ABSTRACT
In the Introduction to this volume, we set out to analyse a cluster of attitudes that are often lumped together as political support, but which, we argued, should be instead treated as both conceptually and empirically distinct. Following di Palma (1970: 30), we labelled as political disaffection a set of attitudes whose common denominators are a distrustful perception of politics as well as a chronic detachment from democratic institutions and political authorities. We also discussed that political disaffection contains two basic dimensions: institutional disaffection and political disengagement, or disaffection tout court. Both dimensions are related to a number of specific symptoms, including feelings of personal inefficacy, cynicism and distrust, lack of confidence in the major political institutions, the beliefs that political elites are unresponsive and the political system is unaccountable, and a general sense of estrangement from politics and the political system. This volume has attempted to answer some questions related to these attitudes by analysing a wide range of contemporary democracies either with comparative studies or with longitudinal case studies. In this concluding chapter, we will revise some discussions and systematize some empirical evidence presented by the contributors to this volume.
