Political Disaffection In Comparative Perspective

Abstract

In the mid-1970s, the problem of government overload became a prominent issue. As the oil crisis made evident to almost everyone, the period of economic growth, security, and prosperity, which had endured since the end of the Second World War, had come to an end. The new catchwords were stagflation and economic decline. It took some time, however, before political elites were willing to readjust welfare state policies and public spending patterns to meet new socio-economic conditions and before Western publics – whose political preferences were shaped during a period of unprecedented wealth and prosperity – were willing to accept them. In this setting, starting from completely different points,1 NeoMarxists, Neo-Liberals, and Neo-Conservatives claimed that the inability of democratic governments to cope with the ever increasing economic challenges and contradictory public demands would lead to a major crisis of democratic legitimacy in the Western world (Huntington 1968; O’Connor 1973; Crozier et al. 1975; Offe 1984; Habermas 1985).