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A Map of Political Participation in Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Geraint Parry  and
George Moyser
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Extract

WHEREVER ONE TAKES A POSITION IN THE GREAT DEBATE between representative and participatory democrats it is clear that no democracy can function without the involvement of its citizens. What is at issue is the extent and nature of the citizen participation which is thought to be required if a democracy is to be worthy of its name. Whilst this is a fundamentally normative issue, the protagonists on both sides regularly cite evidence as to actual levels of participation and draw inferences from that evidence in support of their contentions.

On the one side are those who assert that in Britain ‘some of the spectators have begun to descend on to the field’; on the other are those who say that ‘the “grass roots” of politics seem shrivelled and starved of the nourishment of participation by the citizens’. For this reason, as Jane Mansbridge has said, ‘field studies of what happens to various ideals when people try to live by them could prove useful in clarifying a wide range of normative questions.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , 01 April 1990 , pp. 147 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1990

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References

1 Marquand, D., The Unprincipled Society: New Demands and Old Politics, London, Fontana, 1988, p. 237;Google Scholar Barnes, S., Kaase, M. et al., Political Action: Mass Participation in Five Western Democracies, Beverly Hills, Sage, 1979, p. 84.Google Scholar

2 Mansbridge, J., Beyond Adversary Democracy, New York, Basic Books, 1980, p. xii.Google Scholar

3 The study is based on a sample survey conducted in 1984–85 of around 1,600 citizens in Britain (excluding Northern Ireland), coupled with a survey of a further 1,600 citizens and some 300 leaders in six contrasting localities. It is a survey of actual participation over the five-year period and not of willingness to act (potential participation). Further details can be found in Parry, G. and Moyser, G., ‘Political Participation in Britain: a Research Agenda for a New Study’, Government and Opposition, Vol. 19, No. 1, Winter 1984, pp. 68–92 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The full report is to appear in Parry, G., Moyser, G. and Day, N., Participation and Democracy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 See Verba, S. and Nie, N., Participation in America: Political Democracy and Social Equality, New York, Harper Row, 1972;Google Scholar Verba, S., Nie, N. and Kim, J.-O., Participation and Political Equality: a seven nation comparison, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978.Google Scholar

5 The fuller treatment will be found in Parry, Moyser and Day, op. cit., forthcoming.

6 Resources are closely related to social class but, in our view, a resource-based analysis is, for these purposes at least, more fine-grained than one based on class. See Moyser, G. and Parry, G., ‘Class, Sector and Political Participation in Britain’, Manchester Papers in Politics, Department of Government, University of Manchester, 1987 Google Scholar.

7 See Milbrath, L. and Goel, M., Political Participation: How and Why Do People Get Involved in Politics?, Chicago, Rand McNally, 1977, pp. 98–102.Google Scholar

8 See Inglehart, R., The Silent Revolution. Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics, Princeton, N. J., Princeton University Press, 1977.Google Scholar

9 See Pizzorno, A., ‘An Introduction to the Theory of Political Participation’, Social Science Information, 9, 1970, pp. 29–61 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 See Milbrath and Goel, op. cit., pp. 114–18

11 Nie, N., Verba, S. and Kim, J.-O., Political Participation and the Life-Cycle, Comparative Politics, 04 1974, pp. 319–40.Google Scholar

12 See Barnes, Kaase, et al., op. cit.

13 Compare Kent Jennings, M., ‘Residues of a Movement: The Ageing of the American Protest Generation’, American Political Science Review, 81, 1987, pp. 367–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Milbrath and Goel, op. cit., p. 116.

15 For a discussion of the patterns in other Western democracies see Lovenduski, J., Women and European Politics: Contemporary Feminism and Public Policy, Brighton, Wheatsheaf, 1986;Google Scholar Christy, C., Sex Differences in Political Participation: Processes of Change in Fourteen Nations, New York, Praeger, 1987;Google Scholar Dalton, R., Citizen Politics in Western Democracies, Chatham, N.J., Chatham House, 1988.Google Scholar

16 Compare Crewe, I., Fox, T. and Alt, J., ‘Non-Voting in British General Elections 1966–1974’, in Crouch, C. (ed.), British Political Sociology Yearbook: Vol. 3, Participation in Politics, London, Croom Helm, 1976, pp. 38–109.Google Scholar

17 Milbrath and Goel op. cit., p. 54; Verba and Nie, op. cit., pp. 209–28.

18 The policies were ‘giving the police more power to deal with protestors and demonstrators’; ‘turning more nationalised industries into private businesses’; ‘trying to get greater equality of wealth and income in Britain’; [creating], ‘more jobs…even if government spending and taxes rise’.

19 R. Inglehart, The Silent Revolution, was the seminal study. For a wide-ranging analysis of the new configuration of issues and political groupings see also Offe, C., ‘New Social Movements: Challenging the Boundaries of Institutional Politics’, Social Research, 52, 1985, pp. 817–68.Google Scholar

20 Heald, G. and Wynbrow, R., The Gallup Survey of Britain, 1985, London, Croom Helm, 1986, pp. 94–5.Google Scholar

21 The study of ‘concurrence’ was developed initially by Verba and Nie, op. cit., pp. 412–14 and our measures are an adapted version of their technique.

22 Barnes, S., Kaase, M., et al., Political Action, Beverly Hills, Sage, 1979;Google Scholar Beer, S., Britain Against Itself, Faber, 1982.Google Scholar

23 See Offe, C., ‘New Social Movements: Challenging the Boundaries of Institutional Politics’, Social Research, 52, 1985, pp. 817–68.Google Scholar

24 Dowse, R. and Hughes, J., ‘Sporadic Interventionists’, Political Studies, XXV, 1977, pp. 84–92.Google Scholar

25 See the articles on ‘Modern Knowledge and Modern Politics’, Government and Opposition, Vol. 24, No. 4, Autumn 1989.

26 We acknowledge with gratitude the support of the Economic and Social Research Council under Grant No. E00220003. A version of this article was delivered to the Conference on Political Participation in Europe, University of Manchester, 5–8 January 1990, sponsored by the ESRC and the European Science Foundation. We are grateful for the comments of the conference participants.