留学作业写作—政治不满与脱离的原因

www.baydue.com baydue论文网 专业留学生论文作业代写网站留学作业写作政治不满与脱离的原因Causes of Political Disaffection and Disengagement Is the British political class to blame for political disaffection and disengagement?The Founding Fathers suggested that a democracy can only come to impartial decisions if both high levels of representation and deliberation take place (Gargarella, 1998). As a result of growing political disengagement and disaffection within contemporary British politics, there is a growing, “focus on the quality of representative democracy in Britain and on the quality of participatory democracy” (Kelso, 2007, p365) the relationship that has been recognised is that political disaffection and disengagement are not conducive with an impartial democracy. Worryingly, both the Hansard Societys annual, Audit of Political Engagement (2017), and a recent House of Commons briefing paper, Political disengagement in the UK: who is disengaged?” (2017), suggest that political disaffection and disengagement are growing issues; knowledge of politics is down six percent from the previous year (49%), the level of trust in Government to put the needs of the nation first has dropped to 17% (2013) and trust in the credibility of MPs stands at a measly 9%. These figures indicate that there is indeed an issue of disaffection and disengagement within the UK, thus, to determine if the political class or instead, something else is responsible, it becomes necessary to investigate what the cause of disengagement and disaffection is within specific subsections of the population; especially those who are more likely to become disengaged from politics the disaffected democrats (Flinders, 2015). These factions include demographics such as the working class and 18-24 year olds, both of which account for low levels of knowledge in politics compared to the average mentioned above; 29% and 33% respectively (Hansard Society 2017).The term political class is contentious and, is still not thoroughly developed in literature (Manolov 2013). Allen & Cairneys, What do we mean when we talk about the “Political Class”? (2015), offers the best practical definition; that the term political class is used to identify certain, flawed characteristics, that elected politicians tend to hold, those being:“Limited roots in local constituencies, inexperience of the real world, inability to reect the social background of the voting population, inability to represent devolved and English regions, and their tendency to engage in a style of politics that is off-putting to the general public.”(Allen & Cairney, 2015, p18 )The general view that the working class currently have of politicians is one of cynicism (Manning & Homes 2012). Within a study conducted by Manning & Holmes (2012), members of the working class gave opinions on how the political class cannot represent them one member of the survey describing David Cameron, the then PM as followed: “hes snooty hell not really be interested in ordinary, what I class ordinary people” (Manning & Holmes, 2012, p.483). This line of narrative makes total sense as there is no sense of descriptive representation (Pitkin, 1967) for most elected MPs. For example, just 3% of MPs elected in 2015 came from an occupational background described as manual work (House of Commons Library 2016), whilst the proportion of the population that lies within the social class of manual workers (DE) stands at 25% (NRS, 2016). Moreover, the annual wage for the working class sits below £20,000 (Manning & Holmes, 2012) whilst the base annual salary of an MP starts at £76,011 (Parliament.uk, 2017). It would be fair to say that there is a huge socio-economic disparity between the two classes which makes it hard for the working class to believe that they are truly represented within Parliament. This idea has been explored thoroughly in regard to the descriptive representation of women; Phillips (1995), most notably suggested that the electorate tends to favour those that are, “best equipped to represent” (Wängerud, 2009, p.52), their views those that can empathise directly with their electorate. Underrepresentation is an issue for a much wider demographic than just the working class. Just 8% of MPs identify as BME (British Future, 2017) whilst the population of BME citizens in the UK stands at 13% (Census, 2011). Furthermore, just 2% of MPs are under the age of 30 (Total Politics, 2016) whereas those who are of voting age under 30 make up 8.4% (Census, 2011). As the political class is not representative of the working class, or if it fails to represent minorities proportionally, there is no sense of, impartiality, within the representative process (Gargarella, 1998), resulting in political disaffection and potentially even disengagement.Whilst Pinkleton & Austin (2004) suggest that political disaffection leads to political disengagement, in evaluation, there is evidence to suggest that al