The Challenge of 1973 and Governability as Leading Purpose

Abstract

Abstract The challenge of 1968 did not stand on itself. It was soon followed by another major blow to the postwar model of democracy, one that targeted in particular its material base and the social and economic paradigms which had sustained it: the 1973 Oil Crisis. This chapter shows how party leaders sought to confront the economic crisis that followed it and shows how it affected their understanding of the function of the people’s parties in the democratic system. Sometimes motivated by the memories of the 1930s, party leaders felt that the people’s parties could distinguish themselves most of all in these uncertain times by providing good and efficient government. They could provide, in the catchword of the time, governability of what seemed to them unruly societies and an ungovernable state. This growing emphasis on governability implied a rather radical change of direction for the people’s parties, which upset some of the careful balances on which they had based their success. By the end of the 1980s, many people inside and outside the people’s parties started to criticize this turn of people’s parties as the gap between their electorate and those in power seemed to become ever wider.