Why We Hate Politics E-Book

Colin Hay

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Polity Short Introductions
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 378

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Politics was once a term with an array of broadly positive connotations, associated with public scrutiny, deliberation and accountability. Yet today it is an increasingly dirty word, typically synonymous with duplicity, corruption, inefficiency and undue interference in matters both public and private. How has this come to pass? Why do we hate politics and politicians so much? How pervasive is the contemporary condition of political disaffection? And what is politics anyway?

In this lively and original work, Colin Hay provides a series of innovative and provocative answers to these questions. He begins by tracing the origins and development of the current climate of political disenchantment across a broad range of established democracies. Far from revealing a rising tide of apathy, however, he shows that a significant proportion of those who have withdrawn from formal politics are engaged in other modes of political activity.

He goes on to develop and defend a broad and inclusive conception of politics and the political that is far less formal, less state-centric and less narrowly governmental than in most conventional accounts. By demonstrating how our expectations of politics and the political realities we witness are shaped decisively by the assumptions about human nature that we project onto political actors, Hay provides a powerful and highly distinctive account of contemporary political disenchantment. Why We Hate Politics will be essential reading for all those troubled by the contemporary political condition of the established democracies.

Leseprobe

Why We Hate Politics

For Ailsa and Ian

Why We Hate Politics

COLIN HAY

polity

Copyright © Colin Hay 2007

The right of Colin Hay to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2007 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

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Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5741-7

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Typeset in 11.25/13 pt Dante

by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester

Printed and bound in Malaysia by Alden Press, Malaysia

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Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Preface and Acknowledgements

1    Political Disenchantment

2    Politics, Participation and Politicization

3    The Domestic Sources of Depoliticization

4    The Global Sources of Depoliticization

5    Why Do We Hate Politics?

Notes

References

Index

Figures and Tables

Figures

1.1    Trends in electoral turnout, OECD average and selected countries

1.2    Average British voter turnout by age cohort and year, 1964–97

1.3    Electoral participation and duration of voter eligibility, UK 1997

1.4    Decline in turnout and party membership, OECD countries

1.5    Levels of trust in politicians and government in the US, 1958–2004

1.6    Do politicians care? Comparative attitudinal trends

2.1    Mapping the political realm

2.2    Politicization(s) and depoliticization(s)

3.1    The rationale for central bank independence

4.1    Rate of growth of world exports and production, 1995–2003

4.2    Growth in world merchandise trade, 1948–2003, in billions of US dollars

4.3    Ratio of merchandise trade to GDP at current prices

4.4    The triad’s share of inward and outward FDI stock, 1980–2003

4.5    Intra-regional trade as a proportion of total trade, selected regions and regional trade areas

4.6    State expenditure as a share of GDP, per cent selected OECD countries

4.7    Economic openness and state spending, OECD member state averages, 2000–3

4.8    Inbound foreign direct investment and state revenue, OECD member state average, 2000–3

Tables

1.1    Decline in electoral turnout, 1945–2005, selected OECD countries

1.2    Trends in political participation in the US and the UK

1.3    Arenas of political participation and non-participation

1.4    Satisfaction with democracy

1.5    Trends in the evaluation of democracy

1.6    Trust in public institutions in the US and the EU, 2004

1.7    Changing UK public trust in the professions, 1983–2005

1.8    Primary interests served by MPs

1.9    US perceptions of the interests that government serves 38

1.10  US perceptions of wastage of taxpayers’ money by government

1.11  Potential demand-side and supply-side factors responsible for declining political participation

2.1    Politics as context, politics as conduct – narrow and inclusive definitions

2.2    Forms of political participation

2.3    Political and non-political participation and non-participation

3.1    Rationalizing neoliberalism

Preface and Acknowledgements

This book has taken rather longer to write than I had hoped, just like the last one, and the one before that . . . and, almost certainly, the one before that (I forget). When the idea for this book, or at least a book somewhat like this, was first put to me by Louise Knight, I was about to begin a three-year tenure as Head of the Department of Political Science and International Studies (POLSIS) at the University of Birmingham. I accepted enthusiastically the offer to submit a proposal, both because I was excited about the prospect of sorting out in my own mind the nature of the contemporary condition of political disaffection and disengagement and because this was the kind of book that I could imagine writing as Head of Department. That was to prove a forlorn hope. It has been far more difficult and more challenging intellectually to sort out my previously rather disparate thoughts on the issues addressed in this volume than I had thought likely. And the process has taken me in some genuinely new directions. It also became clear, rather early on, that I was profoundly naïve to think that I was going to write anything very much as Head of Department. But the book is probably better for its rather lengthy gestation. It is certainly the case that when I eventually sat down to consign my thoughts to paper at the start of my period of sabbatical in the Department of Government at the University of Manchester, I was far clearer about what I was seeking to do. The months that have followed have proved unusually cathartic.

As this perhaps already implies, I have, as usual, amassed a great variety of debts, both personal and intellectual, in writing this book. I must first thank my colleagues in POLSIS. It is not their fault that I failed to write this book whilst acting as their Head of Department – indeed, they have contributed greatly to making that a far less legitimate excuse for my inability to meet my publisher’s deadlines than it would normally be in British higher education today. I must also thank my friends, new and old, in the Department of Government at the University of Manchester, who have accommodated my sabbatical but who have, by virtue of this book, seen rather less of me than they might have expected. Now that it is completed, I hope to rectify that and to repay as best I can their generosity. An innumerable array of friends and colleagues have shaped, often unbeknownst to them, my ideas on the issues that I address in this volume. Amongst those who spring immediately to mind are the following, whom I thank profusely: Sam Ashman, Stephen Bates, Mark Blyth, Jim Buller, Pete Burnham, Keith Dowding, Alan Finlayson, Matthew Flinders, Andrew Gamble, Bob Goodin, Peter Hall, Andrew Hindmoor, Chris Howell, Laura Jenkins, Steven Lukes, Ross Maloney, Dave Marsh, Mick Moran, Pippa Norris, Craig Parsons, Ben Rosamond, Heather Savigny, Nicola Smith, Hugh Ward and Matthew Watson. It is almost inevitable that the day this book goes to press I will recall another dozen names that should be on this list – I thank them too, equally profusely – and trust that they will excuse my notoriously appalling memory. I am also immensely indebted to three anonymous readers for Polity, each of whose thoughtful, supportive and yet probing comments led to significant improvements, I think, in the final manuscript. I must also thank Louise Knight, Ellen McKinlay and, latterly, Emma Hutchinson at Polity. It was Louise who first put the idea to me for this volume, and I am immensely grateful to her for that – especially now that the book is complete! But I would also like to thank all three for their dedication, support and, above all, their enthusiasm for the project as it has developed and for their patience and perseverance. Whilst on the subject of patience and perseverance, this book, like all the others, would simply not have been written without the love and support of Elspeth. It is testimony to her generosity, kindness and tolerance that she has read almost every word and commented on almost every page.

Finally, it is now well over four years since the completion of my last single-authored book, Political Analysis. Since then I have become a father – twice. This book is, appropriately enough, dedicated to Ailsa (now four) and Ian (six months). I guess that, like any father and author, I hope that one day they will be interested to see what I have written. Yet I have one further hope – namely, that if they do, they will scarcely recognize the description of the condition of political disaffection and disengagement from which it builds.

Colin Hay

May 2006, Macclesfield

1

Political Disenchantment

Politics, or so it seems, is not all that it was once cracked up to be. Despite its near global diffusion, democracy motivates a seemingly ever smaller proportion of the electorate to exercise its right to vote in the states in which that right has existed the longest. Levels of electoral participation amongst the young are particularly low, and, it appears, each successive cohort of new voters has a lower propensity to vote than the previous one. Moreover, despite the bitter, often bloody and almost always protracted struggle to acquire the right to vote in free, fair and open elections, levels of participation in the new democracies are scarcely less depressing. Nowhere, it seems, does politics animate electorates consistently and en masse to enthusiastic participation in the democratic process. It should come as no surprise, then, that membership of political parties and most other indices of participation in formal politics are down – in established democracies to unprecedented levels.

For most commentators, this is depressing enough in itself.1 Yet, arguably, such trends are merely the symptoms of a more worrying and deep-seated condition. For each individual pathology might be seen as indicative of a more pervasive – indeed, near universal – disdain for ‘politics’ and the ‘political’. Once something of a bon mot, conjuring a series of broadly positive connotations – typically associating politics with public scrutiny and accountability – ‘politics’, has increasingly become a dirty word. Indeed, to attribute ‘political’ motives to an actor’s conduct is now invariably to question that actor’s honesty, integrity or capacity to deliver an outcome that reflects anything other than his or her material self-interest – often, all three simultaneously.

Politics and the collective good

There is, of course, a certain irony about this, the more detailed analysis of which will concern us throughout much of this volume. Stated most simply, politics responds to the need in complex and differentiated societies for collective and ultimately binding decision making. In the language of rational choice theory, contemporary societies are characterized by the proliferation of so-called collective action problems to which politics is, in some sense, a response. A collective action problem exists whenever the common or collective interest of a group or society is not best served by the narrow pursuit by individuals of their own (perceived) self-interest. Facing pervasive environmental degradation, the pursuit of material self-interest by profit-driven corporations will, in the absence of a collective and authoritative decision-making body, result in the continued exploitation of the natural world. No individual corporation can afford to impose upon itself unilaterally the costs of environmental sustainability unless it is entirely confident that others will do likewise. Rationality at the level of the individual unit (here the corporation) translates into collective irrationality – an outcome, environmental degradation, from which all suffer. Politics, here in the form of an authoritative environmental regulatory agency, is capable (in theory at least) of providing a solution to such collective action problems, negotiating and enforcing a set of binding environmental standards and, in so doing, imposing collective rationality where otherwise it would not prevail.