The picture shows a Central Lobby with no members of the public present. I use it as a means of raising the question: how concerned should we be that the public take a limited interest in what Parliament does?
I have raised this question before in two contexts. One relates to the work of select committees (and the legislative process). Interest groups can usually be relied upon to make sure that their views are fed in to any relevant inquiries. Individual citizens are less likely to write to let a committee have their views. Is this because the committees are not good at publicising what they are doing or because people are not interested? (Or both?) When I chaired the Constitution Select Committee, we carried out a year-long inquiry into the consequences of devolution for inter-institutional relationships in the UK. I did various media interviews on TV and radio, primarily in Scotland and Wales, making clear that we did not wish to hear solely from the ‘usual suspects’ but rather wanted anyone with any views on the subject to write to us. In the event, we were awash with the usual suspects. And the number of submissions from members of the public? Two, and they were from the same person – a lady in Wales – who, I might add, was extremely good in what she had to say. The take-up was disappointing, but to what extent should we be surprised?
The other context is more general, and that is the level of interest in what Parliament does. I have variously touched upon the work being done by both Houses, both individually and collectively, to ensure that members of the public can access a mass of information about Parliament and what its members are doing. We are keen to do more. We want to combat what appears to be a decline in political participation, certainly in mainstream political activity through political parties. But to what extent should we be concerned? Are we assuming incorrectly that people are inherently interested but are deterred from getting involved by the structure or nature of the system?
I raise the question because of a provocative book published in the States (Stealth Democracy, by John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse) based on survey data. It was first published in 2002 and I have just returned to it. The authors find that most people in the States don’t want to be more involved in politics, don’t care about most policies, and are content for decision-making to be undertaken by others. Though people recognise in principle the value of debate and argument, their real preference is for those in authority to get on and take action. Their main preference is for politicians to understand their concerns and to act in a selfless way.
Is this relevant to this country? Does the problem lie with (self-interested) politicians rather than with the political process? If leaders take decisions that are palpably not on the basis of self-interest and reflect genuine concerns, will the public be content and not want to get involved? In assuming that people want to be more involved in politics, we believe we are acting as democrats. If Hibbing and Theiss-Morse’s thesis is appropriate to the UK, then are we instead being elitist in trying to get people to do that which they really don’t have much interest in doing? Or is our political culture such that our attempts to increase participation are really worthwhile?
Exactly. We Americans let the times roll by without taking the time to learn what’s happening and become involved. Then we jump and scream and condemn when it all comes crashing down. Where were those people when intelligent input was needed? I certainly hope you Brits don’t end up in the same sorry place. Good luck with your project!
Hardly concerned at all, people are fundamentally stupid, the less they are involved with the political process the better.
Frankly, those people who drown a few brain-cells every friday night (or read the Daily Mail, for that matter!), are not the ones I want making long-term decisions about my future.
***
I think that Lord Nortons very last question is the most important one here. I don’t think that people are interested in politics, and nor should they have any reason to be.
Its very simple – those that want to be involved in politics, are involved in politics. I’m interested, and I dare say that others who comment here are too. We’re self-selected. But any movement to get large numbers of people involved will have to be populist, and populism is dangerous. Or its draconian. Or its badly thought out.
(As an example – lowering the voting age).
We don’t have a culture of politics here, and there isn’t a culture of engagement from our politicians either. Its just that simple.
So no, you (we?) should not worry. Government will continue, even if no-one cares.
Just as a factoid, there are almost 72,000 email alerts set up on TheyWorkForYou for either when an MP or Lord speaks in Hansard, or when a particular word or phrase is mentioned. And from feedback, these are certainly not all “usual suspects”. So some people do indeed want to know what’s going on! 🙂
I’ve been there several times over the years; but these days the security measures make it an unpleasant experience.
I don’t blame anyone there for this: I fully understand it all. It’s just that if I can avoid it I will, and do something else, less of a pain, instead. This is natural enough, I think.
Meanwhile, though, I follow what is going on via newspaper online websites, ‘blogs, the Parliament Channel on TV, and a range of other sources.
Hopefully one day I shall revisit the Palace of Westminster, when the climate is such that it becomes a less forbidding place to enter; but not before.
Until a more representative system of government is employed in the UK its disillusionment, perhaps more then apathy, that will prevent more people from engaging in politics.
Engaging in a debate with an MP of the party of government is far more profitable that with an MP from the opposition. So you can exclude 70% of the electorate immediately from having much influence on policy.
Lord Norton has in his previous blogs already drawn our attention to a widespread lack of understanding about what parliament actually does. When I entered parliament as a member of the Lords I was very surprised by how few of my colleagues in medicine and the NHS, in other words an educated group, really understood that parliament’s function is to debate, modify and pass legislation introduced by the Government. This basic fundamental role somehow gets buried in a discussion of ‘politics’ which at its core is about heartfelt ideas about how people want to live their lives and therefore must inform the shape of legislation.
But I return to an old point, that many people feel safe and untroubled by politics because they see no practical differences between the legislation proposed by existing parties, nor the differences between one faction of a party and another. I believe them to be profoundly misguided. I see in my own world the backward steps that have been taken in Labour government policies this past 12 months and I despair…the impact will be felt over many years in the NHS but never attributed to a change of heart and politics in central government. All that will happen is the general public will once more complain that their local hospital isn’t as good as it should be, it won’t blame the Government nor consider how legislation can improve or destroy an initiative. One problem is the time lag between bad legislation and its impact on people’s lives. The responsible Government is usually long gone.
Living in the North East is a deterrent to visiting Parliament. I appreciate you live in Hull but I would not receive transport or acoomodation payments. Not that I resent your meagre subsidies in any way, I hope you understand.
It requires dedication to understand the language and procedures of both Houses. Given that 40% of primary school children do not attain basic literary and numeracy skills, the chances of understanding day-to-day political matters in later life will be extremely low. It is easier to pass the buck, give someone else the responsibilies, then shoot them down in flames because you aren’t included on some special lobby list.
I suppose most people’s first experience with political meetings will be at the parish or district council level. Let’s be honest, they are dire and do not fill one with confidence in the political process, especially when they have been told by central government to meet certain random targets in housing, or renewable energy, thus local opposition is pointless.
We were asked to vote whether we wished the local council structure to remain or become a unitary council under Durham. Over 75% of votes wanted to retain the status quo but nanny knows best and so our local councils will disappear in April.
I worry about the Conservative proposals to give yet more powers to local authorities which could well be a further erosion of local wishes. Can we at least start with sorting out accountability of local governement and get people to trust in matters that easily translate to their local environement?
I think we should be a bit concenred about people’s attitude towards getting involved. But is it a sign that actually people are content with the political system, despite what we hear from the media?
I would be interested to know of any opinion polls about people’s satisfaction with parliament.
I look at the problem from a practical viewpoint. Families everywhere are subjected to the advertising of lifestyle. It makes people want to be individuals and this costs money.
The motorcar has both liberated and imprisoned people by allowing people to live apart. Children are palmed off to expensive childcare because grandparents do not live locally. Schools are located miles away.
People no longer attend workingmens clubs or clubs and pubs generally. The beer is expensive, they cannot smoke and this too is expensive. We loose an essential way of life and social cohesion because politics promotes this.
Couples have both to work in order to make ends meet. They work and commute making for overly long days and don’t even have the time to prepare food so that they can eat properly.
Can politics give people back their lost time? No! But it can deprive them of it!
So you must forgive people for having interests that are easily digestible and having little time for the indigestible offerings of politics.
You might liken it all to the attendance in chamber of peers scrutinising a National Insurance Bill. These ‘political pensioners’ don’t pay National Insurance so why should they attend; it has no relevance for them? Thankfully a handful does so.
Dear Lord Norton
I suggest that public involvement and interest in the political process is part of a broader set of questions about culture and that in order to answer your questions it is necessary to enlarge the area of debate. (I realise that this may be regarded as unhelpful.)
It seems to me that most people in Britain do have an interest in politics, but that it has a low priority for them. Some of the reasons for this seem to be as follows:
– We live in a time poor society and political involvement takes time
– Being politically involved sometimes becomes deeply unfashionable.This creates peer pressure against involvement. (How else do you explain that a book entitled Too Nice To Be A Tory was published with little comment about the implications of its title.)
– A widespread prejudice that people who are politically involved are either nerdy, boring or likely to provoke dissent which is ‘not nice’. (For example, one of the standard pieces of advice about dinner parties is never to discuss sex, politics or religion.) – Yet one of the purposes of political discourse is to reveal dissent and to negotiate its resolution.
– In Britain we appear to lack a widely shared idea of what Britain is for or even agreement whether states are ‘for’ anything. This stands in notable contrast to the US where belief in ‘The American way’ and a brighter future that will be brought about by the American way is very widely held. For Americans this, often unspoken, agreement forms the starting point for political dissent. It makes political dissent safe because everyone ‘knows’ or accepts that at bedrock they all agree simply because they are all Americans. This seems to me to explain why it is, that although turn out to vote at American elections is alarmingly low, attendance at hustings in small town schools and halls is remarkably high.
In Britain this lack of a common foundation for dissent can be seen in the wealth of cultural issues which bear on British identity and which are prone to provoke passionate political dissent. For example, our imperial past (guilt vs. pride), differences in personal wealth (unjust and creates social instability vs. ‘good luck to them’ this reflects their talent or good fortune,) celebration of success, achievement and winning (it is self-serving vs. it is what makes Britain great,) and patriotism (patriotism leads to nationalism which creates wars vs. patriotism gives you the security to respect other peoples love of their own country and thereby prevents wars). Many other examples could be given. One consequence of this is that we do not even have the language needed for public discourse in which politicians might debate ‘What is the British thing to do in this situation?’, ‘What would be a British approach?’ etc. For these reasons getting involved in politics cannot be a casual affair. It requires an emotional commitment to your own views which is sufficiently strong to allow you to confront others who are also British who disagree with your right to your own idea of your British identity.
As for solutions:
Culture change is a widely studied technology in Industrial and organisational psychology. It is relatively easy to start cultural change in an organisation, it is less easy to control where the culture goes once it starts to change. One, widely agreed, sine-quae-none of successful control of cultural change is getting the top team of an organisation to exhibit the culture that is desired in their behaviour, attitudes and words. Those who don’t like the new culture that the top team exhibit tend to resign from the organisation. People do take a cultural lead from those that have power over them.
If this insight may be transferred to national politics, then popular perceptions of the attitudes, assumptions, powers and beliefs of politicians will be of crucial importance to how people behave both generally and with respect to the political process. If politicians are perceived as spiteful (class warriors), dishonest (spin), greedy (putting their nannies and children on the state pay-roll), vain (obsessed with how many cars they get at the state’s expense), or violent (hitting protesters) then these attributes will become more acceptable in society and those people who reject these attributes will tend to resign from involvement in politics.
I conclude that any solution to the problems that you identify is likely to come from the applied social sciences, particularly cognitive social psychology. I also expect that any solution would require cross party agreement for its implementation.
Lord Norton mentions a book published in 2002. I think an updated version of the book might reflect that participation is the same or even lower. However, I think interest and actively following politics has increased. This contridiction is explained by the shifts in population and the way voting precints are arranged.
Many recent studies have shown that on the neighborhood level, American’s tend to live near people who are similar to them. This tendency appears stronger on a socio-economic level than on a family level. This leads to neighborhoods full of people who are similar polically.
I live in Austin, Texas. George Bush was our govenor before he became President. However, Austin is a liberal oasis in redneck Texas! But this means, the rest of the conservative state just ignores us. Our voting districts in Austin are the most liberal in Texas, but it won’t change a thing on a state wide level. So even in the Presidential election, we don’t have an impact and it is assumed the state will go with the Republicans. It is difficult to convince people to vote with the Electoral College already determining the outcome of the election before it even occurs.
On our local level elections, everyone feels like they are in agreement with their neighbors and there’s not a lot of competition in the outcome. Without the competition of different ideas, there isn’t a feeling that your vote is important.
I hope this isn’t too far off topic but maybe what we see over here can help you when you’re looking at your own communities.
Just look at the Radcliffe Reveiw of Levy bodies to see why nobody bothers ! The consultation exercise was a complete fraud from start to finish. The horticutural industry responded with in excess of 90% of growers and ancillary industries stating they wanted HDC kept, yet it was not. It was patently obvious that the Government Minister did not know this before making the decision, nor did he care, so why give the fig leaf of respectability to such a corrupt process. How can you expect people to take part in something they see as not wanting to let them be involved ? WHy seek qualified and experienced advice anf then ignore it ? Why not either seek and heed, or not seek ?
Am not sure how reputable this survey is (although there were sources cited), or how relevant it is to the lack of interest in politics, but the Transparency International Corruption Index for 2008 shows the UK is on the decline.
I can see how increased corruption would lead to a feeling of disenfranchisment among the voting public. Even if this hypothesis is a red herring, your lordships might find the report of interest. 🙂
Thanks for the various and stimulating comments. I have read them with great interest. Given my post, it is not surprising that they address different aspects of political engagement. Some focus on Westminster and others on public interest in politics.
On accessibility of Westminster, there is both a geographic issue (distance) and one of access (security). The authorities go to great lengths to balance accessibility with the needs of security. The new Cromwell Green entrance is designed to make entering the Palace somewhat less off-putting than previously. Recognising that people cannot necessarily visit Westminster, the Parliament website is designed to help to take Westminster to people. The Education Service has recently been expanded, with more educational material made available online; anyone interested should check-out the Service’s new website on the Parliament site. BBC Parliament – just about to celebrate its tenth anniversary – also enables people to follow proceedings.
On the wider aspect of political interest, I agree with the observation that people have other things to do. Politics attracted people in an era when there was far less competition that there is today. There are mechanisms other than political parties nowadays for integrating people into society (making them feel they belong by supporting ‘their’ party or now some other body) and offering a range of social activities. Technological developments have not only widened choice but also encouraged a instant-gratification society. People have an increasingly short-attention span. The nature of political, certainly parliamentary, debate does not fit well with this change. The range of modern distractions means people devote less time to politics and, given that political rights have been won and now taken largely for granted, see no compelling need to get involved. Although we may be slipping slightly on the corruption index, referred to by Liam, it is marginal and on most international indexes (covering democracy etc) the UK is essentially in the premier league, along with other West European countries.
If people are to be engaged in politics, then it requires not more ‘representative’ institutions but rather political leadership. The latest Audit of Political Engagement shows that people do not regard the established structures (voting system and how it translates into seats, for example) as particularly pressing problems. They focus on more recent issues, some dealing with politicians’ behaviour (such as exploiting expenses). People are not going to respond if politicians themselves do not show leadership. People’s views of Parliament varies, often with their perception of government efficacy, though their assessment of the local MP has tended to be more constant (and positive); assessments of ‘politicians’ tend to be negative. There needs to be an emphasis on public interest rather than self-interest. If political leaders can demonstrate a commitment to public service and avoid debate that consists of partisan soundbites, then I think we are moving in the right direction. If they do that within Parliament – and use it is as the pulpit of the nation – even better.