It is not our goal to review the rival hypotheses on why public support for democratic politics may be eroding (see
Klingemann and Fuchs 1995; Nye et al. 1997). The general features of these theories, however, have implications for
the types of empirical evidence that should be collected. Thus, we want briefly to discuss these theoretical explanations
in the context of our data collection needs.
Many of the ‘crisis of democracy’ theories link the decrease in public support for democracy to broad, ongoing changes
in the nature of advanced industrial societies. As subsequent chapters explore, if there is an extensive and long-term
shift in public attitudes toward government, then it presumably results from equivalent processes of social and political
change—and not coincidental political scandals or episodic policy problems.17 For instance, some analysts have argued
that the public's expanding issue interests have involved governments in new policy areas, such as protecting the
quality of the environment, arbitrating moral issues, and assuring equality for minorities and women (Inglehart 1990,
1997a). This was coupled with popular demands for a more open and participatory style of democracy. From this
perspective, the challenge to democracy arose because established institutions did not respond effectively or efficiently
to long-term changes in public expectations for government. An alternative approach has focused on this same
process, albeit witha different interpretation (Crozier et al. 1975; Huntington 1981). These scholars claimed that
advanced industrialism weakened the ability of social groups to guide and moderate the demands of individual citizens.
Furthermore, the mass media became critics of government and stripped away the cloak of anonymity that once
shielded government actions from popular scrutiny (Patterson and Donsbach 1997). Governments consequently were
being ‘overloaded’ by the demands of citizen action groups and issue-based politics (see the Chapters by McAllister
and by Miller and Listhaug in this volume). As Samuel Huntington succinctly stated, the crisis of democracy arose
from an excess of democracy on the part of the citizenry (1975, 1981). Yet another approach to this topic stresses the
change in social and political patterns of advanced industrial societies. For example, Robert Putnam's research (1995a)
suggests that changing social relations, the decline in social capital, and the intrusive influence of the media have
contributed to a new political isolationism.