Behind the crisis of trust

By Editor on August 21, 2008 2:52 pm

The British media’s treatment of politics as a game played by self-serving – if not corrupt – people has created a significant crisis of trust in recent decades. Professor Barry Richards sees such cynical journalism as an effect of the emotional dysfunctions of a tribal party system.

THE PARTY SYSTEM through which British democracy operates has become deeply dysfunctional, in a way that holds lessons for other mass-mediated democracies. Since one symptom of this dysfunctionality has been declining turnouts, however, it may be obscured as we approach the next General Election. There have been various reasons for the declines in voter turnout observed in numerous countries over the last 20 years, and the most basic of these are long-term social and cultural trends, not specific electoral circumstances. Yet the expectation of a very one-sided contest increases the sense of meaninglessness around the democratic process, while contrastingly predictions of a close battle may make voter participation seem more significant and worthwhile. And if the electoral revival of the Conservatives is sustained, there may be more of a real contest next time than there has been for over a decade in UK elections.

The major reason for the Conservative upswing is still their relatively recent election of a new, youthful leader with a direct and informal style. Labour, on the other hand, will find it hard to avoid being seen as the exhausted party. The relationship between a government and a people, rather like those between two people, is usually one that needs occasional renewal. It isn’t clear at this point whether Gordon Brown’s accession will have met that need, or whether he will be assimilated into voters’ experience of Labour as another chapter in the story of the government which – like so many others – was the solution that became the problem. Our collective inability as an electorate to stop ourselves over time from turning against the government which we have elected expresses a restlessness which is one of the general emotional dysfunctionalities of contemporary society. This restlessness profoundly affects party politics, but is not caused by the party system. It has its roots in our basic psychological needs and in how contemporary culture attempts to manage them through perpetual change (I’ve written at more length in a recent book — Emotional Governance: Politics, Media and Terror, Palgrave Macmillan 2007 – about how changes of government and leadership are partly driven by ‘fantasies of renewal’ and by the futile search for the perfect leader.)

But still, could an increase in election buzz and possibly in turnout mean that British democracy is at least partly on the mend, and that the alienation of voters so much commented on and researched in recent years has begun to decrease?

Unfortunately not, as the alienation stems primarily from another emotional dysfunction. This one is intrinsic to the party system, though it is amplified enormously through particular media presentations of politics. It concerns the psychology of inter-party competition in a postmodern society. In modern society (let’s say up until the 1950s in the UK) the Manichean logic of the two-party system had a rationale in the material and ideological interests of the stable socio-cultural blocs of capital (and its functionaries) and labour (and its fellow-travellers), loosely speaking. Our visions of society were organised in a basically binaristic competition. This endowed the endless see-saws and ding-dongs of Parliamentary political life with some higher purpose, and with some fidelity to the passions of the electorate. Enough of us identified with the political tribes, and so were ready to endorse the self-righteousness of the party protagonists, for the system to feel meaningful and right.

But this obscured, perhaps even cancelled out, the emotionally impoverished nature of a system in which ‘we’ are always right and ‘they’ are wrong. Now, however, the foolishness of this system in itself becomes more apparent, and ‘dealignment’ has arrived. This term normally refers to the dealignment of voters from automatic allegiance to traditional ideological packages and the parties that went with them. It could also refer to the decoupling of voters from the whole democratic process. Now we have substantial values convergence between the major parties, the policy differences between them – while still sharp at times – do not consistently reflect differences of view between the same large groups of the electorate. And for individual voters, increasingly unable to identify with an overall ideological package, an exclusive emotional investment in one party only – which is what ‘one person one vote’ requires – makes little sense. With no social traditions or material interests to dictate party allegiance, more people come to experience the banal binarisms of the inter-party competition as a charade, or as a self-interested game organised for the benefit of those who actively play it – politicians and their following.

A new gulf opens between the political classes and the rest of us. Our media play a major role here. There is abundant evidence that media treatments of politics as a game played by self-serving if not corrupt people have become much more prominent in recent decades. Indeed this is one of the deeper cultural trends I have noted as responsible for the decline of democratic process. But these cynical treatments feed off what has become the inherent implausibility of a tribal party system and the emotional inauthenticity it demands.

There is a crisis of trust, orchestrated by the media, but it stems not from the actions of politicians (who are no less trustworthy than in the past) but from the growing inability of a two- or three-party system to offer effective political theatre. Some of us may continue to feel that the major parties do represent, albeit faintly, a consistent choice between basic values. But those who believe absolutely in a party cause are now on the margins of the emotional public sphere. While they may continue to be articulate and cogent representatives of different positions on specific issues, their generalised partisan fervour and point-scoring is increasingly felt to be aberrant and suspect, out of touch with the sensibilities of the time. We need new forms of democratic drama to bring more authentic styles of political leadership to the fore. Will the political classes or their media counterparts lead the way towards this emotional re-invigoration of electoral politics?

Professor Barry Richards is the Deputy Dean of Research and Enterprise at the Media School, Bournemouth University.

Categories: Article