Het einde van de sociale cohesie? Een kritisch overzicht van de postmoderne argumenten tegen het communautaristisch pessimisme

Samenvatting

In recent years, several authors have voiced concern about the alleged decline of conventional political participation and political trust in the US and other Western societies. These pessimistic observations, which are often inspired by a communitarian philosophical agenda, have evoked three separate lines of criticism. The first line questions the empirical validity of the communitarian observations, or their generalizability to other societies than the US. The second line argues that the erosion literature neglects the impact of new, more network-like forms of participation. The third line argues that the erosion of political trust cannot be considered a real threat to the stability of democratic regimes. In this article, it is argued that while the first two lines of argument lead to specific research agendas, the third line is weakened because of a one-sided pluralistic conception of political systems and interest mediation. 93 References. Adapted from the source document.