Political Disaffection in Contemporary Democracies

Mariano Torcal, José Ramón Montero

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134297115
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Citizens of many democracies are becoming more critical of basic political institutions and detached and disaffected from politics in general.

This is a new comparative analysis of this trend that focuses on major democracies throughout Latin America, Asia and Central Europe. It brings together leading scholars to address three key areas of the current debate:

• the conceptual discussion surrounding political disaffection
• the factors causing voters to turn away from politics
• the actual consequences for democracy

This is a highly relevant topic as representative democracies are coming to face new developments. It deals with the reasons and consequences of the so called 'democratic deficit' in a systematic way that enables the reader to develop a well-rounded sense of the area and its main debates.

This book is an invaluable resource for all students of political science, sociology, cultural studies and comparative politics.

Part I
Introduction

1 Political disaffection in
comparative perspective

Mariano Torcal and José Ramón Montero

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 Neo- Marxists, 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).

Only 20 years later, these pessimistic projections had largely disappeared (Kaase and Newton 1995; Klingemann and Fuchs 1995a and 1995b). The enduring stability of existing democracies, the consolidation of the new ones that emerged at the end of the 1970s, and the breakdown of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe were regarded as definitive proof of the superiority of democracy. The debate on the crisis of legitimacy was interpreted by many as outdated or at least as an artefact of gloomy social scientists and media reports. But citizens’ attitudes toward democracy and democratic institutions may have not actually changed; and their assessments of politics and politicians may have not improved, either. In many Western polities, symptoms of disengagement with democracy have become a familiar feature of the political landscape, whereas levels of confidence in key political institutions have been suffering a secular decline (Barnes et al. 1979; Dalton 1988). Even the third wave of democratization was by no means accompanied by an increase in political confidence (Diamond 1999; Torcal 2002a and 2003). In both old and new democracies, citizens seem to have become even more critical regarding the way democracy works, the performance of political institutions, and the daily activities of political actors. Democratic governments are thus settled on less solid ground to intervene in the policy process, other democratic institutions have to deliver their outcomes through a combination of large indifference and harsh criticism, and the gap between citizens and their representatives has become increasingly wider (Lipset and Schneider 1983; Klingemann and Fuchs 1995a and 1995b). In fact, this confidence crisis is taking a permanent form and does not seem to be tied to a particular situation or related to political scandals, the evolution of a deteriorating economy, and the frustration of either general or particular expectations (Dogan 1997; Nye et al. 1997). Critical democrats, critical citizens, or disaffected citizens have appeared as new figures in the political arena. They were characterized by an interplay of strong support for democratic ideals, on the one hand, and a large variety of critical attitudes toward democratic performance, on the other (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 1995; Klingemann and Fuchs 1995b; Klingemann 1999; Norris 1999a; Torcal 2002a and 2003; Dalton 2004). And current democracies have also been qualified, using an old concept coined by di Palma (1970), as disaffected democracies (Pharr and Putnam 2000), implying that many citizens had redefined their relationships in line with important elements of contemporary democracies such as the political process, the political institutions, and the political elite, but without questioning the democratic order.

The questions

Despite the appearance of significant contributions dealing with the comparative presence in some countries of a larger number of those ‘disaffected citizens’, many questions remain unanswered or require further research. What should we understand by political disaffection and how is this concept related to old, similar concepts such as political alienation, political cynicism, political apathy, political trust, or political confidence? What is the existing relationship between political disaffection and democratic support, or other dimensions of political support? Is political disaffection merely a result of the differences between expectations and evaluations of democratic performance and institutional achievements, as the original theorists of the legitimacy crisis claimed? If that is the case, why do these attitudes seem immune to the substantial economic and social changes since the 1980s? On the other hand, is political disaffection more a long stable process with some cultural roots? If this is the case, what associations does political disaffection have to the allegedly declining trends in social capital? Are all democracies presenting a more or less similar picture? And even if political disaffection is such a general phenomenon, why are there still important differences among Western democracies? Which are the factors explaining these differences? Are they associated to some social characteristics, political variables, and institutional settings? Finally, what are the possible consequences of political disaffection for, say, political participation? To what extent are these new critical and disaffected citizens producing a discernible effect on the functioning of representative democracies?

This collaborative volume attempts to answer some of these questions by analysing a wide range of contemporary democracies either through comparative analyses or with some longitudinal case studies. In this book we set out to examine a cluster of attitudes that are often lumped together under the general label of political support, but which we argue should instead be treated as conceptually distinct. We claim that critical attitudes toward politics and representative institutions comprise all together a distinctive attitudinal dimension that should be differentiated from political support. We have labelled it as political disaffection. We take it to mean a certain estrangement or detachment from politics and the public sphere, as well as a critical evaluation of their core political institutions, their representatives, and the democratic political process. This attitudinal attribute is characterized by a number of specific symptoms, including a sense of personal inefficacy, cynicism and distrust, lack of confidence in representative institutions and/or the representatives elected, the belief that political elites do not care about the welfare of their citizens, and a general sense of estrangement from both politics and the political processes.

We have required the contributors of this volume to make an effort in trying to measure this concept and distinguish it from other close but different ones such as political alienation, political discontent, or political distrust, and whatever other concepts positively or negatively related with political support, a concept so frequently misused in some of the literature on this topic. We have also suggested that they address questions related to the main explanatory factors of the origin, evolution, and levels of political disaffection in some contemporary democracies. Can a general trend be identified? If the answer is negative, how can we explain the different levels of disaffection over time and place? What are the political factors influencing its evolution? Is it possible to design a comparative model explaining why disaffection is on the increase in some societies but not others? Generally speaking, we propose to answer these questions by steering clear of macro-cultural and sociological approaches (Dalton 1988; Inglehart 1990 and 1997a), searching instead for cross-national political explanations (Evans and Whitefield 1995; Whitefield and Evans 1999; Pharr and Putnam 2000).

Finally, we have also proposed to the contributors to this volume an exploration of some of the feasible behavioural consequences of political disaffection. Existing studies have come up with a rather contradictory picture. As described by Lipset and Schneider (1983), the confidence gap was originally considered to have very negative connotations and was identified as one of the major fault lines in contemporary representative democracies. More recently, some scholars have highlighted the more positive consequences that increasing numbers of critical citizens may eventually have on the transformation of their democratic institutions, particularly on the relationship between citizens and their representatives (Dalton 1988 and 1999; Kaase and Newton 1995; Klingemann and Fuchs 1995b; Nye et al. 1997; Norris 1999a). But, for other scholars, political disaffection might also be essentially responsible for the widespread estrangement of citizens from politics (especially in new democracies) and for the presence of an uninformed and non-participant citizenship (Montero et al. 1997a and 1997b). How to reconcile these two opposing consequences? Is political disaffection responsible for the increasing use of new forms of political participation or is it instead conducive to decreasing political involvement? Given the relevance of disaffection for the relationships between citizens and the state, as well as for the functioning of contemporary democracies, we are extremely interested in exploring some of these consequences and the major political factors associated with them.

Setting the conceptual and theoretical framework

Before briefly previewing each of the contributions to this edited volume, we would first like to trace the common theoretical and methodological framework in which our discussions are rooted. While some of the authors might not fully agree with all the editors’ theoretical claims, all their contributions share a common concern with the basic themes we outline in the following few pages.

Political disaffection, support for democracy, and political discontent

Although increasingly used, political disaffection is an undefined term. In a recent and important monographic volume on this topic, Pharr and Putnam (2000) do not offer any definition of the concept; they only provide a list of possible indicators of affection and disaffection. Instead, we would like to contribute in this volume with some conceptual clarifications. Following di Palma (1970: 30), we define political disaffection as the subjective feeling of powerlessness, cynicism, and lack of confidence in the political process, politicians, and democratic institutions, but with no questioning of the political regime (see also Torcal 2002a: ch. 3 and 2003: ch. 4; Citrin 1974, and Citrin et al. 1975). Political disaffection thus contains two aspects or sub-dimensions that are partly independent. The first comprises a cluster of attitudes related to a general distrust of politics and to the respondent’s lack of engagement with the political process. We have called this political disengagement, or political disaffection tout court. The other sub-dimension consists of beliefs about the lack of responsiveness of political authorities and institutions, and citizens’ lack of confidence in the political institu- tions of their countries. We have named this institutional disaffection (see Torcal 2002b). Most of the contributions in this volume have focused on one or both of these dimensions of political disaffection.

It should be noted that this definition of political disaffection differs somewhat from other closely related concepts that are frequently used, often interchangeably, in studies of political support. Moreover, some of these concepts are sometimes measured similarly, resulting in a rather unclear and sometimes confusing conceptual and methodological picture. We maintain here that many of these alternative concepts suggest a state of crisis in the political regime that disaffection does not. Unlike the concept of political alienation, for instance, political disaffection does not imply a crisis of democratic legitimacy. Indeed, many democracies, particularly third wave democracies, show high levels of both democratic support and political disaffection (Torcal 2002a and 2002c). Political disaffection is also independent of support for the democratic regime and has different behavioural consequences (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 1995; Kavanagh 1997). Support for democracy, or democratic legitimacy, pertains, on the other hand, to citizens’ beliefs that democratic politics and representative democratic institutions are the most appropriate (indeed, the only acceptable) framework for government. Democratic legitimacy should be regarded as an ideal type, since no system is fully legitimate in the eyes of each and every citizen (Hertz 1978: 320; Linz 1988: 65). Support for democracy may thus be considered the belief that democracy is the ‘only game in town’. This definition also implies that support for the regime should be based on an explicit, or most of the time implicit, comparison with other types of regimes. As Rose and Mishler (1996: 52–53) maintain, ‘a democratic regime does not necessarily make the “right” decisions . . . nor is there a guarantee that the government will be effective. . . . Democracy’s claim to superiority is that it is an open system making it possible to learn from mistakes and to correct them through the sanction of voting governments out of office as well as into office’. This definition of democratic support is ‘based upon the comparison of different regimes within the experience of those undertaking the evaluation’ (Rose and Mishler 1996: 53).

Moreover, as we said before, much of the literature on the democratic crisis was based on the assumption that political alienation, political trust, and all the symptoms of the crisis of confidence in democracy were mainly the result of citizens’ dissatisfaction with government performance or, more generally, with general democratic performance. For testing this possibility, we have proposed using the concept of political discontent, or the expression of displeasure resulting from the belief that the performance of the government is falling short of the citizens’ wishes or expectations (di Palma 1970: 30).² In this regard, we have first proposed to the contributors of this volume to somehow test if political disaffection appears to occur regardless of a government’s popularity or policies. We suspect, based on previous research (Montero et al. 1997a and 1997b; see also Nye et al. 1997), that political disaffection has little to do with short-term fluctuations in assessments of the government’s actions, its decisions, or its current level of popularity. Evaluations of a particular government can affect political mobilization and, ultimately, lead to electoral defeat (throw the rascals out), but they have no impact on political disaffection (Farah et al. 1979; Kaase and Marsh 1979). Second, we have also proposed to the contributors of this volume to test the connection between political disaffection and satisfaction with the functioning of democracy,³ paying special attention to the possibility that an increasing level of disaffection might be due to the frustration of accumulated unfulfilled expectations of democratic performance (Pharr and Putnam 2000).

Interpreting Easton’s concept of political support

Much of the literature on mass attitudes toward democracy treats the three sets of attitudes discussed above as if they form part of a single broad cluster of perceptions, evaluations, and beliefs about democratic regimes. In our view, this approach overlooks the crucial differentiation between support for democracy, political discontent, and political disaffection. We believe that the tendency to see these attitudes as forming part of a single continuum stems from the theoretical legacy of David Easton’s (1965 and 1975) concept of political support and the misinterpretation of his important distinction between diffuse and specific support.

In Easton’s systems theory, political systems have inputs and outputs, with inputs taking the form of demands and support. Easton originally coined a dual conceptualization of political support that could account both for evaluations of the authorities’ performance (specific support) and of more basic and fundamental aspects of the political system (diffuse support).⁴ In his own words, ‘support was not all of a piece’ (Easton 1975: 437) and its constituent classes could vary independently from each other. Diffuse and specific support have been used as an explanatory conceptual tool for a long time, since Easton first introduced this distinction in the mid-1970s. Scholars were then concerned with the conditions under which members of a political system, who were dissatisfied with policy outcomes, could make a move towards radical political or social change. Especially puzzling was the evidence that even intense manifestations of the first phenomenon did not necessarily lead to the second.⁵

This disti...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: Concepts and Dimensions
• Part III: Causes I: Institutional Disaffection and Social Capital
• Part IV: Causes II: Politics and Institutions
• Part V: Consequences: Participation, Protest, and Information
• Part VI: Conclusions
• References