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IAN MCALLISTER cotat unity out there is high NE major conclusion of this book is that there are few consistent trends in haps even growing support for democratic values and declining support for regime institutions and political leaders. An earlier chapter by Hans-Dieter Klingemann has traced these patterns with respect to democracy world-wide, while Russell Dalton, William Mishler and Richard Rose have confirmed the existence of these patterns in particular regions of the world. This chapter focuses specifically on the role of public policy in shaping popular support for democratic institutions among OECD countries. The data are aggregate indicators across 24 of the 29 member countries of the OECD in 1997, as well as individual-level data from the same 24 countries based on the 1990-1 World Values Survey. ¹ The role of public policy in shaping electoral outcomes—most particularly with regards to government economic performance—has long been a major preoccupation of political science. Aside from the voter attributes of party identification or social group membership, economic management has traditionally been viewed as the single most important factor that can deliver electoral success or failure. By contrast, studies focusing on the role of the economy in shaping confidence in democratic institutions are comparatively rare (but cf. Clarke, Dutt, and Kornberg, 1993; Finke, Muller, and Seligson 1987), and almost no attention has been devoted to the impact of the broader policy outputs of government. Most studies which examine confidence have focused on aggregate over-time trends, usually concentrating on democracy as a value …