Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, Joji Watanuki
1975 The crisis of democracy : report on the governability
of democracies to the Trilateral Commission
New York University Press.
Chomsky used to make fun of Huntington's (former) title at Harvard as "Professor of the Science of Government."
--C. G. Estabrook
On Fri, 3 Dec 1999, hoov wrote:
> Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington wrote 1975 Trilateral
> Commission report arguing that 1960s 'democratic surge' of
> participation was threatening 'governability of democracy' in US.
> Huntington, whose piece appeared with several other essays in book
> entitled _The Crisis of Democracy_ (portions originally appeared in
> Irving Kristol's journal *The Public Interest*, I think), argued that
> protests, demonstrations, social movements were having adverse
> consequences for 'stable' democratic politics. Politicians were
> forced to respond by increasing level of government activities,
> specifically higher expenditures for social programs.
>
> Plus, according to SH - who had been on CIA payroll, was an adviser
> for US 'strategic hamlet' program in Vietnam, and whose penchant for
> order had him supporting corruption as a mechanism for preventing
> Third World change (_Political Order in Changing Societies_, 1968) -
> increased participation constituted a challenge to government
> authority, preventing politicians from imposing 'hard' decisions
> necessary to make government effective. This 'democratic distemper'
> had 'overloaded' government with demands and the only solution was to
> demobilize folks and limit democracy.
>
> Above is a bit too long way of saying that 'crisis of democracy'
> concept is elitist bullshit. Michael Hoover