Duncan O'Leary
Duncan works on projects looking at public services, skills and work.
at 8:58am on Tuesday, 3rd April 2007
Demos associate Paul Skidmore identifies this as a major problem in a peice of work for the pressure group Compass, in which draws together some of the evidence on political inequality. He argues that as society has become more unequal since the late 1970s, so too has our democracy – concluding that politics has become the preserve of the rich. A major problem, agrees Peter Wilby in the New Statesman, for anyone trying to build a ‘progressive consensus’ as unequal demoacratic participation becomes both a symptom and a cause of wider social inequality.
It’s a matter of weeks now before a new Prime Minister takes office and the clear favourite is Gordon Brown. From what we know, two of his biggest priorities are likely to be tackling inequality and leading a process of democratic renewal. But what about the combination of the two – unequal participation and influence in the democratic process itself?
Demos associate Paul Skidmore identifies this as a major problem in a peice of work for the pressure group Compass, in which draws together some of the evidence on political inequality. He argues that as society has become more unequal since the late 1970s, so too has our democracy – concluding that politics has become the preserve of the rich. A major problem, agrees Peter Wilby in the New Statesman, for anyone trying to build a ‘progressive consensus’ as unequal demoacratic participation becomes both a symptom and a cause of wider social inequality.
LOGIN to add comments
Comments
If we are to encourage people to participate in democracy, then we need to ensure that the structures and outcomes that they seek to influence are able to absorb and reflect the changes. We have built and refined structures in government to resist change. We need to correct this. One thing that we need to be careful of is confusing voter apathy with issues apathy. They are not the same thing. People care. What people don’t have is confidence about that vote actually changing and making a difference to what they care about. Fixing this requires building citizen responsive structures, organisations and processes – not simply encouraging people to vote.