Problems of Democracies

Problems of Democracies. The central thesis of the assignment, 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 some authors offered somewhat distinct diagnoses of the problems facing their respective regions. In Europe, you can see the upwelling of social mobilization, the collapse of traditional institutions and values, the resulting loss of social control, and governments' …

…Philip D. Zelikow, and David C. King, eds., Why People Don't Trust Government, 10-11. 29. By analogy to physical and human capital, some scholars have introduced the term "social capital" to refer to the norms and networks of civil society that enable citizens and their institutions to perform more productively. Without adequate supplies of social capital--that is, without civic engagement, healthy community institutions, norms of mutual reciprocity, and trust--democracies and market economies may begin to falter.