Participation and Democracy: Dynamics, Causes ... - Jacobs University

social trends (increasing power of popular movements, intellectuals, media, etc.); (3)
intrinsic characteristics of democracy that contribute to its own weakening. Croizier,
Huntington and Watanuki (1975) argued that democracies were confronted with citizens
who increasingly challenged authority, called for a new political agenda and an
expansion of participation rights, thus more and more overloading the political system
with their persistent demands (see also Putnam, Pharr and Dalton 2000; Kaase and
Newton 1995). The aim of the study was, according to the authors, to restore the balance
between democracy on the one hand and governability on the other.
As a response to the challenges, the authors suggested several counter measures to deal
with the crisis, “including measures for promoting sustained economic growth and the
reduction of poverty, strengthening executive and legislative institutions, reinvigorating
political parties, restoring a more balanced relationship between government and media,
slowing the expansion of higher education, achieving more participation of workers in
the organization and management of the workplace, and creating a permanent Trilateral
institute [...]“ (Huntington 2000: xxiv, own emphasis).
Croizer, Huntington and Watanuki rightly name a number of serious challenges that
trouble modern democracies until today - growing dissatisfaction and decreasing
confidence in the functioning of democratic institutions. Some of their conclusions,
however, are misleading and reflecting the authors’ suspicion of knowledgeable, welleducated,
critical democratic citizens who, as a part of the demands, show an increasing
intention to have a say and to question authority. By proposing to limit education
because democracies should fear educated, mature, demanding citizens, Croizer,
Huntington and Watanuki follow the Schumpeterian tradition of an elite-centered
understanding of democracy that largely restricts the role of the individual citizen:
“According to the view we have taken, democracy does not mean and cannot mean that
the people actually rule in any obvious sense of the term “people” and “rule”.
Democracy means only that the people have the opportunity of accepting or refusing the
men who are to rule them” (Schumpeter 1976: 270).
For theorists like Schumpeter, participation by citizens has only played a marginal role.
This approach goes hand in hand with a general mistrust towards ordinary citizens: “The
electoral mass is incapable of action other than stampede” (Schumpeter 1942: 283). In
42