Abstract
“The Crisis of Democracy” was a major ruling-class policy statement on domestic affairs, written principally by Samuel Huntington and issued by the Trilateral Commission in 1973. It described the U.S. political crisis of the 1960s and 1970s as being caused by the excessive demands of “ungovernable sectors,” black, Chicano, and Native American movements, along with women and youths. In the words of Huntington, “The demands on democratic government grow, while the capacity of democratic governments stagnates. This, it would appear, is the central dilemma of the governability of democracy. …” He lamented that society had become too democratic: “There are potentially desirable limits to the indefinite extension of political democracy.” The Trilateralist remedy was more authoritarianism to ensure “a more balanced existence.”
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Notes
- 1.Assata Shakur was targeted as the alleged leader of the Black Liberation Army and was wounded and arrested in 1973 after a New Jersey State Trooper shot at the occupants in a car in which she was traveling. She was tried seven times, found not guilty six times, and finally convicted and sent to prison for life plus thirty-three years. In 1979 she escaped from the Clinton prison in New Jersey. See Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1987)Google Scholar