What does "notwithstanding" mean in this sentence?

Solution 1:

I'm not sure why you understand the google example but not your own quoted one. Is it the word order which is causing the confusion?

'Notwithstanding' can be used after the thing it refers to as well as in front of it. eg, the google sentence could as easily have been written:

"his many activities notwithstanding, Alan finds time to be a dedicated husband and father"

The Oxford English Dictionary describe this as the word being 'used postpositively' and gives this example sentence, among others.

The anxieties of Nato notwithstanding, it is difficult to see how the West can fail to benefit.

Solution 2:

I would say the answer to your example question is brevity. Brevity refers to briefness or shortness. Something that demands brevity is required to be concise. However, the person in the question is basically complaining that the author (Dahl), though brief, did not explain himself clearly enough and would have done well to spend an extra page or two doing so. Your substitution is thus:

Despite demands of brevity, a page or two in Dahl's recent book on democracy that considered what public-choice economics has to say about "democratic failure" —or at least a clear signpost to that literature—would have been very well spent.