Democratic Challenges, Democratic Choices: The Erosion of Political Support in Advanced Industrial Democracies (Comparative Politics)

243 Pages·2007·0.81 MB·English

by  Russell J. Dalton

DEMOCRATIC CHALLENGES,
DEMOCRATIC CHOICES
COMPARATIVE POLITICS
Comparative Politics is a series for students and teachers of political science that
deals with contemporary issues in comparative government and politics. As
ComparativeEuropean Politics it has produced a series of high quality books since
itsfoundation in 1990,but now takes on a new form and a new title for the new
millennium—Comparative Politics. As the process of globalization proceeds,and as
Europe becomes ever more enmeshed in world trends and events,so it is necessary
to broaden the scope of the series.
The General Editors are Max Kaase,Vice President and Dean of Humanities and Social
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OTHER TITLES IN THE SERIES
Mixed-Member Electoral Systems:The Best of Both Worlds
Edited by Matthew Shugart and Martin P. Wattenberg
Coalition Governments in Western Europe
Edited by Wolfgang C. Müller and Kaare Strøm
Political Institutions:Democracy and Social Choice
Josep M. Colomer
Parties Without Partisans:Political Change in
Advanced Industrial Democracies
Edited by Russell J. Dalton and Martin P. Wattenberg
Extreme Right Parties in Western Europe
Piero Ignazi
Democracy Transformed?:Expanding Political Opportunities in
Advanced Industrial Democracies
Edited by Bruce E. Cain,Russell J. Dalton and Susan E. Scarrow
Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies
Edited by Kaare Strøm,Wolfgang C. Müller,and Torbjörn Bergman
Democratic Challenges,
Democratic Choices
The Erosion of Political Support in
Advanced Industrial Democracies
RUSSELL J. DALTON
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Preface
My formative political experiences occurred during the Vietnam war period,when
student protests often took over the campus at UCLA and debates about America’s
role in Vietnam and the actions of our government shaped the thinking of many
college students. A few years earlier, I could see the smoke rising from the fires
during the Watts riots from our house in West Los Angeles. These were times that
taught one to be cynical about politics,to distrust politicians,and to worry about
the future of democracy as well as one’s own. These were experiences that were
shared,to varying degrees,by those who lived through the period—whether it was
in Los Angeles,or observing the May Revolts in Paris,the Provo demonstrations in
Amsterdam, the anti-war demonstrations in Stockholm, or the student protests
inRome.
At the end of the twentieth century,the United States and most other advanced
industrial democracies were enjoying an era of historically unprecedented afflu-
ence, peace and security. Yet over this 40-year time span we have systematically
become more sceptical about government, more distrustful of politicians, and
more cynical about the workings of the democratic process. This book’s goal is to
chronicle this shift,the suggest the reasons for it,and to discuss the implications
for the political process in contemporary democracies.
This book developed with the help of many friends and colleagues. Part of the
genesis was a collaborative project with Martin Wattenberg, which produced
abook on the changes in political parties in Western democracies (Parties without
Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies, 2000). Marty
also provided comments on the manuscript and a valuable stream of data on citizen
attitudes towards politics.
A number of colleagues generously assisted in the collection of national data
series and providing advice on this project: Atle Alvheim, Clive Bean, Harold
Clarke, Cees van der Eijk, Olafur Th. Hardarsson, Soren Holmberg, Ken’ichi
Ikeda, Jeffrey Karp, Michael Lewis-Beck, Ian McAllister, Anthony McGann,
Nonna Mayer, Fritz Plasser, Helmut Prochart, Bradley Richardson, Risto
Sänkiaho,Kaare Ström,Aiji Tanaka,Peter Ulram,and Bernard Wessels. The data
for this study were provided by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and
Social Research,the Zentralarchiv für empirische Sozialforschung,the UK Data
Archive at Essex,the Norwegian Social Science Data Services,and the Swedish
Social Sciences Data Services. Miki Caul Kittilson,Andrew Drummond, Mark
Gray,Nhu-Ngoc Ong,and Bogdan Radu provided valuable research assistance at
various stages of this project.
vi Preface
This project also benefited from my collaboration in two edited collections on
citizens’changing views of government—Critical Citizens: Global Support for
Democratic Governance (ed. Pippa Norris, 1999) and Disaffected Democracies:
What’s Troubling the Trilateral Countries? (ed. Susan Pharr and Robert Putnam,
2000)—and I would like to thank the editors of these books for their advice and
input. Finally,my thanks to Bruce Cain and Susan Scarrow,with whom we devel-
oped a collaborative project on democratic institutional change that might result
from public dissatisfaction and pressure (Democracy Transformed?:The Expansion
of Citizen Access in Advanced Industrial Democracies, 2003). Our discussions
about the transformation of contemporary democracy with Bruce, Susan and the
other participants of this project stimulated my thinking on this topic.
The empirical base for much of the research presented here comes from the
national election studies series collected by survey researchers in each nation. Iam
greatly indebted to all these scholars, even if the list is too large to include here.
Without the decades of data these research teams have assembled, we could not
track how citizens and democratic politics are changing—and these election stud-
ies are now vital national resources for their respective countries. But assembling
comparable cross-national and cross-temporal data is also a challenging task,since
national archives differ in the accessibility and formatting of their data and the
information useful for tracking specific questions over time. I am sure that some
of the trends reported here are incomplete, and I encourage sceptical researchers
to add to the empirical evidence by locating additional time-points or additional
data series. Not all the data I uncovered fit my general conclusions (though I report
all I found); but my experience was that,the more data Iacquired,the stronger the
patterns appeared. So more data collection is welcomed and encouraged,since it
will improve our understanding of how citizens are changing.
It should also be noted that the core of the analyses and a nearly complete draft
of the manuscript were finished before the horrific events of September 11,2001.
Certainly,these events reshaped,at least temporarily,how Americans think about
politics and the world. I considered adding a separate chapter on these post-9/11
shifts in public opinion,but then decided against it,for several reasons. As time
has progressed, it appears that many of the post-9/11 shifts in political support
were temporary and narrowly focused on government responses to these events.
These reactions were essentially limited to the American public, and were not
apparent in other nations. In addition,the central theme of this book is to under-
stand the long-term shift in public orientations towards government—and I do not
believe this development was fundamentally changed by September 11. Thus,we
include some post-9/11 American data in the epilogue to Chapter 2,but the book
focuses on the longer term transformation of advanced industrial democracies.
My great thanks to the fine people at Oxford University Press in the United
Kingdom,who moved this project to publication with ease and grace. This com-
pletes a series of three interrelated books on democratic change I have recently
published with Oxford; and the Press’s support has made this an enjoyable and
Preface vii
successful enterprise. I especially want to thank Dominic Byatt for his invaluable
support and guidance on this series, and Michael James for his care in copy-
editing this manuscript.
I also want to acknowledge the financial support for this project from several
sources. This research began with a generous Research Fellowship from the
German Marshall Fund of the United States, which led to some additional data
collection and several of the papers that developed into chapters of this book.
Subsequent work was supported by research grants from the Center for the Study
of Democracy at the University of California Irvine, the Institute for European
Studies, the University of California Berkeley, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Aportion of the work was completed while I was a POSCO Fellow at the East–West
Center in Hawaii. The support of all these institutions is greatly appreciated.
I began this work generally subscribing to the position that the decline in trust
in government represented a negative challenge to contemporary democracies—
and this study does document negative consequences of these trends. But along
the way I became convinced that these trends also represent the driving force of
democratic development—the expectation that democracies can improve, can
give greater access to their citizens, become more transparent in their processes
and more accountable for their actions. Similar dissatisfactions in earlier periods,
on the part of either the public or contending elites,is what has moved democracy
forward in its development. Thus, these trends are also as an opportunity to
rethink and reshape the democratic process. How we respond to these opportuni-
ties will determine whether this is beneficial for the process and its citizens.
Russell J. Dalton
Irvine,California
August 2003
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Contents
List of Figures x
List of Tables xii
1. The Challenge to Democracy 1
PART I. THE EVIDENCE OF CHANGE
2. Changing Citizen Orientations 21
PART II. THE SOURCES OF CHANGE
3. The Correlates of Political Support 57
4. Social Change and the Accumulation of Incremental Effects 80
5. Value Change and Political Support 97
6. Economic Performance and Political Support 111
7. Policy Preferences and Political Support 128
PART III. THE EFFECTS OF CHANGE
8. The Consequences of Political Support 157
CONCLUSION
9. Democratic Challenges,Democratic Choices 191
References 209
Index 227