Is There A Particiption Crisis Flashcards
What is a participation crisis?
Idea that citizens are become less involved in processes that influence govt policy and shape politics as there is a lack of interest, undermining legitimacy
1A; voting
Between 1945 and 1992, average turnout was above 75%, since it has only exceeded 70% in 1997, with record lows of 59% in 2001 and 2024.
Local elections rarely reach 40%
Since 2010, every Welsh palruemnt, Scottish parliament and NIA has not exceeded the general election
AV vote 2011 had 42% turnout
Brexit vote despite being biggest issue in politics for 6 years only 72.2%
This creates democratic deficit as legitimacy of govt is at doubt and harder for public to hold accountable as less fear of changing vote, this creates elective dictatorship.
Natural that devolved parliaments and assemblies have lower turnout, as control less salient issues, reserved powers are typically what encourages people to vote e.g. tax, immigration recently etc
81% voted in Good Friday Agreement referendum, 84.6% for indyref, Brexit 72.2% still quite high
1B; voting
The 2 lowest records in 2001 and 2024 come in places where one party dominated the polls for an extended period of time before election, making the winner clear, is it fair to use? Since 2001, number gradually increased back to around 65-69%, similar to other democracies like Germany (70.6% 2021), USA (66.6% 2020) and Spain (66.6% 2023).
2A: party membership
In 1953, 3.8million people were party members
2024 around 870k
Further adding trade union members
1979: 13.2million
2021: 6.6million
Particularly due to the fact members vote for party leaders, in event that elected pm resigns, a small % of voters for that party who are members decide, May, Johnson, truss, sunak
2B: membership
People do seem to use party membership as instrument to influence policy and make voice heard
3A: social movements
Public don’t believe protests do anything,
73% of all Brits believe it very rarely or never makes a difference, and even 51% of 18-24 year olds agree
78% of population believe direct action such as just stop oils acts of defacing public property, blocking roads or glueing people to objects hinders social movements, even 60% of those who said they had attended a protest agreed.
Furthermore, the Iraq protests in London in feunrary of 2003 shows even when people do exercise protesting, the govt can simply ignore, 1,500,000 protested the UK war on Iraq, but it wasn’t until 2009 when UK withdrew its troops, and Blair wrote in a memo to George W Bush that “rational people were behaving very stupidly”
3B: social movements
Although didn’t directly affect policy, demonstrations help issues become more salient through media coverage, bring to forefront of public mind, parties adapt policies accordingly,
E.g. People’s vote March 2019 with 400,000 with speeches by Nicola Stuergon of SNP,deputy leader of Labour Tom Watson and Sadiq Kahn and later in October with up to 1mill maybe influenced Labour 2019 manifesto pledge to hold a 2nd referendum
200,000 poll tax protest 1990, introduced in Scotland in 1989, England 1990 gives flat tax to people set by local authority, argued as a large cause to Thatchers resignation 8 months later, showed public dissatisfaction with Thatcherism, protests demonstrate to govt that thier ideology is losing public support
