POLITICAL-PARTIES AND DEMOCRACY - A MUTUAL MURDER

According to the classical Eastonian approach a political system faces stress when it is not able to respond to an acceptable number of dema nds. The support for the system then drops. In this article we use thi s conceptual tool to attempt to explain in very general terms the exis ting anti-party sentiment in Western democracies. We try to show how d emocracy itself produces substantial stress for the system that could however be contained as long as political parties were able to act as collective identities between the citizens and the state. Tile adaptat ion and change of the traditional parties has made democratic systems more vulnerable to the erosion of support, and the parties themselves, as central actors in the systems, are the target of the protest.