humpeter (1950) in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. The primary premise of Schumpeter's analysis of the issue of political support is that political support in Western democracies is determined to a great extent by the capacity of the state to provide its citizens with necessary public services. Therefore, the state should promise what it can deliver, and it should be able to do that. Instability and political unrest would therefore occur when the governing elite failed to deliver these services. It is the balance, Schumpeter argues, between the demands of the people and the capacity of the state to meet such demands that determines the level of political support in society. In order to meet the increasing demands of the people, the state must extend the scope of its activities, which mean the emergence of what Schumpeter termed the "big state." But, since the existence of a big state is incompatible with liberal democracy and poses a threat to civil liberties, the solution should be to reduce the level of citizens' demands and the state capacity.
Schumpeter's notion of political support has been accepted by conservative political scientists as well as radical ones. The controversy has centered around the issue of how the role of non-governmental institutions, or private institutions, such as family and church, has been replaced by the state. The issue has become the center of the debate among scholars regarding the level of support for the state in advanced capitalist societies.
Political scientists on the left think that capitalism generates some undesirable social and economic consequences for which the state must find a remedy (O'Connor, 1973; Olfe, 1974; Wolfe, 1977). Those scholars argue that the state must assist the private sector with investment in the infrastructure, and it must plug the holes left by the private sector by providing social services the state formerly provided. Even though those who are mo...