A Re-assessment of the Concept of Political Support
1975/10/01 by David Easton · 3,046 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Government (linguistics) #Law #Philosophy #Political Influence and Corporate Strategies #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Public administration #Social Policy and Reform Studies #Sociology
paper · doi:10.1017/s0007123400008309
published in British Journal of Political Science 5(4), 435-457 (Cambridge University Press)
openalex publication_date 1975/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Abstract
It has been said about the United States that it is now suffering ‘a crisis of regime’. Europe, we have been told, is in little better condition: ‘all over Europe the First World War broke up the structure of society which, before 1914, had provided the necessary basis of confidence between government and governed. There no longer exists, except in a few places such as Switzerland, that general acceptance of the conduct of national affairs that adds to the vigor of government and society alike.’ 1 These are the kinds of practical political problems to which the concept of political support, as found in systems analysis, has been directed.
Cited by
- Exploring popular conceptions of democracy through media discourse: analysing dimensions of democracy from online media data in 93 countries using a distributional semantic model
- Political Parties and Confidence in Government: A Comparison of Norway, Sweden and the United States
- Satisfaction with Democracy and the Winner/Loser Debate: The Role of Policy Preferences and Past Experience
- How Government Efficiency Shapes Political Trust: Evidence from the Case of Brexit
- Citizen Satisfaction With Democracy and Parties’ Policy Offerings
- Delegating Away Democracy: How Good Representation and Policy Successes Can Undermine Democratic Legitimacy
- The Influence of Perceived Injustice on the Endorsement of Political Leaders1
- Populist radical right party representation and satisfaction with democracy in Europe
- Can transparency strengthen the legitimacy of international institutions? Evidence from the UN Security Council
- Unilateral Powers, Public Opinion, and the Presidency
- Conflict exposure and democratic values: Evidence from wartime Ukraine
- Young People's Attitudes towards Democracy and Political Participation: Evidence from a Cross-European Study
- The Perception of the Legitimacy of Citizens’ Assemblies in Deeply Divided Places? Evidence of Public and Elite Opinion from Consociational Northern Ireland
- The Role of Political Efficacy on Public Opinion in the European Union
- Valence and satisfaction with democracy: A cross‐national analysis of nine Western European democracies
- The causes of perceived government trustworthiness
- Effects of Self-Legitimation and Delegitimation on Public Attitudes toward International Organizations: A Worldwide Survey Experiment
- Leaving a Legacy: Shifting Media Use and American Democratic Attitudes
- Closed borders, closed minds? COVID‐related border closures, EU support and hostility towards immigrants
- From latest buzzword to conceptual framework: Unraveling the complexities of democratic resilience
- Benchmarking pandemic response: How the UK’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout impacted diffuse and specific support for the EU
- Speaking the State: Linguistic Displacement and Political Support
- Process Preferences and British Public Opinion: Citizens' Judgements about Government in an Era of Anti-politics
- The effect of accumulated losses on perceptions of legitimacy
- The Role of Perceived Injustice in Defendants' Evaluations of Their Courtroom Experience
- The Democracy I Like: Perceptions of Democracy and Opposition to Democratic Backsliding
- Generalized trust and political support: A cross-national investigation
- Democracy and Bureaucracy: How their Quality Matters for Popular Satisfaction
- Group-based congruence and political support
- Trust in the Judiciary and Partisan Reactions to Judicial Checks: Evidence from Argentina
- Downbound spiral? Economic grievances, perceived social protection and political distrust
- Context matters for the relationship between national identity and perceived democratic quality: National pride as a blind spot
- Does multilevel government increase legitimacy? Citizens’ preferences for subnational authority and acceptance of governmental decisions
- A spectre of democracy: are populist citizens less supportive of democracy?
- Democratic backsliding and support for public good provision in the European Union
- Does digital surveillance boost citizen compliance? Evidence from China
- Partisan cueing and preferences for fiscal integration in the European Union
- Navigating policy legitimacy: the distributive and procedural justice of road transport pricing schemes
- Understanding trust among German citizens with migrant backgrounds – a latent profile approach
- Confidence Across Cleavage: The Swiss Rural–Urban Divide, Place‐Based Identity and Political Trust
- The role of procedural fairness in EU legitimacy: Lessons from the Spitzenkandidaten process
- The Partisan Foundations of Attitudes Towards State Supreme Courts
- Unequal Democracies
- Political trust in a multilevel polity: patterns of differentiation among more and less politically sophisticated citizens
- Testing the Measurement Invariance of Political Trust across the Globe. A Multiple Group Confirmatory Factor Analysis
- Political Trust in Norway
- The Symbolic Benefits of Descriptive and Substantive Representation
- The mobilization of political discontent
- How mass political attitudes affect democratization: Exploring the facilitating role critical democrats play in the process
- Measuring the quality of democracy: Why include the citizens’ perspective?
- Procedural and Functional Sources of Trust in Police in Pakistan
- Cultivating trust? The role of European Union investments in bridging rural-urban divides
- A future of authoritarian citizens? Explaining why Spanish youth are losing faith in democracy
- Institutional sources of legitimacy for international organisations: Beyond procedure versus performance
- Nationalism and political support: longitudinal evidence from The Netherlands
- Divergent paths of political trust in Southern Europe: the roles of economic performance, corruption, congruence, and polarisation
- Do Voters and Candidates Share the Same Views on Democracy? Support for and Satisfaction with Democracy in Switzerland
- How Violations of Electoral Integrity Undermine Partisan Attachments
- Supremely Polarizing
- Beyond Left and Right: The Role of System Trust in COVID-19 Attitudes and Behaviors Across Eight Western Countries
- The Social Transformation of Trust in Government
- Addressing the Citizenship and Democratic Deficits: The Potential of Deliberative Democracy for Public Administration
- The Demand Side of Democratic Backsliding: How Divergent Understandings of Democracy Shape Political Choice
- Supporting the War in Ukraine Compared to the Annexation of Crimea in Russia’s Bureaucratic Texts
- Blaming a Few Bad Apples to Save a Threatened Barrel: The System‐Justifying Function of Conspiracy Theories
- How the internet and social media reduce government approval: empirical evidence from Russian regions
- Capturing legitimacy in captured states: an interview-based exploration of the validity of existing legitimacy measures in Serbia’s hybrid regime
- Political trust formation during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany: The combined role of partisanship and evaluations of containment measures
- Ownership Society of the Proletariat
- Voting with dissatisfaction: an analysis of the 2019 parliamentary election in Tunisia
- Iceberg of discontent? Emotional responses to welfare state development and political trust
- Authoritarian Attitudinal Legacies, Corruption, and Democratic Satisfaction
- Same money, different impact? The curving effect of European Structural and Investment Funds on EU support in Spain (1990–2019)
- Medindo o apoio público ao Supremo Tribunal Federal: confiança e legitimidade institucional
- The Impact of Online Political Conflict Frames on Party Evaluations and Trust in Politicians
- Distrusting the Process: Electoral Trust, Operational Ideology, and Nonvoting Political Participation in the 2020 American Electorate
- The Europeanness of the 2019 European Parliament elections and the mobilising power of European issues
- Assessing Performance from Space
- Pension Policy and Governmentality in China: Manufacturing Public Compliance
- The end of the ‘consociational mood’? Generational differences in sense-making of regionalization among Belgian Dutch-speakers
- Authoritarian Reforms and External Legitimacy
- How populist parties fuel science skepticism: Evidence from a 15-year panel study
- When the Whole Is Greater than the Sum of Its Parts: On the Conceptualization and Measurement of Populist Attitudes and Other Multidimensional Constructs
- Vote buying, turnout and trust: democratic consequences of electoral clientelism in the Polish 2023 election
- A Crisis of Political Trust? Global Trends in Institutional Trust from 1958 to 2019
- Locality as a safe haven: place-based resentment and political trust in local and national institutions
- Identification with an anti-system party undermines diffuse political support: The case of Alternative for Germany and trust in the Federal Constitutional Court
- Democratic values, education, and political trust
- The Winner Takes It All: Revisiting the Effect of Direct Democracy on Citizens’ Political Support
- Procedural Justice, Legitimacy, and Public Cooperation with Police
- Democracy under threat? The influence of perceived insecurity on public support for democratic governance in Africa
- What kind of Europe do Europeans want?
- Standard Language, Propaganda, and Government Satisfaction under Authoritarianism
- Elite and Mass Confidence in New Democracies - Towards Congruence? The Baltic States 1992-2007
- Uninformed or informed populists? The relationship between political knowledge, socio-economic status and populist attitudes in Poland
- Le Pays du miel et du lait
- Social cohesion in platformized public spheres: toward a conceptual framework
- Democratic Commitment
- The non‐linear impact of corruption investigations on political trust
- Perceptions of Electoral Integrity and Election-Related (Non-)Compliance: Evidence from Germany
- Political trust and democracy: the critical citizens thesis re-examined
- In the European Union we trust: European Muslim attitudes toward the European Union
- Hate Speech, Contentious Symbols and Politics of Memory: Survey Research on Croatian Citizens’ Attitudes
- Communicating Assistance to Ukrainian Refugees: Does Empathetic Communication Make a Difference?
- Addressing Violence Against Women: The Effect of Women’s Police Stations on Police Legitimacy
- Regime Legitimation Strategies (RLS) 1900 to 2018
- The Zimbabwean war of liberation: struggles within the struggle
- Totalitarian and Authoritarian Dictators: A Comparison of Fidel Castro and Alfredo Stroessner
- A Defense of Participatory Democracy
- ESPAÑA: CRISIS Y RECORTES
- Beyond winners and losers: trust and the occurrence of elections in a quasi-experimental setting
- Political Trust and Sophistication: Taking Measurement Seriously. [europepmc]
- The relevance of different trust models for representation in patient organizations: conceptual considerations. [europepmc]
- The Support for Economic Inequality Scale: Development and adjudication. [europepmc]
- Interdisciplinary Lessons Learned While Researching Fake News. [europepmc]
- Immigration, Discrimination, and Trust: A Simply Complex Relationship. [europepmc]
- The social cohesion investment: Communities that invested in integration programmes are showing greater social cohesion in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. [europepmc]
- Urban Residents' Acceptance Intention to Use Recycled Stormwater-An Examination of Values, Altruism, Social and Cultural Norms, and Perceived Health Risks. [europepmc]
- Political attitudes and efficacy of health expert communication on the support for COVID-19 vaccination program: Findings from a survey in Hong Kong. [europepmc]
- Exploring the mediating role of government-public relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic: A model comparison approach. [europepmc]
- Americans' Attitudes Toward Federalism. [europepmc]
- Can we trust measures of trust? Measurement invariance in trust in EU news media. [europepmc]
- Intention to consume news via personal social media network and political trust among young people: The evidence from Hong Kong. [europepmc]
- Treading Through COVID-19: Can Village Leader-Villager Relations Reinforce Public Trust Toward the Chinese Central Government? [europepmc]
- Boris Johnson: the moral case for government resignations in July 2022. [europepmc]
- Trust and vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-national analysis. [europepmc]
- Predictors of perceptions of human rights violations during the Chilean social outburst of 2019. [europepmc]
- Factors Associated with Trust in Public Authorities Among Adults in Norway, United Kingdom, United States, and Australia Two Years after the COVID-19 Outbreak. [europepmc]
- Knowledge as a key determinant of public support for autonomous vehicles. [europepmc]
- Distrusting the Process: Electoral Trust, Operational Ideology, and Nonvoting Political Participation in the 2020 American Electorate. [europepmc]
- How is political trust associated with economic and environmental policy prioritization? A longitudinal analysis between 2017 and 2022. [europepmc]
- Ernst B. Haas, liberal nationalism and the double-edged nature of European identity. [europepmc]
- The Influence of Political Trust on Attitude towards Public Participation in China. [europepmc]
- Limitations of democratic rights during the Covid-19 pandemic-exploring the citizens' perception and discussions on dangers to democracy in Germany. [europepmc]
- Impact of social fairness perception on sense of social security in China's COVID-19 pandemic: the mediating role of political trust. [europepmc]
- Context matters for the relationship between national identity and perceived democratic quality: National pride as a blind spot. [europepmc]
Related