A QUARTER-CENTURY OF DECLINING CONFIDENCE Susan J. Pharr, Robert D. Putnam, and Russell J. Dalton A quarter-century ago, Michel J. Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, and Joji Watanuki argued that the nations of Europe, North America, and Japan confronted a “crisis of democracy.” 1 Their starting point was a vision, widespread during the 1960s and 1970s, of “a bleak future for democratic government,” an image of “the disintegration of civil order, the breakdown of social discipline, the debility of leaders, and the alienation of citizens.” The central thesis of the subtle, nuanced, and wide-ranging analysis by Crozier, Huntington, and Watanuki (hereafter CH&W) was that the Trilateral democracies were becoming overloaded by increasingly insistent demands from an ever-expanding array of participants, raising fundamental issues of governability. Within that common framework, the three authors offered somewhat distinct diagnoses of the problems facing their respective regions. In Europe, Crozier emphasized the upwelling of social mobilization, the collapse of traditional institutions and values, the resulting loss of social control, and governments’ limited room for maneuver. Huntington asserted that America was swamped by a “democratic surge” that had produced political polarization, Susan J. Pharr, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics at Harvard University, is the author of Losing Face: Status Politics in Japan (1990) and Media and Politics in Japan (1996). Robert D. Putnam, Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University, is the author of Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (1993) and Bowling Alone: Decline and Renewal of the American Community (forthcoming, June 2000). Russell J. Dalton, director of the Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of California at Irvine, is author of Critical Masses (1999) and The Green Rainbow (1994). This essay is adapted from the introductory chapter to Pharr and Putnam’s edited volume Disaffected Democracies: What’s Troubling the Trilateral Countries? (Princeton University Press, 2000). Journal of Democracy Volume 11, Number 2 April 2000 Trouble in the Advanced Democracies?