Who Governs?

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Who Governs? is an influential book in American political science by Robert Dahl. It was published in 1961 by Yale University Press. Dahl's work is a case study of political power and representation in New Haven, Connecticut. It is widely considered one of the great works of empirical political science of the twentieth century.

Fifteen years later, William Domhoff reresearched the same topics of Who Governs? and published Who Really Rules? in which he concluded, based on additional historical research and the review of Dahl's own notes (which Dahl provided him) that many of the basic conclusions of Who Governs? were wrong.

"Who Governs" is Dahl's claim as the leader of the Pluralistic approach to politics, where many interest groups compete in the political sphere, and the government's role is to act as the mediator between these groups.