whilst remaining in the same society. Plural groups share a limited, but common, set of public rules and regulatory institutions, which ensure that their differing goals and beliefs can be accommodated without undue confiict or the in-fringement of the rights of individuals and associations.

The institutional changes proposed in an associative democratic reform of existing forms of representative democracy and central-ized bureaucratic State administration can be summed up in three principles of political organization:

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1    that voluntary self-governing associations gradually and progres-sively become the primary means of democratic govemance of eco-nomic and social affairs;

2    that power should as far as possible be distributed to distinct domains of authority, whether territorial or functional, and that administration within such domains should be devolved to the lowest level consistent with the effective governance of the affairs in question - these are the conjoint principles of State pluralism and of federation;

3    that democratic govemance does not consist just in the powers of Citizen election or majority decision, but in the continuous flow of information between governors and the governed, whereby the former seek the consent and cooperation of the latter.