To what extent does democracy in the UK suffer from a ‘participation crisis’?
Over time, as society changes many seem to form presumptions that in the UK there is an evolving ‘crisis’ in political participation as less people are willing to actively participate or engage in any political activities whatsoever. This can be problematic as participation in politics is crucial because it will allow the government to be held responsible.
There are several reasons suggesting a ‘political participation’ which can be evident from the current turnout at general elections because they have been considerably lower than average between the years of 1945-1997. In the election year 1992 the turnout was 77.7% which gradually declined to 59.5% in 2001 which highlights the significant difference of election participation decline as the years went by. This perhaps could be due to the number of the population disagreeing with the ideologies of the political parties and have perhaps different strong ideas thus resulting in them in not turning up to the elections. Also, the fall in turnout levels could be because of people progressing in the industrial sectors as society is modernising so this occupies people and doesn’t allow them to make the time to actually go vote.
Moreover, another contributing factor to the ‘participation crisis’ is that party membership has been declining drastically over the last thirty years as during 1980 the membership of all parties was a staggering 1,693,156 as well as 4.12% membership of total electorates. This is highly contrasting to the figures of 2008 where there were was a huge decrease to 476,000 membership of all parties, with 0.95% membership of total number of voters, making it obvious that there had been a dramatic decline in political participation.
On the other hand, many would disagree as they believe in fact that there is no such ‘participation crisis’ occurring at current years because of apparent indications such as the recent turnout levels which seem to be progressing slowly, as even though there has been a fall down from election years of 1992 to 2001 where there has been a difference of 18.3%, more electorates have emerged and are willing to participate in general elections as shown by the turnout of 65.2% in 2010. This could be a result of people hoping for better change and good decisive decisions made by elected (favoured) candidates in order to tackle certain issues which may arise in the society. Perhaps, people have also more insight on politics because of social networking sights which is highly popular among the current generations allowing many to have the ability to post their own perspectives on current affairs and how they feel in regards to politics, which may encourage them to vote more regularly.
Furthermore, another aspect opposing the idea that there is a ‘participation crisis’ is that even though the voting public have not conformed to traditional methods of making themselves politically participated in society such as being involved (becoming a member) in political parties and actually giving their presence to general elections so they can vote for nominated candidates, there are considerably a few other ways in participating actively such as peaceful protesting, writing a letter to a representative, or even joining pressure groups for example the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) where there membership numbers were estimated of 1,000,000+ which exceeds the membership of the British Conservatives Party where there is a substantial difference as their membership numbers were around 0.17million, thus these statistics imply that members of the public are definitely intact with participating with interests in politics, however just not necessarily in turnouts or the current major political parties such as the Conservatives. This is because people would still desire to express their opinions and issues that they may be concerned with, despite even that the political parties may not be able to fully represent them.
In conclusion, the extent to which I believe that democracy in the UK is suffering from a ‘participation crisis’ is that in spite of the fact that there have been evidences provided suggesting that there is low membership in all political parties and mass decline in specific parties’ memberships, as well as the turnout rates being increasingly low in comparison to the past election years, there have been signs of electorates being immensely active in politics as the number of pressure groups are indefinitely rising and their memberships are greater than party memberships which confirm that people are nevertheless very interested in matters relating to the government and politics and that they are not holding back their concerns on any issues because they still do convey their opinions, just not essentially by traditional party involvements but instead by alternatives such as protesting, campaigning, fundraising and other similar methods, thus I agree that possibly there may be a ‘participation crisis’ due to clear reasons , but only to a limited extent.