Overload, Ungovernability and Delegitimation: The Theories and the British Case

The concept of ‘overload’ was introduced into the vocabulary of political science in 1975, in two publications which appeared almost simultaneously in the United States and Britain. One was by Michel Crozier in a ‘report on the governability of democracies’ entitled The Crisis of Democracy; the other by Anthony King in Political Studies. Both authors took the same general line: that there had been a rapid growth in public expectations about what benefits could be provided by government in Western democracies, that many of these expectations had inevitably been disappointed, and that the result was a serious decline of public confidence in government. King summarized the development in an aphorism so striking that it deserves quotation once again: ‘Once upon a time man looked to God to order the world. Then he looked to the market. Now he looks to government’. And when things go wrong people blame ‘not “Him” or “it” but “them”.’ It was suggested by King that this development had made Britain more difficult to govern and by Crozier, more generally, that Western democracies might be moving towards a condition of ungovernability.