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A more nuanced version of this sharp title would be: “why do so many people nowadays project negative attributes onto political actors (who they mainly see as self-serving and self-interested crooks, who have no feeling or motivation to act in the collective good) and therefore have very bleak expectations about what “politics” can mean or do to further economic and societal problems?” Opinion polls seem to suggest that we all like the ideal of democracy, but that we no longer have trust in politics as such, in the way democracy has been implemented in the advanced liberal democracies. Voter turnout has been ever-declining (a trend accelerated since the 90s), party membership is at an all-time low, levels of political trust are extremely meagre, and various forms of informal participation (such as consumer politics, protests, demonstrations) are on the rise. It seems therefore that “the political”, or the drive to engage in political debates has been transformed (and is therefore not absent), into informal ways of engagement. Why so little formal participation, and so much cynicism about what politicians – and by extension politics – can do?
To answer this question, most literature has focused on the “demand” side, meaning that “citizens get the politics they deserve”. If they are uninterested, show a lack of civic duty, are becoming more realistic about what politics can do, they engage less, and the blame is therefore shifted away from politicians or the polity itself. Colin Hay argues, however, that we have focused too much on these kind of variables (even though they obviously play a role in explaining the outcome, often intertwined with his own input). His argument is that we should redirect our focus on several “supply” side variables, related to the “offer of political goods”. If there are arguments that make sense here, the bottom line changes towards “the levels of political participation the politicians deserve”.
Luckily for those uninterested and cynical citizens, his argument does make sense, shifting the blame away from us “ignorant non-voters”. His argument relies on two main claims, a “domestic” and a “global” one, that together have had a genuine depoliticizing influence. This means that the whole sphere of politics, the “capacity for agency and deliberation in situations of genuine collective or social choice” has been eroding over time. There is, simply, less to deliberate and debate about. This has reinforced a lack of legitimacy and confidence in politicians and politics, which has in turn – not entirely irrationally – disengaged voters and citizens.
The “domestic source” of this trend deals with the negative assumptions we project onto political actors, and the internalization of these assumption by political elites onto themselves. Politicians have been actively promoting the depoliticization of several issues (or entire public policy domains) to e.g. independent bodies or the market, because they state these topics would be better off without politicians’ involvement. The theoretical groundwork for such claims lie in the public choice literature, which has prominently focused on ‘state failure’. These economistic assumptions, however, have come to dominate our thoughts about electoral competition and politicians’ motivations. The solution? Keep as many things away from them, leave it to the market, leave it to independent agencies, add some sense of realism about the very little things politics can do. This tendency has been reinforced by normalizing and constitutionalizing these essentially neoliberal ideas (which has a strong affinity to public choice theory), effectively taking public political scrutiny, contestation and debate off the table.
A second, “global” source of depoliticization refers to the increasing discourse of talking about the constraints and the imperatives that we need to adapt to “because of globalization”. Hay firstly shows that what we witness nowadays is first of all not globalization, but regionalization (increased intra-regional trading and investment) and ‘triadization’ (increased networks and flows between EU, North America and Pacific Asia). Nonetheless, it does not matter if ‘globalization’ as such is happening or not; what is important is that many people believe it is. The idea of globalization is nested extremely strong in our and politicians’ minds. If they think and say they are no longer capable of dealing with several problems ‘because, you know, globalization’, people will come to expect less of them in return.
In sum, politicians have come to internalize the most pessimistic public choice assumptions about the character of politicians and politics, and internalized the most pessimistic assumptions about their capability to act. Both have led to an increasing depoliticization of politics (we should not take this into our hands, we can no longer influence this or that), taking issues and entire public policy domains off the debating table. As Dan Leighton summarizes: “If more and more areas of social life are either issues of individual consumer choice, or determined by uncontrollable market forces, what is the point in politics?”.
Hay ends with a hopeful message, to those who want to see it. He does not simply state that we should start trusting politicians and public servants more. Indeed, as he argues, they get as much trust as we are willing to give them. More importantly, we should start to realize the consequences of projecting these negative assumptions onto politicians and politics in general, and start scrutinizing if these claims are actually true. This implies revising the narrowly instrumental conception of human nature that we are projecting onto political actors, but also putting question marks next to things that are stated to be ‘irreversible’ or ‘having no alternative’, amongst which the process of globalization.
The link with contemporary disengagement is easily made. The disenchantment with American (and EU) politics is not primarily one of uninterested or stupid voters pulling away from (or trying to disrupt) the debate. Their griefs towards politicians and politics are for a large part due to tendencies such as a reliance on claims that we have to abide by this or that economic doctrine (we simply have no alternative), or that we should no longer talk about a certain issue or a policy domain (TTIP, a free trade agreement between the US and EU currently under negotiation and which has produced massive outrage in the EU, has been labelled by politicians as a “no brainer” – it’s free trade, why all the fuss?!), or that we should leave inherently political decisions (such as monetary or trade policy) to bodies that are as far away from public scrutiny and debate as possible. Many people are no longer heard, policies have – through various tactics and strategies – been depoliticized over the years, which makes us an electorate that is no longer voting on issues or programs, but on which political head we trust most. We should stop implying that there is no legitimacy in politics, that they lack the capacity to change things. We should start taking seriously that there are choices, there are many. We will have (hard) conflicts about them, but in essence that is what democracy looks like.
To answer this question, most literature has focused on the “demand” side, meaning that “citizens get the politics they deserve”. If they are uninterested, show a lack of civic duty, are becoming more realistic about what politics can do, they engage less, and the blame is therefore shifted away from politicians or the polity itself. Colin Hay argues, however, that we have focused too much on these kind of variables (even though they obviously play a role in explaining the outcome, often intertwined with his own input). His argument is that we should redirect our focus on several “supply” side variables, related to the “offer of political goods”. If there are arguments that make sense here, the bottom line changes towards “the levels of political participation the politicians deserve”.
Luckily for those uninterested and cynical citizens, his argument does make sense, shifting the blame away from us “ignorant non-voters”. His argument relies on two main claims, a “domestic” and a “global” one, that together have had a genuine depoliticizing influence. This means that the whole sphere of politics, the “capacity for agency and deliberation in situations of genuine collective or social choice” has been eroding over time. There is, simply, less to deliberate and debate about. This has reinforced a lack of legitimacy and confidence in politicians and politics, which has in turn – not entirely irrationally – disengaged voters and citizens.
The “domestic source” of this trend deals with the negative assumptions we project onto political actors, and the internalization of these assumption by political elites onto themselves. Politicians have been actively promoting the depoliticization of several issues (or entire public policy domains) to e.g. independent bodies or the market, because they state these topics would be better off without politicians’ involvement. The theoretical groundwork for such claims lie in the public choice literature, which has prominently focused on ‘state failure’. These economistic assumptions, however, have come to dominate our thoughts about electoral competition and politicians’ motivations. The solution? Keep as many things away from them, leave it to the market, leave it to independent agencies, add some sense of realism about the very little things politics can do. This tendency has been reinforced by normalizing and constitutionalizing these essentially neoliberal ideas (which has a strong affinity to public choice theory), effectively taking public political scrutiny, contestation and debate off the table.
A second, “global” source of depoliticization refers to the increasing discourse of talking about the constraints and the imperatives that we need to adapt to “because of globalization”. Hay firstly shows that what we witness nowadays is first of all not globalization, but regionalization (increased intra-regional trading and investment) and ‘triadization’ (increased networks and flows between EU, North America and Pacific Asia). Nonetheless, it does not matter if ‘globalization’ as such is happening or not; what is important is that many people believe it is. The idea of globalization is nested extremely strong in our and politicians’ minds. If they think and say they are no longer capable of dealing with several problems ‘because, you know, globalization’, people will come to expect less of them in return.
In sum, politicians have come to internalize the most pessimistic public choice assumptions about the character of politicians and politics, and internalized the most pessimistic assumptions about their capability to act. Both have led to an increasing depoliticization of politics (we should not take this into our hands, we can no longer influence this or that), taking issues and entire public policy domains off the debating table. As Dan Leighton summarizes: “If more and more areas of social life are either issues of individual consumer choice, or determined by uncontrollable market forces, what is the point in politics?”.
Hay ends with a hopeful message, to those who want to see it. He does not simply state that we should start trusting politicians and public servants more. Indeed, as he argues, they get as much trust as we are willing to give them. More importantly, we should start to realize the consequences of projecting these negative assumptions onto politicians and politics in general, and start scrutinizing if these claims are actually true. This implies revising the narrowly instrumental conception of human nature that we are projecting onto political actors, but also putting question marks next to things that are stated to be ‘irreversible’ or ‘having no alternative’, amongst which the process of globalization.
The link with contemporary disengagement is easily made. The disenchantment with American (and EU) politics is not primarily one of uninterested or stupid voters pulling away from (or trying to disrupt) the debate. Their griefs towards politicians and politics are for a large part due to tendencies such as a reliance on claims that we have to abide by this or that economic doctrine (we simply have no alternative), or that we should no longer talk about a certain issue or a policy domain (TTIP, a free trade agreement between the US and EU currently under negotiation and which has produced massive outrage in the EU, has been labelled by politicians as a “no brainer” – it’s free trade, why all the fuss?!), or that we should leave inherently political decisions (such as monetary or trade policy) to bodies that are as far away from public scrutiny and debate as possible. Many people are no longer heard, policies have – through various tactics and strategies – been depoliticized over the years, which makes us an electorate that is no longer voting on issues or programs, but on which political head we trust most. We should stop implying that there is no legitimacy in politics, that they lack the capacity to change things. We should start taking seriously that there are choices, there are many. We will have (hard) conflicts about them, but in essence that is what democracy looks like.
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