The Crisis of Disaffection

[UCBooties]

This is a working draft for an essay I am working on. Some feedback would be appreciated. The topic is adressing the question of why the citizens of modern democracies do not trust their governments.

The Crisis of Disaffection
The government leaders of modern democracies both here and abroad are the most qualified and educated of any in the world, and more so than any time in the past. They are increasingly informed and more responsive to their constituents than ever before, yet in America and other modern democracies, the citizens have less faith in their political leaders and institutions then ever before. In fact, confidence and trust in almost all aspects of government has been declining for decades. There is in fact a crisis in modern democracy, and it is a crisis with two aspects. The first is political disaffection, a lose of confidence in the institutions of government. The second aspect is that of involvement, where fewer people are voting and fewer people are informed. Many culprits have been named to explain these troubling phenomena, including corruption, scandal, the media, and the decline of political parties. All of these have been factors in causing the problem, but no single one is entirely to blame. I believe that the problem is cultural rather than institutional, and that it is within the electorate itself. Everything is interconnected in study of government, and many of the problems of previous decades have led to our entire culture is arrayed against our government, with antigovernment sentiment being a central tenant in our everyday lives. People despise politicians simply because, for the younger generations where the problem is really taking root, they always have.

The problem began when our parents protested the government during the upheavals of the sixties, a time of civil unrest in most of the trilateral democracies. They fought to extend equal rights, to end a costly and brutal war, and to deny any form of controlling establishment. The problem was not that they chose to protest the government, it is the duty of responsible citizens to protest their government when they feel it is acting irresponsibly and unjustly. The problem was that rather than just protesting actions of the government they found deplorable, they began to make the government itself their enemy. Even though it was necessary for them to work through the government to effect the changes they desired, they still felt themselves opposed to that government. In the seventies the media’s attention to scandal helped to solidify the feeling that government could not be trusted. So, for the generation that grew up in the sixties and seventies, an untrustworthy government was perceived as a fact of life. The true problem is that, by the time these people began to abandon their idealism and support their government, anti-government sentiment had become ingrained in the culture. People’s perceptions had changed from believing that the government was mostly good, to believing that the government was corrupt and unresponsive.

This can be seen by examining campaign trends among current politicians. When parties fell out of favor in the seventies, and were dealt their final blow by progressive reforms, elections became candidate centered. In fact, all of politics is now individually focused. While they do have partisan affiliations and agendas, candidates and politicians are now measured by their individual merits. Because of this, current politicians spend most of their time in congress attempting to secure funding and services for their constituents, bringing home the bacon, as it is sometimes called. They do this in an attempt to prove that they, at least, are responsive to the people, and are different from what culture perceives to be true about “all the other politicians.” They campaign wit the full knowledge that people despise the government, so they promise to go and fight on behalf of their constituents against Washington. Our elected officials campaign on the platform that they are going to go work against the institution they are attempting to join.

So what does this have to do with disaffection? It proves how much it has pervaded the mindset of the people. We have been raised in a society that tells us that all politicians are crooks, that our political institutions are at best ineffective and at worst actively seeking to do us harm. Our government is presented as untrustworthy in our entertainment. In movies we are told that our government lies to us, that it hides its intent, even that it is controlled by shadowy interests working against the interests of the citizenry. Even movies about politics, the good guy is someone who is able to buck the system and go against the establishment as the only way to do some good. On television sitcoms about suburban families, offhand comments are made about how there’s no use trusting the government because a corrupt government is simply a fact of life. So why is it that the media only depicts an ineffectual and irresponsible government? Why is it that the highest rated news stories are those regarding political snafus and corruption? Because that is what the people expect to see. Worse yet, they refuse to actually examine their government and its intricacies, because it is easier to assume the worst. We have a disaffected electorate because our electorate has already turned its back on its own government. We are living with the government we deserve, and there is a crisis of confidence in public institutions because the electorate can’t be bothered to examine the government as a whole or in part, they only form opinions on an issue by issue basis. The concept fails the that it is not the duty of a republican (not the political party, the governmental system) government to make everyone happy, it is to allow everyone fair representation in the pursuit of the greater good for the nation as a whole.

Please note, it's not done yet, still in progress.

[Darth Wong]

Blaming the people for not trusting their government rather than the government for not being trustworthy seems pointless. You argue that it started in the 1960s when people "turned their backs" on the government. Do you realize that this was, after all, immediately subsequent to the 1950s, in which the government conducted medical and radiological experiments on its own citizens? How the fuck can you trust the government after something like that?

[UCBooties]

noted and thank you. I'll try to make myself a bit clearer. First of all, this is a problem in all democracies, not just the US. Second, I am not saying that the government is infallable and always right. I am arguing that my generation, those most recently able to participate in the political process, are dissafected, not because they themselves have reason to distrust the government, but because they are told the government is wrong. Third, politics and government will always have problem because they are run by people and nothing run by people can be perfect. My contention is that the public's ire and mistrust should be focused on corrupt people, rather than sweeping condemnation of the entire institutions, institutions which many of my generation could not be bothered to learn about or understand.

[Darth Wong]

noted and thank you. I'll try to make myself a bit clearer. First of all, this is a problem in all democracies, not just the US. Second, I am not saying that the government is infallable and always right. I am arguing that my generation, those most recently able to participate in the political process, are dissafected, not because they themselves have reason to distrust the government, but because they are told the government is wrong. Third, politics and government will always have problem because they are run by people and nothing run by people can be perfect. My contention is that the public's ire and mistrust should be focused on corrupt people, rather than sweeping condemnation of the entire institutions, institutions which many of my generation could not be bothered to learn about or understand.

Both targets are off the mark. If you really want to get to the root, the real problem is the voters. Do you think these corrupt and venal politicians would get away with what they did if voters were logical, well-informed, and ethical? The problem is that they are none of the above. Most voters are irrational, highly susceptible to advertising techniques (which are what modern politics is), ignorant, and their sense of ethics is either warped by religion or driven by naked shortsighted self-interest.

[UCBooties]

That is the point I'm trying (and failing) to make. Today's voters are irresponsible. We can debate the inumerable causes for their irresponsibility, but we can't hold the electorate irresponsible for their own opinions and actions. So am i correct in saying your suggestion is to focus more on the makeup of said electorate than the cultural influences on the voters? If so, where do we find the cause for such an irresponsible electorate. Thanks for taking the time to help wit this by the way.

[Darth Wong]

That is the point I'm trying (and failing) to make. Today's voters are irresponsible. We can debate the inumerable causes for their irresponsibility, but we can't hold the electorate irresponsible for their own opinions and actions. So am i correct in saying your suggestion is to focus more on the makeup of said electorate than the cultural influences on the voters? If so, where do we find the cause for such an irresponsible electorate. Thanks for taking the time to help wit this by the way.

IMO, the problem with the irresponsible electorate is threefold:

1. Half of the population has an IQ below 100. This is not a joke; the average IQ is 100, therefore half the population must have an IQ below 100 if the distribution is normal. This limits their ability to learn new things, thus making it more likely that they will "entrench" into a position early in life and simply ignore contradictory information or events. These people are most likely to completely toe one party's line rather than cherry-picking, because they lack individual problem-solving and analysis initiative so they go for a "tribal" approach by picking a side and sticking to it. These are the ones who do not even bother to construct their own arguments, preferring to simply refer people to websites that support their position. As one politician once put it on the Daily Show, you're born either a Democrat or a Republican; you don't mingle, you don't intermarry, and you never switch sides.
2. The education system does not properly teach critical thinking. You can look at a lot of TV commercials and tear them apart on a logical basis, analyzing them for the various subtle conditioning techniques and fallacies they employ, but how many people do that? How many people are capable of doing that? Why is it necessary for all kids to learn "Romeo and Juliet" but not critical analysis?
3. People are balkanized. They self-segregate into communities defined by wealth, race, even religion. As a result of this self-imposed isolation, their thinking becomes more provincial, and less universal. Instead of thinking of the common good, they tend to think only in terms of what will benefit their particular clan, and screw the rest.

Those are the ones that come to mind off the top of my head, anyway. As one writer put it up here in Canada, both parties attack each other with arguments which they know to be utterly specious, yet which they use anyway because they will play well to the man on the street. He was talking about the Canadian parliament, but it applies to the USA as well, naturally.

[Exmoor Cat]

I dunno about irresponsibility.

First port of call is laziness. The vast majority of voters actually don't care about tax dollars, they want to know if they're going to a job the next day, can get food and not be beaten up that evening. The more municipally minded are more interested in whether or not the roads will be maintained, how their kids are getting to school, and adequate street lighting.

Invariably they hold politicians to be a class apart, distant and self-absorbed. It is seen as a self-enclosed incestuous bubble of elitists who have nothing to do with their locality/driving radius. A lot of voters would rather pay up an inaccurate tax bill than go through the hassle of remonstrating against it.

Demonstrations and protests are easy qucik-fix solutions t the average perosn, they usually are a) new to it all, therefore actually belive a demonstration will change things or b) too impatient to realise the limit of demonstration.

I agree ad belive in dmeonstrations for something else, that is, as apar of a wider campaign where you use it for publcity and justify that your cause actually has some support in the wider community. This is often ignored by the organisers who are complete egotists.

[UCBooties]

Here is the text of the essay as it is being turned in tommorow:

The Crisis of Disaffection

The government leaders of modern democracies both here and abroad are the most qualified and educated of any in the world. They are, in fact, more qualified and responsive than any time in the past. They are increasingly informed and more responsive to their constituents than ever before, yet in America and other modern democracies, the citizens have less faith in their political leaders and institutions then ever before. Polls have shown that confidence and trust in almost all aspects of government has been declining for decades. There is in fact a crisis in modern democracy, and it is a crisis with two aspects. The first aspect is political disaffection, a loss of confidence in the institutions of government. Tied to it is the crisis of political involvement, where fewer people are voting and fewer people are informed about their own governments and how they work. Many culprits have been named to explain these troubling phenomena, including corruption, scandal, the media, and the decline of political parties. All of these have been factors in causing the problem, but no single one is entirely to blame. I believe that the problem is cultural rather than institutional, and that it is within the electorate itself. The very problems of which the people complain have been caused by their own actions and ignorance. Everything is interconnected in study of government, and many of the problems of previous decades have led to our entire culture being arrayed against our government, with antigovernment sentiment being a central tenant in our everyday lives. People despise politicians simply because, for the younger generations where the problem is really taking root, they always have.

The problem began when our parents protested the government during the upheavals of the sixties, a time of civil unrest in most of the trilateral democracies. They fought to extend equal rights, to end a costly and brutal war, and to deny any form of controlling establishment. The problem was not that they chose to protest the government, it is the duty of responsible citizens to protest their government when they feel it is acting irresponsibly and unjustly. The problem was that rather than just protesting actions of the government they found deplorable, they began to make the government itself their enemy. Even though it was necessary for them to work through the government to effect the changes they desired, they still felt themselves opposed to that government. In the seventies the media’s attention to scandal helped to solidify the feeling that government could not be trusted. What began as justified political activism and progressive thought stagnated into cultural disdain. So, for the generation that grew up in the sixties and seventies, an untrustworthy government was perceived as a fact of life. The true problem is that, by the time these people began to abandon their idealism and support their government, anti-government sentiment had become ingrained in the culture. People’s perceptions had changed from believing that the government was mostly good, to believing that the government was corrupt and unresponsive.

This can be seen by examining campaign trends among current politicians. When parties fell out of favor in the seventies, and were dealt their final blow by progressive reforms, such as a primary nomination process, elections became candidate centered. In fact, all of politics is now individually focused. While they do have partisan affiliations and agendas, candidates and politicians are now measured by their individual merits. Because of this, current politicians spend most of their time in congress attempting to secure funding and services for their constituents, bringing home the bacon, as it is sometimes called. They do this in an attempt to prove that they, at least, are responsive to the people, and are different from what culture perceives to be true about “all the other politicians.” They campaign wit the full knowledge that people despise the government, so they promise to go and fight on behalf of their constituents against Washington. Our elected officials campaign on the platform that they are going to go work against the institution they are attempting to join.

So what does this have to do with disaffection? It proves how much it has pervaded the mindset of the people. We have been raised in a society that tells us that all politicians are crooks, that our political institutions are at best ineffective and at worst actively seeking to do us harm. Our government is presented as untrustworthy in our entertainment. In movies we are told that our government lies to us, that it hides its intent, even that it is controlled by shadowy interests working against the interests of the citizenry. Even in movies about politics, the good guy is someone who is able to buck the system and go against the establishment as the only way to do some good. On television sitcoms about suburban families, offhand comments are made about how there’s no use trusting the government because a corrupt government is simply a fact of life. So why is it that the media only depicts an ineffectual and irresponsible government? Why is it that the highest rated news stories are those regarding political snafus and corruption? Because that is what the people expect to see. Worse yet, they refuse to actually examine their government and its intricacies, because it is easier to assume the worst. We have a disaffected electorate because our electorate has already turned its back on its own government. We are living with the government we deserve, and there is a crisis of confidence in public institutions because the electorate can’t be bothered to examine the government as a whole or in part, they only form opinions on an issue by issue basis. The concept eludes them that it is not the duty of a republican (not the political party, the governmental system) government to make everyone happy, it is to allow everyone fair representation in the pursuit of the greater good for the nation as a whole.

One of the most troubling things about this political disdain in America, is its full effect on individual campaigns. The incumbency rate in Congress is nothing short of astounding. People who condemn the entire institution justify reelecting their particular incumbents because those incumbents are supposedly the only one doing their jobs. They have bought in part and parcel to the delusion that the purpose of the American government is to serve the wishes and whims of the individual, rather than ensure the needs of the whole. Every locality believes that their particular representative or senator is the only one willing to fight the good fight, and many are willing to cross party lines to vote for an incumbent of the opposite party because that incumbent has done so much for the community. While elected officials must be responsive to their own constituents, the current trend of candidate centered politics has led to a Congress that is individually responsive, but collectively incapable of effecting meaningful policy as a whole. While a Congressman may legislate and vote along party lines for national issues, most of their constituents are only concerned with a legislator’s stance and action on local issues. After voting time and again for local minded legislators, Americans complain about the deadlock they themselves have caused by voting only for candidates who care more about local interests than the nation as a whole.

As stated in the introduction, this cultural distaste for our elected officials and government institutions has led to the decline in government involvement and of the level of electorate awareness of government. People may be rabidly concerned with single issues, but they are impatient with a government system that demands some sort of consensus, favoring rabid posturing and soap box oration to reasoned debate. It’s no wonder that an electorate which demands instant action according to its disparate and conflicting wishes and whims has no patience for a system of government that demands compromise to be effective. However, because of the cultural contempt for government, they translate their own refusal to compromise on the few issues they can be bothered to have an opinion on into ineffectiveness on the part of the government. Worse yet are the people who do not even trouble themselves to have an opinion on any issue, let alone know anything about said issues or the process of government. These are the people who complain that there is no difference between political parties and candidates, who claim that there’s no point in being involved because the government can’t be affected by the people. I was talking to a friend of mine on this very campus recently who, though I knew he was not very interested in politics, absolutely blew me away when he asked with complete earnestness, who was Kerry Edwards, and why were there signs all over the place? This signifies a gross ignorance of the state of the nation which I contend is nothing short of dangerous. This from a college student who is one of our nations emerging educated elite. Being a bio major does not give a person leave to ignore their responsibility as a citizen to understand their own government. Yet that is just the argument many people try to make, “the government doesn’t have anything to do with me, and won’t listen to me anyway.” If leadership is irresponsible in a democracy, it reflects the irresponsibility of the people.

In conclusion, when studying the problem of disaffection in modern democracies, we can not ignore the distinct possibility that the problem is not caused by outside forces upon the electorate, but by the electorate themselves. Because the modern citizen only cares about a government that can cater to their personal whims, they have created governments comprised of people who refuse to look beyond the narrow demands of local issues. We can not separate people from their actions, so if we want to understand why they act in a certain way, we can not focus solely on external influence. We have a decline in political involvement and trust because it is easier to believe the government is evil, than it is to become informed about issues, candidates, and government institutions. Why take the trouble to be a responsible citizen when there is less effort involved in blindly accepting rhetoric. We need to stop accepting the culprits offered up by the electorate for their own actions, and start looking at the people really responsible for their actions and opinions, themselves.

Flame way... er, I mean, feel free to discuss...

[Stuart Mackey]

In NZ there is a very high voter turn out at general elections and people tend to care a great deal about voting. Most, however, vote out the government, they dont vote them in, and no one really trusts a government but we do vote..

[TheDarkling]

In NZ there is a very high voter turn out at general elections and people tend to care a great deal about voting. Most, however, vote out the government, they dont vote them in, and no one really trusts a government but we do vote..

We have the same problem in Britain; many people have an unrealistic expectation of what the government can achieve.
For example somebody recently criticised the government for not achieving anything on crime because crime had only fallen by 39% since they came to office but was still (slightly) above the level it was in 1981.
In essence the government was being castigated because they had only reversed a decade’s worth of growth in crime and not achieved more.
The same could be said of health, people are upset with the government because they have to wait at all, instead of looking at the statistics and realising that sure they may have to wait almost 4 hours in A&E but before the current government took over most people had to wait over 4 hours in A&E.
In Britain people don’t seem to realise if the government has done any good, so they vote negatively, which is to say they vote for the party they think will do the least harm.
Which of course leads to anger because they don't feel they have a good option available.

[Stuart Mackey]

In NZ there is a very high voter turn out at general elections and people tend to care a great deal about voting. Most, however, vote out the government, they dont vote them in, and no one really trusts a government but we do vote..

We have the same problem in Britain; many people have an unrealistic expectation of what the government can achieve.
For example somebody recently criticised the government for not achieving anything on crime because crime had only fallen by 39% since they came to office but was still (slightly) above the level it was in 1981.
In essence the government was being castigated because they had only reversed a decade’s worth of growth in crime and not achieved more.
The same could be said of health, people are upset with the government because they have to wait at all, instead of looking at the statistics and realising that sure they may have to wait almost 4 hours in A&E but before the current government took over most people had to wait over 4 hours in A&E.
In Britain people don’t seem to realise if the government has done any good, so they vote negatively, which is to say they vote for the party they think will do the least harm.
Which of course leads to anger because they don't feel they have a good option available.

Yeah, same thing over here more or less. I put it down to people simply being ignorant of how things can and do work.
At the end of the day people only see their pet interest and not the whole picture. People want more spent on defence, yet fail to ask where the money comes for for that, raised taxes? welfare? or education? etc etc.