Political Disaffection as an Outcome of Institutional Practices? Some Post-Tocquevillean Speculations

Abstract

In this essay I proceed as follows. Its first part provides a conceptual map by which we can locate the various symptoms of political malaise and disenchantment, which beset, as it is widely perceived, political life and political developments even in established liberal democracies (and a fortiori in new ones). The second part proposes to invert the chain of causation that is widely used in empirical political science as a model of analysis. Rather than proceeding from opinions to behavior to institutional viability, I propose here, in an admittedly speculative mode, to proceed in a top-down perspective from institutional patterns to the observable “enactment” of institutions and the perceived opportunities, incentives, expectations they inculcate in citizens and finally the opinions, habits, and attitudes people exhibit and which are in turn registered and analyzed by the methods of survey research. In the third and final part of the paper, I propose a taxonomy of the various sorts of “failure of citizenship” (or deficient modes of its practice) that we encounter within established democracies of the OECD world. I conclude with a few remarks on the hypothetical impact of disaffection upon the liberal democratic regime form.

Leicht veränderter Nachdruck meines gleichnamigen Beitrags in: Torcal, Mariano/Montero, J. R. (eds.): Political Disaffection in Contemporary Democracies. Social Capital, Institutions, and Politics. London, pp. 23–45.