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Policy Demands and System Support: The Role of the Represented

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Extract

Discontent with the functioning of representative bodies is hardly new. Most of them were born and developed in the face of opposition denying their legitimacy and their feasibility. Most have lived amid persistent unfriendly attitudes, ranging from the total hostility of anti-democrats to the pessimistic assessments of such diverse commentators as Lord Bryce, Walter Lippmann, and Charles de Gaulle. Of particular interest today is the discontent with representative bodies expressed by the friends of democracy, the supporters of representative government, many of whom see in recent history a secular ‘decline of parliament’ and in prospect the imminent demise of representative bodies.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

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63 Key's discussion (Public Opinion, 30ff) of ‘supportive’, ‘permissive’, ‘negative’, and ‘decisional’ consensus is most instructive here. See also Mcclosky, Herbert, ‘Consensus and Ideology in American Polities’, American Political Science Review lviii (1964), 361–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Prothro, James W. and Grigg, Charles W., ‘Fundamental Principles of Democracy: Bases of Agreement and Disagreement’, Journal of Politics xxll (1960), 276–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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