Political (Dis)Engagement

The Changing Nature of the 'Political'

Nathan Manning, Manning, Nathan, Nathan Manning

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781447317012
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781447321347
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Political Process
• Index: Social Sciences

In what ways is the meaning and practice of politics changing? Why might so many people feel dissatisfied and disaffected with electoral politics? What approaches do political activists use to raise issues and mobilise people for action? What role does the internet and social media play in contemporary citizenship and activism? This book brings together academics from a range of disciplines with political activists and campaigners to explore the meaning of politics and citizenship in contemporary society and the current forms of political (dis)engagement. It provides a rare dialogue between analysts and activists which will be especially valuable to academics and students across the social sciences, in particular sociology and political science.

Part One:
The changing landscape of politics

TWO

Does participation always have a democratic spirit?

Michele Micheletti

Introduction

Let’s face it. We love it and think the more the better. Our ongoing passion for participation leads politicians and policy makers to cry out when it declines, and scholars of politics to track, trace and analyse the numerous ways in which individuals engage and disengage politically. Political scientists intensively debate where participation takes place – if it occurs only in parliamentary politics and government-oriented settings or also in other settings (van Deth, 2010; Stolle and Hooghe, 2006; McFarland, 2010; Scholzman, 2010; Stolle and Micheletti, 2013). Some scholars devise innovative theories, methods and materials to study emerging venues for citizen engagement outside government and commonly find that fears of participation’s decay often are related to privileging certain forms of political activity over others. This insight helps to explain why politicians and policy makers in different countries target electoral participation among the youth, including suggesting compulsory first-time voting and lowering the legal voting age to 16 (for example, Swedish Save the Children Foundation’s Youth Movement, 2006; IPPR, 2013). More general agreement coheres over the importance of the who of participation, a topic involving worries of whether or not pockets of participatory inequality exist, how and why they come about, and how they might be remedied (Brady, Verba and Schlozman, 1995; Verba, 2003; Stolle and Micheletti, 2005; Schlozman, Verba and Brady, 2012). Here scholars analyse the individual characteristics of participants and non-participants and ask whether gender, age, education, ethnicity, race, religion, income, social class and so on matter for who participates and who does not. The short answer is that they do. The general fear is that certain groups are better and others worse off at realising themselves in politics. Important concepts such as ‘mobilisation of bias’ (see below) and books like The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy (Schlozman, Verba and Brady, 2012) reflect this concern.

Research on participation does not stop here. Scholars examine how participation takes place, that is, through which forms, tools and methods. Though somewhat related to the where question above, this one is more about bringing scholarship up to date with today’s political world. For instance, scholars might ask how politically concerned individuals target the ‘politics of products’ of transnational corporations since these entities have gained more political power through contemporary economic globalisation. They even explore how people participate to solve problems created by economic austerity, governmental shutdowns and global climate change, or study how the online activities of a global political character are used in participatory activities (Stolle and Hooghe, 2006; Dalton 2008a, 2008b; Micheletti and McFarland, 2010; Bennett and Segerberg, 2011). Moreover, researchers investigate the why of participation in order to understand better the motivations, incentives, resources and networks that mobilise or draw political actors into politics (Conway and Feigert, 1968; Brady, Verba and Schlozman, 1995; Bäck, Teorell and Westholm, 2011). This focus is important because it helps us to understand the interests, values and norms underlying political behaviour as well as whether mobilisations of bias exist or not. Recently scholars have begun systematic studies of the so what of participation by evaluating whether and how effective different participatory activities are in bringing about societal change and well-being (Bosi and Uba, 2009; Stolle and Micheletti, 2013, chapter 7).

Participation scholarship greatly improves our understanding of political activity and assuages some worries about its decay. However, it also slights other important questions, particularly ones about how well it helps to grow democracy. The implicit assumption in scholarship has been that participation is good for democracy even when there is clear evidence to the contrary – from voting Hitler into office and boycotting Jewish merchants in the 1930s to contemporary protests of gay rights, public-dialogue forums that hinder free debate and special-interest mobilisation that thwarts global environmental problem solving. Hence the question: Does participation always have a democratic spirit?. This chapter contributes some thoughts and offers suggestions for how participation’s democratic spirit can fruitfully be studied. It begins with a short overview of an insightful study that brings democratic theory and participation research closer together, suggests how citizenship research can be used to study this important question, briefly discusses how this approach might be applied empirically and then ends with a few final reflections on this question’s importance for science and society.

Participation and democracy: some innovative insights

By revealing how normative democratic theory values participation, Swedish political scientist Jan Teorell (2006) identified important ‘blind spots’ in past research. He discusses how liberal, participative and deliberative democratic theory justify the role of participation in democracy and, in so doing, fills a knowledge gap on why participation is assumed to be important for democracy. For liberal democratic theory, participation offers individuals political voice – the foremost mechanism for interest representation in parliamentary politics – thus explaining why political equality and inequality (the who question) are important societal matters. For participatory democracy, the main value is hands-on involvement in decision making. It welcomes participation opportunities outside the parliamentary system, for they offer additional opportunities for self-governing and problem solving. For deliberative democracy, its core value is learning about and understanding politics by talking through the issues.

These theories generally assume, therefore, that participation is good for democracy, and thereby even accept the ‘the more of it the better’ thesis. For liberal and deliberative democracy, more of it by more people strengthens political equality and knowledge. For participatory democracy, participation and more of it implies wider and perhaps deeper community engagement. More participants and more participation are, furthermore, generally deemed to be better for political systems. For liberal theorists, a plurality of participatory forms and more of their use tends to ‘make the system more responsive to citizens’ needs and preferences’, which promotes the equal protection of interests (Teorell, 2006, p 792) and enhances political equality. For participatory theorists, more participation fosters the individual’s social and political capacities, which, it is assumed, also improves the quality of the citizens. The core value for deliberative theorists is accepting the political system’s legitimacy (its political rules and decision outcomes). Here participation is envisioned as teaching how to be a good and understanding democratic loser if one’s interests do not always prevail in decision making (so-called critical citizenship, see Norris, 1999). But as it is not always the case that participation in the real-life politics functions this way, should not scholarship recognise this?

Aside from this obvious additional blind spot, previous scholarship’s point of departure has generally been to theorise from the perspective of the nation-state. This yesteryear’s political context is typically collectivist in orientation. Here a central characteristic is its elite orientation through representative democracy and strong political agents able to screen the flow of ideas in and out of politics. Two prominent screening forces (gatekeepers) have been the traditional media (broadcast-network television and radio, traditional newspapers) and large membership organisations (particularly encompassing trade unions and political parties) that could function as strong socialising agents for informing and steering citizens into politics. In short, this era’s participation was to large degree conducted in ‘pre-packaged’ involvement opportunities (compare Dalton, 2008b, p 93), offering strong suggestions about how to think and behave politically as well as about which political values to identify with. Elsewhere I have coined the concept of ‘collectivist collective action’ to characterise participation in this era and have identified it in pure ideal-typical terms as requiring that citizens accept the norms and rules of physical and territorially or nation-state-based structures whose numerical strength gave them the legitimacy to screen out undesirable (for them) political views and values. They could even convince prospective members to change their views and behaviours to fit better in the organisational mould and the identity politics expressed by its grand or semi-grand ideological narratives (Micheletti, 2010, pp 24–34). Table 2.1 provides details of this characterisation.

Today’s political era is different and typically identified as looser, more flexible, open and vulnerable to many diverse influences, targets and values. Participation in it resembles more the pure ideal type of ‘individualised collective action’ (Micheletti, 2010, pp 24–34), theorising political actors as not primarily seeking a pre-packaged established political home, as in yesteryear, or trusting traditional authorities (political parties, broadcasting networks, unions and so on) to tell them what to think politically and how to behave in politics. Rather, political actors create their own political identity and express and act it out in real life. Today’s political actors in many democracies also have much more freedom to create their own political identity and engagement in politics. They believe that their attempts to influence (liberal democracy’s justification for participation), their desire for hands-on and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) involvement (participatory democracy’s justification) and even their hunger to understand politics more fully (deliberative democracy’s justification) can be achieved outside yesteryear’s framework. Therefore, political activity can occur on a more individualised basis, for instance through less-organised and structured market-based activism (political consumerism) outside the parliamentary sphere or through social media. Self-development and self-governing can even imply life-style politics (Bennett, 1998) and life-style political consumerism (for example, veganism or simple living) (Micheletti, 2010, p 182–5; Stolle and Micheletti, 2013). This self-governing form of participation, requiring the demand for more active choice and rights on the part of individuals, differs considerably from those forms theorised by participatory democracy in the past (for example, the workplace) (Pateman, 1970). Table 2.1 presents yesteryear’s and contemporary participation as pure ideal types. The terms ‘participation 1.0’ and ‘participation 2.0’, borrowed from the evolution of the World Wide Web from the more linear and static Web.1 to the more socially interactive and flexible Web.2, are coined to reflect similar developments in participation, and also to underscore their significant ideal-theoretical differences. ‘Participation 1.0’ represents ‘old school’ yesteryear’s collectivist and elite-dominated participation culture; ‘participation 2.0’ is the term for the new generation of participation with looser, more plural, elite-challenging and individualised elements.

Table 2.1: The ideal types of participation 1.0 and participation 2.0

Given its relative newness, much effort is devoted to explaining and even defending ‘participation 2.0’. Scholars argue that this conceptualisation of participation brings research up to date with current realities and assuages panic about participation’s decay. They identify globalisation, individualisation and privatisation as key processes spurring on 2.0 activities, venues and opportunities and find that its participatory formats are increasingly used (Dalton 2008a; Stolle and Micheletti, 2013). ‘Participation 2.0’ is found to occur more spontaneously and can, for instance, surge as swarms (Segerberg, 2010) or carrotmobs (Hoffmann and Hutter, 2012), be triggered by various new authorities on politics, take place in ‘leader-less’ networks of ‘scattered individuals’ (McFarland, 2010, pp 23–4) and be performed more anonymously. ‘Participation 2.0’ generates theoretical debates on creative participation,1 new conceptions of how individuals participate in politics (individualised responsibility taking and responsibilisation2), but it is noteworthy that its democratic quality is also slighted in scholarship, though researchers are probing the value portraits of its users (see more below).

Some scholars and experts express worries about citizens’ current ability to learn about politics and the value of participation in today’s more multifaceted political world (Crick and Lockyer, 2010; Wattenberg, 2012). Among other matters, the role of self-interest in triggering and shaping participation and its contribution to democracy is intensively debated; scholars differ in their analysis (Burtt, 1993; Innes and Booher, 2004; Micheletti, 2010). Here the central question is whether the more individualised collective-action setting is evolving participation from engagements for the common good toward the individual good. Is the ‘we intentions’ of politics fizzling away and being replaced by a focus on self, self-interest and self-promotion as a political project? Is, so to speak, participation becoming a ‘selfie’, just like photographing has to a great degree become a more individual and individualised activity? Obviously these questions pertain to ‘participation 2.0’, but also even to ‘1.0’ because traditional political agents increasingly appeal to self-interest to attract supporters, as when social citizenship is framed in terms of welfare pocketbook voting and established environmental associations evoke emotions to advocate and mobilise for their cause (Boström and Klintman, 2011; Stolle and Micheletti, 2013).

Another worry is what here is identified as the eventuality of a value divide between ‘participation 1.0’ and ‘2.0’ and what this might mean for growing democracy. This implies that the two participation cultures might have different value portraits separating them from each other and drawing in interests and individuals (that is, mobilisation of bias) in particular ways. An insightful ethnographic study of a civic group associated with British labour, for instance, reveals an internal tension between participation via social networking sites (‘participation 2.0’) and participation drawing on the group’s more collective political ethos (‘participation 1.0’). ‘2.0 participants’ were found to be more ego centred and focused primarily on self and forms of self-representation, thus leading the scholars Fenton and Barassi (2011, p 188) to conclude that the two participatory cultures do not ‘sit easily’ with each other. Other research reports similar findings indicating a value divide. A large survey of US citizen involvement in democracy shows, interestingly, that the individuals involved in certain ‘1.0’ forms (voting, working for and in a political party) tend to have a restrictive view of how one should engage in politics and are more oriented toward the duty norms of democracy (duty citizenship, see Table 2.2 for definitions). In contrast, those individuals who participated more in signing petitions, lawful demonstrations, political consumerism, web activity and other looser, contentious or extra-parliamentary activities veering more toward the ‘2.0’ ideal type tend to stress other citizenship norms, particularly solidarity and enlightened understanding (Table 2.2) (Dalton, 2008b, especially pp 72, 92). This research suggests the possibility that changing participatory norms lie behind...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• One: Introduction: Nathan Manning
• Part One: The changing landscape of politics
• Part Two: Contemporary political (dis)engagements
• Part Three: The politics of identity and marginalisation