Disaffection is a perennial problem for politics; the way democracy is understood contributes to that problem
Disaffection is a perennial problem for politics; the way democracy is understood contributes to that problem
The OECD reports that voting rates are falling in member nations and shows that turnout for the last UK general election, at only 61%, was well below the OECD average of 70%.
A House of Commons Library note describes ‘a large decrease in reported membership of UK political parties over the post-war period’ and how, since 1983, the proportion of the population who are members of political parties has fallen from 3.8% to 1%.
Trust in governments is low: a Guardian/ICM poll found that ‘European citizens do not trust their governments’ and, according to Democratic Audit, only 55% in the UK feel that ‘people like them’ could ‘change the way the UK is run’ if they were to get involved in politics.
Yet, as formal participation in politics falls and a sense of disempowerment becomes rife, political leaders talk up democracy and their own democratic credentials. The gap between what people hear from politicians and what people feel about politicians is a problem. It is a problem for government, and all centre-ground political parties, but is a particular problem for the centre-left: it leaves a gap for a populism that is not progressive.
The last Labour administrations felt and tried to address this problem. ‘Democratic renewal’ was a powerful and recurring idea for Labour in government. It was a phrase that it attached to many of its reforms of government. Why, then, does disaffection and its symptoms remain? Partly due to the actions of the present coalition government, of course, but given the long term trend, the malaise also runs deeper than that.
Previous research I’ve carried out (see here and here) reveals important absences in the way that professional politicians tend to describe democracy. Very often democracy is spoken or written about with no reference to ‘the people’ (or any similar phrase) and so fails to acknowledge that democracy is about those groups which are beyond government and are without formal power.
It follows that there is also an absence of any recognition that democracy is a specific type of relation between government and the people: one in which the powerless ‘bite back’ at those with formal power and that when they do so they do it with good cause.
Conversely, professional political use of the term has tended to see ‘democracy’ as taking place only within the institutions of Westminster and as being a property of government rather than something to which government might be subject.
Holding this view, even when attempting to renew democracy, makes deep rooted reform improbable. Labour could change this but in order to do so it must not fall for those prevailing ideas about democracy which have undermined it.
It must recognise that government and democracy are not the same thing as each other. A distinction between the legitimate, mandated, business of government on the one hand and the potential for democratic action from beyond government means two things for a party in government.
First, it means that the business of a party in government must be founded on the values of the party, values which resonate with its broader constituency. It must defend those values and the policies for which it has a mandate and it must resist the lobbying and conniving of opposing vested interests.
It also means, though, that when it gets decisions wrong – and no government can be right always – it must find ways of being open to democracy. This can be done not by trying to change democracy – democracy is beyond government – but by changing the practice of government to actively seek out, listen to, and engage with the objections and arguments formulated amongst the powerless. And when those objections and arguments are sound, the party in government must act accordingly.
Michael Farrelly is a lecturer in English Language at the University of Hull and author of Discourse and Democracy: Critical Analysis of the Language of Government, Routledge
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35 Responses to “Disaffection with democracy and what political parties must do about it”
robertcp
I agree with most of this but we need to acknowledge that turnout collapsed during the New Labour era. The turnout in 1992 was high partly because there was a reasonable choice for voters. Labour had moved away from the hard left but it was still a recognisably left of centre party.
The election in 2010 was strange because the turnout increased slightly and the Lib Dems seemed to be the left of centre party. They then decided to go into coalition with the Conservatives! This left a gap on the centre-left that has been filled by Labour to some extent. It will be interesting to see what happens to turnout in 2015.
Of course, our awful voting system is the elephant in the room when turnout is discussed!
Kryten2k35
This is, unfortunately, a very dangerous thing. The more disenfranchised people get with the voting system, and the parties, the more right-wing parties like UKIP will gain voters, and I can’t really imagine anything worse than that happening.
Gary Scott
The public perceive little difference between the parties. Politicians appear to sit in a very narrow band of what is possible or desirable. They don’t reference the wishes of the voters, they are professional politicians. Whoever you vote for, the government always gets in.
DamianHockney
France has a ‘left wing’ president, who campaigned on left wing policies. But of course as a member of the EU (and the eurozone), France is powerless to implement many of the promises – these were carefully worded but gave impressions to the electorate of intended action. Instead, he simply implements the agenda of the superior layer of government without proper explanation. When, over a period of 20 years, politicians of the old parties appear to do the opposite of what they promise, and are not frank that they themselves do not make certain decisions, it brings the whole political class into disrepute. It suddenly becomes obvious that the failure to deliver is cynical and not some sort of ‘accident’.
It is all very well referring to alternatives as ‘populist’ but that is how the elite used to describe socialists, and how anyone today who does not wish to introduce popular policies describes those who do. If a government just wishes to be elected all the while knowing its promises are fraudulent and cannot/will not be implemented (‘just shut up and vote’). then it is surely a surprise that turnout even hits 50%. That is the reason in the UK for the growth of both UKIP and indeed to some degree the Green Party.
DamianHockney
The answer is for governments to act on what they actually believe in, or what they say they do – not cynically campaign for one thing, knowing they will not implement it. Their only hope at the moment is to rely to friends in the media to just make non-political and personalised attacks on new opponents in the hope that slur and smear will cow the electorate into submission and not vote for alternatives. It seems worse to be governed by lying smear campaigners with no real policies than by new parties which might do something better.
Otherwise, the only choice left is, indeed, UKIP or Green. Who wants to vote for those main three parties once you know they are simply holding out a fraudulent prospectus – a kind of purposefully fuzzy mess all similar to each others?