Anti-Politics: 12 Explanations?
Gerry Stoker
Complex patterns
• Differences between countries
• Differences over time
• Differences between social groups
• Complexity in and of explanation
Anti-politics: WHAT IS IT?
• Attitudes?
• Individual Behaviours?
• Collective Actions?
Five types of “decline” trajectory
• Flatliners: Italy, Greece
• Modest decliners: Sweden, Denmark, Norway,
Germany
• Slow burning and deep decliners: UK, US
• Abrupt decliners: Spain, Portugal , Japan
• Blessed decliners: Australia, Canada
• In each case of course the story is complicated…
INPUT: SOCIAL CHANGE
• 1/1 Input/ social capital
• Decline in social capital ( and more broadly the quality of civil
society) means loss of capacity to engage in associational activity
and impacts on anti-politics as citizens support and independent
dynamic to engage is weakened
• 1/2 Input/ decline of collectivism
• Decline in collective institutions from trade unions, through
churches and large firms reflects an individualisation of life ( more
consumer focus and less citizenship focus)
• 1/3 Input / inequality
• Increased inequality given impact of economic globalization has
created a more fragmented citizenry and led to the intensified
exclusion of some from the political process
INPUT: ATTITUDINAL CHANGE
• 2/1 Input / Less deferential more critical citizens
• As citizens have become more educated and information more
freely available they have become more critical and challenging to
all types of authority, including political authority
• 2/2 Input / More issue oriented less partisan
• Citizens are less committed to one partisan perspective or party
and more issue-driven and fragmented in their interests and
therefore less loyal and more selective in their political engagement
• 2/3 Input / Impact of neo-liberalism and depoliticization
• The dominance of neo-liberal ideology has weakened citizens’
sense of what government can do and what action in the public
realm can address, thereby limiting engagement with politics and
processes of depoliticization have removed a swathe of decisions
from public input
THROUGHPUT
• 3/1 Throughput / political elites out of touch and narrowly selected
• Political leaders are drawn from an increasingly small pool, often lack a
broader life experience. The declining social base of political elites in turn
rests on the weak and declining membership and active capacity of
political parties.
• 3/2 Throughput : media culture and spin response
• The emergence of intense 24 hour media coverage of politics, and the
parallel developments in social media has developed a sense that politics
is obsessively short-term, focused on spin and presentation and lacks the
substance to demand engaged public attention
• 3/3 Throughput: dominance of lobby politics and special interests
• Politics is dominated by special interests and the lobbying of those seeking
favours from government rather than any concern for the public interest.
The nature of campaign and lobby finance, party funding and networks of
influence and ties confirm that politics does its business with the few
rather than for the many
OUTPUT
• 4/1 Output: Opaqueness of Governing System
• The complexity of modern governance arrangements caused by the
impact globalisation and other factors means that the system
lacks a basic accountability or legitimacy, turning many away from
politics
• 4/2 Output : Failure to tackle big or long-term issues
• Politics cannot grapple with the big issues such as climate change or
economic renewal; nor can it because of democratic myopia driven
by electoral and other popular pressures deal with long-term issues
such as care for the elderly
• 4/3 Output : economic austerity
• Politicians and politics have presided over economic failings and
loss of living standards and potentially worse still connived with
bankers and others in making ordinary people pay for the problems
caused