ABSTRACT
Thirty years ago, at the time of the launch of West European Politics, the academic discussion of state and government in Western Europe was preoccupied with crises of governability, overload and legitimacy (the chief contributions are summarised succinctly in Kaase and Newton 1995: 17ff. and Birch 1984). Critics of both the left and the right agreed that the contemporary state was faced with ever-growing demands for the provision of services and benefits, which it was unable to meet. Analysts from the left pointed to a fundamental contradiction between the need for the democratic state to legitimate itself in the eyes of the voters through extensive service provision to be paid for through taxation; and the demands by capital to secure the highest possible returns. This theme, with variations, ran through the work of O'Connor (1973) on the Fiscal Crisis of the State, Offe (1972) on the Structural Problems of the Capitalist State, and Habermas (1973) on the Legitimation Crisis. Not only did the contradictory demands of capital and the mass of the population overstretch the state’s capacity to deliver; the more the state’s structural inability to meet the demands of both capital and the citizens at the same time became apparent, the more its popular legitimacy eroded.
