Page 217 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

194 Communication and Evolution of Society

problems, b) restrictive conditions on problem resolution, and
c) two stages of delegitimation.
a) The expression “‘social welfare state-mass democracy” men-
tions two properties of the political system which are effective for
legitimation. On the one hand, it tells us that the opposition to
the system which emerged in the labor movement has been de-
fused by regulated competition between political parties. Among
other things, this has institutionalized oppositional roles, formal-
ized and rendered permanent the process of legitimation, period-
ized variations in legitimation and canalized the withdrawal of
legitimation in the form of changes of regime, and finally it has
involved everyone in the legitimation process as voting citizens.
On the other hand, threats to legitimacy can be averted only
if the state can credibly present itself as a social welfare state
which intercepts the dysfunctional side-effects of the economic
process and renders them harmless for the individual—after the
fact, through a system of social security which is supposed to
mediate the basic risks connected with weak positions in the
market, and before the fact, through a system of securing the
conditions of life that is supposed to function primarily by way
of equal-opportunity access to formal schooling. In mass democ-
racies, fulfilling this social welfare state program is, if not the
foundation, at least a necessary condition of legitimacy; it pre-
supposes of course an economic system relatively free of dis-
turbances. Thus the state programmatically assumes the responsi-
bility to make good deficiencies in the functioning of the economic
process. There is today no disagreement concerning the structural
risks built into developed capitalist economies. These have to do
primarily with interruptions of the accumulation process condi-
tioned by the business cycle, the external costs of a private pro-
duction that cannot adequately deal with the problem situations
it itself creates, and a pattern of privilege whose core is a struc-
turally conditioned unequal distribution of wealth and income.
The three great areas of responsibility against which the per-
formance of the government is today measured are then: shaping
a business policy that ensures growth, influencing the structure
of production in a manner oriented to collective needs, and cor-
recting the pattern of social inequality. The problem does not lie