The Crisis Of Democracy

'Democracy motivates a seemingly ever smaller proportion of the electorate to exercise its right to vote in the states in which that right has existed the longest.' This damning verdict on the state of play was issued by Professor Colin Hay in 2007, and continues to hold true to this day. We are living through a Crisis of Democracy.

Average voter turnout at general elections in the UK and across the Atlantic has been in decline for almost 70 years, since a time of nylon stockings and pleated trousers. Indeed, both the US and the UK experienced record-low turnouts in the era of Clinton and Blair. If we take true democracy to mean more than an appearance at the polls a couple of times per decade, the outlook is even bleaker, with all further political participation the preserve of a minority activist class.

How should we interpret this disengagement with party politics? One popular stance is that an increasingly professionalised political industry - an exclusionary microcosm of archaic traditions and Eton connections - has caused the man (or woman) on the street to turn away from formalised political channels. Widely held and voiced opinions on politics can be heard declaring that "The parties are all the same", "They'll go back on their word when they get in", and "They don't really care what you or I think". For those burnt by the Lib Dem reversal on their tuition fee pledge, the ongoing delay of an EU referendum, and the countless refusals by the political establishment to even bring issues such as drug reform to the table, party politics is a rigged fairground game no longer worth playing.

In the search for solutions to the crisis there have been calls for a new breed of politician, and increased use of referenda as a path toward direct democracy. However cries for the end of the career politician will achieve nothing in isolation, while the referendum is no golden bullet solution - it remains open to misinformation campaigns within the existing political culture, and can lead to increased disillusion due to the non-binding nature of the process.

Beyond any one material change or attempt to instantaneously solve the Crisis of Democracy, the aim of governments ought to be simply to encourage and enable greater citizen engagement, and show a clear dedication to following the public will articulated. As Gerry Stoker (2006) argues, 'politics is a place for amateurs, but we need to design institutions, structure processes and develop support systems so that amateurs can engage and improve their skills.' This culture of civic engagement promises too many benefits to be curtailed by a fear of the general public's limited skills and understandings of politics. It is time to democratise our democracy. Yet if you share my doubt that this change will come from the archaic political class itself, isn't it time that we the people paved a new path for a modern, inclusive politics?