There exists a considerable ongoing debate in political science about past and future trends in the political legitimacy of Western democratic systems. While the empirical findings for historical periods are mixed and the indicators have a questionable validity across countries and time periods, assumptions and conditions of a scenario utilized in experimental runs with a formalized computer model indicate long-term decline in political legitimacy in five Western countries under study. The scenario implies increasing distributional conflicts and rising short-term maximization of goals by societal actors. This causes long-term decline in macro-economic performance. Following Eastonian terminology the politi cal section of the model differentiates between two layers of political support: support for the incumbent government and support for the political regime (legitimacy). As far as the data situation permits model parameters are "estimated" using a specific technique combining simulation and iterative parameter optimization
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