The Dynamics of Mass Political Support in Western Europe: Methodological Problems and Preliminary Findings

Abstract

Following the Vietnam War and the student movement of the sixties the question of mass support for the political system received much attention both in Europe and elsewhere (e.g. Crozier, Huntington, and Watanuki, 1975). Depending on one’s political preferences, a shift from representational democracy to large scale citizen involvement in politics (‘grass root democracy’ or ‘Basisdemokratie ’) was anticipated with joy and hope or fear and reluctance. Conservatives asked whether politics would still be benign; liberals proclaimed a silent revolution, the dawn of a Postmaterialist age in which old cleavages would become obsolete and party politics would be restructured along a ‘new politics — old politics’ dimension (e.g. Inglehart, 1977, Dalton et al., 1984).