ABSTRACT
Representative democratic regimes have spread out all over the countries of Southern Europe and the vast majority of countries in Asia, Latin America, and the former Eastern Europe. These ‘new democracies’ have very defined symptoms of political disaffection: lack of interest in politics; cynicism towards everything related to politics, institutions of representation and politicians; and a sense of alienation from all things political. Since the 1960s, an increasing ‘confidence gap’, or increasing ‘symptoms of disaffection’, have also been observed among citizens of advanced Western industrial countries (Barnes et al. 1979; Lipset and Schneider 1983; Dalton 1988, 1999; Nye, jr. 1997; Pharr and Putnam 2000).1 Is there any difference in the levels of political disaffection among old and new democracies?2
