The Democratic Disconnect

Three decades ago, most scholars simply assumed that the Soviet Union would remain stable. This assumption was suddenly proven false. Today, people have even greater confidence in the durability of the world's affluent, consolidated democracies. Most political scientists, however, have steadfas...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of democracy Vol. 27; no. 3; pp. 5 - 17
Main Authors Foa, Roberto Stefan, Mounk, Yascha
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 01.07.2016
Subjects
Citizens
Democracy
Governance
Intellectuals
Legitimacy
Political scientists
Politics
Religion politics relationship
Trends
Trust
North America
Western Europe
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Three decades ago, most scholars simply assumed that the Soviet Union would remain stable. This assumption was suddenly proven false. Today, people have even greater confidence in the durability of the world's affluent, consolidated democracies. Most political scientists, however, have steadfastly declined to view these trends as an indication of structural problems in the functioning of liberal democracy, much less as a threat to its very existence. A wide range of leading scholars, including Ronald Inglehart, Pippa Norris, Christian Welzel, and Russell J. Dalton, have generally interpreted these trends as benign indications of the increasing political sophistication of younger generations of "critical" citizens who are less willing to defer to traditional elites. Citizens in a number of supposedly consolidated democracies in North America and Western Europe have not only grown more critical of their political leaders. People can have an abstract allegiance to "democracy" while simultaneously rejecting many key norms and institutions that have traditionally been regarded as necessary ingredients of democratic governance.
ISSN:1086-3214
1045-5736
1086-3214
DOI:10.1353/jod.2016.0049