牛牛资源

With voter turnouts low, and falling, how can we explain why so many people feel disengaged from politics and turned off by our politicians?

James Martin, Professor of Politics and Co-Director of the Centre for the 牛牛资源 of Global Media and Democracy at 牛牛资源, recently contributed to The Psychologist magazine鈥檚 exploration of voter apathy. 

Professor Martin uses psychoanalytical ideas in his research into political speech. He argues that 鈥減olitical behaviour is often not very rational at all 鈥� what grips us instinctively may be any number of things that speak to an unacknowledged sense of hurt or anger, loss or potential fulfilment. 鈥淪ometimes people don鈥檛 explicitly know why they believe what they do, they feel it as a gut instinct, it 鈥榗alls鈥� to them and they respond by identifying.鈥�

Writing for The Psychologist, journalist Ella Rhodes explains that Professor Martin 鈥渂elieves that as older identifications with political parties subside, we find we simply cannot tell, as commentators and analysts, what might happen in elections".

He says: 鈥淭he public鈥檚 dissatisfaction at politics does not supply an obvious location for investment but rather, many. We tend to think it a sign of trouble that we can鈥檛 predict what will happen in an election. But in many ways this is simply a truth about our own psyches 鈥� it is not automatic what it is that will grab our attention and call up our allegiance.鈥�

Professor Martin explained that the issues that cause anger and hostility are the issues that lead people to engage with politics:

鈥淗ostility to immigration, for example, is a persistent, unresolved sore in British culture that gathers around it a surprising amount of anger and prejudice that certainly motivates people to come out onto the streets and to validate all sorts of hostile political argument.

鈥淭he important point here, however, is less the merits of the issue and how it might practically be resolved than what grievances are invested in it, how some people manage to hook their desires, their fears and aspirations, in this rather than in anything else.鈥�

鈥淸Anger over immigration] is a symptom that substitutes for all sorts of desires and disappointments, not least the failing of established politics to evenly spread wealth and opportunity. It serves as a point of emotional eruption to activate people鈥檚 sense of grievance, not simply as a genuine problem awaiting solution. So in some ways, it is the failure to shift political ground that leads to some issues becoming sources of motivation and stimulants to participation.鈥�