Political disaffection: what we can learn from asking

the people

Margit van Wessel

Wageningen University

Accepted for publication by Parliamentary Affairs

Correspondence: margit.vanwessel@wur.nl

Abstract

This interpretive study of the meaning of politics for Dutch citizens offers a distinct contribution to the debate about political disaffection. Politically disaffected citizens interviewedunderstand politics in terms of a lifeworld-politics clash, and theyespouse a policy-oriented ideal of politics that puts their lifeworld at the centre. While their approach suggest they turn awayfrom institutional politics that fails this ideal, their citizenshipis political, and they demand acknowledgement and inclusion of theirview of reality rather than simply improvement in policy quality. These citizens assume themselves to be standing together with otherspresumably sharing their common sense understandings of what politics should be and how it fails in reality. However, with their micro-level interpretations they also often see themselves standing alone in politics, without aggregation, integration and articulationof their complaints and demands. So, although confident, opinionatedand oriented towards ‘big’ politics, this citizenship is defined by disjunction.

Political disaffection in present-day democracies has received

extensive attention from political scientists in recent years.

Research so far, working from many different theoretical

perspectives, has largely focused on explaining the rise in

disaffection across countries. One line of work suggests that

citizens will find it increasingly difficult to experience a

meaningful relation with democratic institutions. Some analysts

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point to processes of partisan dealignment.1 Other literature argues

that nation-state democracy is becoming less and less a realistic

option, with political and policymaking arenas pluralising across

the bounds of institutions and territories.2 Another line of research

seeks to understand declining political support by analysing

citizens themselves. Some researchers focus on correlations between

increasing education levels and changing values and expectations

that contribute to a decline in political support.3 Others analyse

the connections between low levels of social capital and political

disengagement.4 A final major line of research focuses on the nature

and role of the media as mediating relations between citizens and

politics.5

Although clearly highly diverse, and each offering important

insights, all the above approaches largely ignore citizens as

interpreters of their relations with political actors and

institutions in their own right. In empirical research in

particular, citizens’ views are studied through the analysis of

factors in causal relations rather than that they are approached as

actors having their own understandings of politics. This suggests

that important explanations of political disaffection may be being

ignored – little is known of how citizens’ own perspectives on what

happens between them and political actors, institutions and

processes might contribute to our understanding of disaffection.

Recently, some works have appeared that do in fact focus on

citizen understandings of politics, analysing disaffection with

politics through the dynamics between citizens and political actors

and institutions, involving ‘supply‘ as well as ‘demand’. This

research is more meaning-oriented than much research so far, which

focuses on ‘why’ questions rather than on understanding political

disaffection itself – ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions. This recent trend

is starting to develop ways of zooming in on what actually happens

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between citizens and politics, and thereby make disaffection

understandable. Stoker (2006) and Hay (2007) are among the most

prominent authors in this regard.6 They provide overlapping but

partly different diagnoses of failing citizen-politics interaction.

Stoker concludes that the central problem of citizen disaffection

with politics is citizens’ misunderstanding of the nature of the

political process. As he states:

The increased discontent with formal politics is best explainedby a number of misunderstandings of the political process that have taken hold in the discourse of democracies. The pressure from the increased prominence given to market-based consumerismin the culture of many democracies has led key aspects of politics to be overlooked. As a result, many citizens fail to fully appreciate that politics in the end involves the collective imposition of decisions, demands a complex communication process and generally produces messy compromise.7

Hay rather concludes that the answer to the question as to ‘why we

hate politics’ is depoliticisation, which has removed issues and

questions from the realm of politics and has made politics look

incapable of, and unsuited to, solving society’s problems. As far as

Hay is concerned, ‘democratic polities get the level of

participation they deserve’. The meaning that politics has for

citizens is the problem:

What we expect from politics is dependent to a considerable extent on the assumptions we project onto politicians and public officials – about both their motivations and their capacity to influence events. And those assumptions have changed decisively in recent years. It is not all that difficult to show that such assumptions are, today, profoundly pessimistic ones; nor is it difficult to show that this is still a relatively recent phenomenon. Unremarkably, perhaps, itparallels the rise of political disaffection and disengagement.Politicians are assumed today not to be selfless representatives of those who elected them, or benevolent guardians of the public good, or even partisan advocates of a

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particular cause. They are, instead, self-serving and self-interested rational utility-maximizers. They are, moreover, increasingly seen to be powerless and ineffective in the face of processes beyond their control.8

Both analyses focus on the problem of citizens’ political

disaffection in terms of meaning: a central element in both texts is

the explanation of citizen disaffection in terms of what politics

means to them. Stoker and Hay come to their conclusions on the basis

of analyses that connect large-scale socio-cultural developments,

the functioning of institutions, and research on citizen attitudes

and behaviours. However, insights on what politics means to citizens

are largely derived rather than based on empirical research that

directly tells us what it means. In fact, the authors themselves in

a recent text state that the meaning of politics for the citizen

side of the relation has hardly been explored so far and suggest

that there is a problematic paucity of research on this front:

…despite the unprecedented contemporary interest in the sourcesof political disengagement and disaffection, we lack a real understanding of how citizens understand politics. Any strategyfor revitalising politics needs to take seriously the issue of how politics is perceived by citizens. We know a fair amount about what kinds of political activity people engage in and what factors drive that activity. We can offer some reasonable evidence-informed insights into issues such as electoral turnout and election outcomes. What political science – and thesocial sciences in general – is less good at understanding and explaining is what politics means to citizens at the beginning of the 21st century.9

This is exactly the matter taken up in this paper, zooming in on the

tension that citizens experience between their democratic ideals and

the possibility of seeing these ideals made reality through

democratic institutions. What makes the functioning of democracy

problematic for citizens themselves? And how should this functioning

change, in their view?

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This paper presents the results of an interpretative study

conducted in the Netherlands through which an attempt was made to

gauge politically disaffected citizens’ sense of politics. This

study was not set up to test Stoker and Hay’s theories, but analysis

of interview data shows citizen understandings that have interesting

connections with arguments made by Stoker (2006) and Hay (2007).

While maintaining the relational and meaning-oriented approach

developed by Stoker and Hay, I shift the analysis to the citizen

side of the equation and seek thereby to refine the understanding of

what disaffection actually looks like; what meanings it embodies.

This study thus expands on existing analyses, showing that the

relational perspective can be further developed by getting a clearer

picture of how citizens, on the basis of a certain understanding of

politics, arrive at their attitudes. The insights obtained can

connect with existing analyses and approaches, but also have a

quality and relevance of their own. Stoker and Hay’s analyses,

focusing as they do on the politics side of the relationship,

suggest that the understandings citizens have will be informed by

happenings on this side. Although this study agrees with that, it

also shows that citizens introduce their own ‘materials’ as well,

projecting these onto politics, thereby partly filling their

understandings of politics with meaning derived from their own

lifeworld – with important implications for how they relate to

political institutions and processes.

The case of the Netherlands

Research in the Netherlands has established that there is a high

appreciation of democracy as a political system in this country,

combined with a decline in recent decades in political indifference

and a rise in interest in politics. There has also been a rise in

willingness to protest, a rise in appreciation of a range of forms

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of unconventional political participation, and a will to co-decide

in society that is felt by a large majority of society.10 These

developments and characteristics of citizen attitudes towards

politics that indicate support for democracy in the Netherlands are

combined with developments that indicate a critical attitude towards

democratic institutions. Research on citizenship in the Netherlands

shows that many Dutch citizens increasingly look upon Dutch politics

from a position of independence.11 Increased electoral volatility has

brought an end to an earlier period of relatively stable support

bases.12 Trends in trust in political actors such as the cabinet,

parliament and political parties have been the subject of debate.

Whereas trust in politics was relatively high compared with many

other European nations for many years13, from 2002 to 2005 trust

rates declined rapidly and saw historic lows.14 According to research

undertaken by the government itself in late 2005, a majority of

people at that time had a negative attitude towards politics and

government. They perceived that the administration did not care

about what ordinary people thought and that citizens had no way of

influencing the government. Only a small minority saw politicians as

capable.15 Since 2006, trust rates have risen again,16 but in 2009

research still showed that negative attitudes towards politics and

politicians were commonly held.17 Whether the Netherlands has joined

the commonly seen trend towards increasing disaffection is not

entirely clear. However, the Netherlands does appear to be a

suitable case to study how citizens supportive of democracy, but

dissatisfied with the functioning of democratic institutions,

imagine politics as they know it and the changes that are required.

The social imaginary

But how can we study the way citizens see and evaluate politics?

Citizens are not political scientists who can be expected to wrestle

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with democratic theory. However, a concept developed by Canadian

philosopher Charles Taylor can be fruitfully employed here: that of

the social imaginary.18 For Taylor, the social imaginary consists of

the ways in which people imagine their social existence: what their

relations with others are like, the practices that are part of that,

the expectations that people have of each other, and the deeper

notions and images that ground these. This imagination cannot be

1 R. Dalton and M.P. Wattenberg (eds.), Parties without Partisans. Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies, Oxford University Press, 2000.2 M. Warren, ‘Democracy and the State’ in J. Dryzek, B. Honig and A. Phillips (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory, Oxford University Press, 2008. 3 R. Dalton, Democratic Challenges, Democratic Choices. The Erosion of Political Support in Advanced Industrial Democracies, Oxford University Press, 2004; R. Inglehart, Modernization and Post-Modernization. Cultural, Economic and Political Change in 43 Countries, Princeton University Press, 1997.4 R.D. Putnam, ‘Bowling Alone’, Journal of Democracy, 6, 1995, 1, 65-78.5 See e.g. C. de Vreese, ‘The Spiral of Cynicism Reconsidered’, European Journal of Communication, 20, 2005, 3, 283-301. 6 C. Hay, Why We Hate Politics, Polity Press, 2007; G. Stoker, Why Politics Matters. Making Democracy Work, Palgrave MacMillan, 2006. But see also, e.g., N. Couldry, S. Livingstone and T. Markham, Media Consumption and Public Engagement. Beyond the Presumption of Attention, Palgrave McMillan, 2009; M. Henn, M. Weinsteinand S. Forrest, ‘Uninterested Youth? Young People’s Attitudes towards PartyPolitics in Britain’, Political Studies 53, 2005, 556-578; F. Hendriks, ‘Contextualizing the Dutch Drop in Political Trust: Connecting Underlying Factors’, International Review of Administrative Sciences, 2009, 75, 473-90.7 Op. cit., p. 10, n 6 (Stoker).8 Op. cit., p. 115, n 6 (Hay).9 C. Hay and G. Stoker, ‘Revitalising Politics: Have We Lost the Plot?’, Representation, 45, 2009, 3, 225-36. 10 I. Verhoeven, ‘Veranderend Politiek Burgerschap en Democratie’, in E.R. Engelen and M. Sie Dhian Ho (eds.), De Staat van de Democratie: Democratie Voorbij de Staat, Amsterdam University Press, 2004, 55-77.11 G. Van Den Brink, Mondiger of Moeilijker. Een Studie naar de Politieke Habitus van Hedendaagse Burgers. Sdu, 2003.12 K. Aarts, H. Van Der Kolk and H.M. Rosema, Een Verdeeld electoraat. De Tweede Kamerverkiezingen van 2006. Spectrum, 2007.13 Op. cit., n 3 (Dalton).14 Op. cit., n 6 (Hendriks).15 Voorlichtingsraad, Belevingsmonitor Herfst 2005. Voorlichtingsraad, 2005.16 Sociaal Cultureel Planbureau, De Sociale Staat van Nederland 2009.17 For example, in a survey, 38% of respondents tended not to trust politicians. Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau, Meten wat Leeft. Achtergrondstudie bij het Continu Onderzoek Burgerperspectieven, 2009

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considered as a theory: the way in which people imagine their social

existence is usually not expressed in theoretical terms, but carried

in images, stories and legends. Neither is the social imaginary

something that belongs to elites, but rather to society more

broadly. It is a shared understanding that makes possible and

legitimates shared practices. This understanding is simultaneously

factual and normative. We have an image of how democracy works, but

this image is woven together with images of moral order – ideas of

how democracy should work. As Taylor illustrates, we know how, in

our own country, elections are carried out, and we also know what

would invalidate these elections. The shared understanding of how

elections should be conducted makes the practice of elections

possible. At the same time, it is the practice that carries the

understanding. A society or section of society has, at any given

moment in time, a repertoire of practices at its disposal, such as

ideas about how and when to organise, appeal, protest, and what

could be achieved with that. Most of us orient ourselves through

these practices, to the extent that we have a grasp of them, without

a complete theoretical perspective on which to ground these.19

The above presentation of Taylor’s concept of the social

imaginary focuses, statically, on the connection between images of

moral order and social practices. However, Taylor’s social imaginary

is a dynamic concept, with interplay between these two. The moral

order people imagine can be out of line with the practices at their

disposal. Changing norms can clash with practices, de-legitimise

these, and inspire demands for new practices more fitting to new

images of moral order. But these practices do not necessarily exist.

Taylor, pointing out this tension, provides the example of the new

image of popular sovereignty that arose in France at the time of the

18 C. Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries, Duke University Press, 2004. 19 Ibid.

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French revolution, which was confronted with a lack of practices

through which this popular sovereignty could take shape.20 In short,

images of moral order are carried in practices, and clashes between

images of moral order and social practices can be identified. This

means that it is possible to ascertain people’s ideas about what

democracy should be like by analysing their portrayal of existing

practices and their dissatisfactions with these practices.

Methodology

The fieldwork for this study was exploratory in nature; a first step

in developing a relatively open-ended, interpretative approach to

the study of citizen understandings of politics. Twenty semi-

structured interviews lasting about 90 minutes each were conducted

with Dutch citizens. These citizens were selected with the aid of a

survey, developed in cooperation with Dutch research agency TNS NIPO

and carried out by this same organisation. The survey contained a

set of statements (also used in other political research in the

Netherlands), the reactions to which are used to measure the degree

to which respondents feel that they have influence on national

politics. The statements were about the interest of members of

parliament and political parties in citizens’ opinions, estimation

of citizen influence on government politics and the impact of

voting. Respondents could indicate their agreement or disagreement

with these statements on a Likert scale, obtaining a score of 0 to

4, indicating the degree to which they felt that they could

influence the key institutions of representative democracy.

Respondents with a low score of 0 to 1 were selected as potentially

suitable for this study. However, it was also necessary for them to

show a level of interest in politics. It is one thing not to feel

that one has influence, but this study was interested in people who

20 Ibid.

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actually cared about this. The survey therefore also included a

number of statements and questions measuring this interest in

politics, asking about interest in political news, participation in

conversations about politics, and estimation of the interviewee’s

interest in politics. Respondents could answer or indicate their

agreement or disagreement with these statements on a Likert scale,

obtaining a score of 0 to 4, indicating the degree to which they

were interested in politics. For our study, respondents with a score

of 1-4, i.e. those with at least some interest in politics, were

seen as potentially interesting, in combination with the other

criterion of a score of 0-1 on whether they felt that they had

political influence.

For this survey, carried out in June 2007, TNS NIPO approached

972 members of its national panel TNS NIPObase CASI. After exclusion

of respondents that answered ‘don’t know’ to questions, 651 persons

remained. Persons with a low feeling of political influence (0-1 on

scale 0-4) and at least some interest in politics (1-4 on scale 0-

1), formed 51% of the total, or 364 persons. These 364 persons were

all asked whether they were willing to agree to an interview. We

offered € 35 as an incentive to prevent overrepresentation of

persons with an extraordinarily high interest in the subject. Of the

364 potential respondents, 147 agreed. From these 147, 20 were

selected, differentiated in terms of age, education, sex and region.

These people were interviewed at their homes.

Using questions and statements to which respondents could

react, the interview addressed national politics. How does national

politics work, as a constellation of actors, in the eyes of

citizens, and how do these citizens evaluate the functioning of this

constellation in democratic terms? Are alternatives imagined? If

yes, how are these described? The interview encouraged citizens to

describe and discuss practices of agenda setting, leadership,

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representation, responsiveness, accountability, performance and

inclusion as they saw them, and to complain where they saw fit. The

complaints expressed by respondents made it possible to identify

practices about which respondents were dissatisfied, what those

practices looked like to them, and the reasoning behind the

dissatisfaction. Thereby, citizens’ images of moral order about

democracy – democratic ideals from which they approached politics -

could be revealed.

The first step in the analysis of the interview material

consisted of the identification of tensions between practices and

images of moral order that could give information about practices

deemed problematic, as well as the image of moral order that could

be derived from complaints. For example, an expression like ‘Those

politicians in The Hague don’t pay attention to the problems of

ordinary people; they’re only involved with themselves’ is an

expression about practice, as imagined, but also about moral order.

The speaker also states implicitly: Politicians in The Hague should

pay attention to the problems of ordinary people. Moreover, the

expression also reveals the imagined relation between moral order

and practices: Those politicians in The Hague are supposed to pay

attention to the problems of ordinary people, but they don’t. We can

identify here a tension between an image of moral order (paying

attention to the problems of ordinary people) and a perceived

practice (politicians being self-absorbed only). The second step in

the data analysis consisted of searching for patterns in the

tensions between images of moral order and practices across

respondents. The material was consistently examined for

similarities, and how these could be characterised. Was there

something to be learnt here that could be more broadly applicable,

because of it being shared across respondents? A clear set of

identified patterns is presented and discussed below.

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Political rationality as poorly tuned to on-the-ground realities

Respondents were asked about their views on the way political

institutions handle problems in society. Does politics adequately

address problems that they experience or know of? If it does not, or

not to a sufficient degree, why would this be so? Respondents,

engaging with these questions, raised different policy issues that

they thought important and inadequately dealt with by politics, and

shared their ideas about why this was so. For Sylvia (51), a

healthcare professional, the problem lies in the inability of

politics to connect meaningfully with on-the-ground realities in her

field:

Imagine, someone having two mentally handicapped parents, and all that comes with that. Those parents can’t go and discuss things with the teacher. That those children have to take thoseparents everywhere. Young children, thirteen years old, taking their parents to the doctor. Makes me think: ooohhh. That’s what I mean about politics. What is politics doing? What is Child Protection Services doing? Why isn’t that working as it should? Why are there so many millions put into that and still it’s not working properly? How is that possible?

To Sylvia, it is a disgrace that the glaring problems she describes

are not handled adequately by politics. The only sensible thing that

can be said is that the realities prove that politics clearly is out

of touch and not up to dealing with challenges adequately. It is the

on-the-ground realities around which arguments are formed, with the

world of politics being perceived in terms of its inability to

engage with these. Jeanette (25), a nurse, has a similar

understanding of meaning-poor politics failing in its engagement

with the realities that she confronts in her daily life, where

meaning is again self-evidently at the centre. I asked Jeannette to

respond to the statement ‘Things aren’t going bad in the

Netherlands. So they must be doing something right in The Hague’:

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Yes, a little, I think. Things aren’t going really bad in the Netherlands. So they must be doing something right. I think. I don’t really know. I think.

So they are doing something right, even if you don’t have a completely clear view on it. Is it perhaps that there are also things they are not doing right?

Yes, there are plenty of things they are not doing right. Should I give examples? Like, sometimes I have to deal with theHealth Care Inspection and that all got changed just recently from The Hague or whatever. And then I find that lots of thingshaven’t become better or more workable, because they don’t lookat how things really work in healthcare. So much paperwork has been added. Writing it down five times, getting ten signatures,so to speak. No more time to help at the bedside.

Such views, presenting politics as meaningless in terms of its

engagement with reality as citizens experience it through policy,

are not just to be heard from public sector workers, who are

‘experts’ at the practical end of policy. This understanding can

also be found in cases involving knowledge pertaining to daily life.

Krista (38), who is visually handicapped and receives an allowance,

tells how she perceives economic development and policy in the

Netherland, responding to the statement ‘Things aren’t going bad in

the Netherlands, so they must be doing something right in The

Hague’.

They say things are going well in the Netherlands. Well, many people don’t get to experience that. The economy is running well, yeah, well, I don’t give a hoot. This is not my experience. My benefits were increased by 5%. From 70% of the wage I used to have to 75%. You think, hey, nice. But then it is taken back again with the other hand, so in the end the plusis zero. And then this goes up, and that, rent, energy. And then I think, things are getting better, well I don’t see it. And that’s how it is for many others too. And many think, it’s only getting worse. It’s getting harder and harder to make endsmeet. My weekly budget used to be enough for me, a few months ago. That’s no more. Slowly, prices rise in your own daily

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situation. You are going under, and you’re left to deal with itall by yourself.

Even though respondents raised diverse policy issues, a notable

pattern arises from their statements. Sylvia, Jeannette and Krista

relate to the world of politics through their experience or

perception of policy consequences in their day-to-day lives. This is

where the meaning of politics originates. The meaning of politics is

thus derived from experience of daily reality seen as being

inflicted by politics, and defined by its faulty relation with

reality as citizens experience it. The world of politics from which

action comes, affecting the lives of citizens, remains void of

meaning, or filled with meaning defined in negative terms - by its

clash with citizens’ perceptions and views. Politics is thus defined

in terms of rationality, and it is a rationality insufficiently

geared towards problems and developments in society. Thus, politics

fails to be meaningful in the reality that really matters, that of

citizens.

Politics ignores citizens’ knowledge

Sometimes respondents speak about the opposition between their

perceptions and views and those of politics in terms of ‘distance’

between perceptions of reality, although both sides seem to agree on

values and goals. In other words, politicians would like to do the

right thing, but cannot because policy is not sufficiently based on

knowledge of actual problems. The rationality behind policy then

fails because politics has no realistic view of the nature or

magnitude of a problem and from that position cannot possibly

formulate policy that meaningfully relates to reality., The

concomitant argument is that valid knowledge is in fact available,

and it is among citizens that this knowledge can be found. The final

implication is that this knowledge is wrongfully ignored by

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politics. Kasper (34), a secondary school teacher, discusses a

problem widely discussed in Dutch politics, that of a shortage of

teachers. I asked him what he thought of the way politics engaged

with this issue:

Politics is open to this question. And rightly so. But how theydo it isn’t right. Because I’m someone who knows the practical end. And if I see the proposals that they come up with, I stillthink, ‘if you want to attract more people you really have to come up with something else’. The idea of keeping teachers in the classroom beyond retirement age, it’s simply not what people want, it’s a counterproductive strategy. Money is made available for higher salaries, but it’s simply not enough. And having people work more hours, that works against quality, and the shortage is related to questions of quality.

According to Kasper, a solution for the teacher shortage is to be

developed from a true understanding of the ‘practical end’, and the

failure of politics that he identifies lies in the lack of this

understanding, with solutions being devised on the basis of

quantitative logic that is bound to fail. Kasper speaks from an

insider position of knowledge gained within the education sector,

but similar reasoning can be seen among non-professionals, speaking

about their daily lives, similarly raising the question of a clash

of rationalities, arguing that the valid knowledge of reality as

citizens see it should be the starting point, but is not. Dorien

(55), a mother of an adolescent son, raises youth and its problems

as a policy matter of prime importance in her response to the

statement ‘Political leaders in The Hague are not interested in

people’s problems’:

I don’t think that’s true. I think they’re interested. But it might be interesting if they sent a form to everybody, with lots of questions, ‘what do you think about this’, and then they should look at all those answers. Because the more people express their thoughts, the more points they can bring togetherto see ‘oh, this problem, we hadn’t thought about that in that

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way’. They may not know, or not realise how serious the problems are. I think the young people who drink, they know about those problems. Because we see a lot about that, on TV, that they are trying to do something about that. But they are really late. Young people drinking, that has been going on for so long. They should have acted on it earlier. Not let it get out of hand. Then it’s harder to deal with. Maybe they didn’t realise it was getting out of hand. Because, well, I suppose, there are so many problems. Plus, now it’s all about the environment. They’re paying way too much attention to that now.Like it’s all that matters.

Astrid (34), a housewife living in a medium-sized town, explains why

in her view the topic of ‘norms and values’ that has been part of

the political agenda of the current government is not approached

adequately in national politics. As far as she is concerned, policy

fails because of politicians’ ignorance of reality. She builds her

argument from experiences that she has had living in her

neighbourhood:

If you look at The Hague, how they are dealing with it. They throw those plans on the table and you start to think, hey, they’re really going to do something about it now! But then they start implementing it and I think: those guys have blinkers on. If you look at how people behave towards each other. Look at violence, look at how kids act. Sometimes I sit outside and I see how kids roam around, the words that are thrown about. The thing is, politicians focus too much on one thing: immigrants. Integration of immigrant families. No projects for Dutch kids. But if you look at who is running around in this neighbourhood, screaming, throwing about firework, no immigrant kid among those. And all I see is policesending them home. That I think, Jesus Christ, what neighbourhood is this turning into!

For some, wrong political choices are made because of inadequate

responsiveness to signals coming from citizens that could have made

reality more clear to politicians. Tanya (23) describes how this

would have led to better policy in the area of immigration:

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Politics should understand what goes on, anticipate and respond. They don’t understand that

there is a lot of dissatisfaction and unrest in society. If they had known, they would have made different choices. For example the Polish immigrants. Way ahead, we knew that the borders would be opening up. People were afraid long before, ‘here goes my job, those people are a lot cheaper’. They shouldhave responded to that. And now, after it all happened, they come up with ‘let’s close the door for now; it’s getting to be a lot’. And then I think: you should have looked a bit further than you did at the time, further than that positive picture ofopening the gates, and, well, I don’t know what positive things. Let them really look at the consequences. It’s good foremployers, but they forget that Dutch employees are thrown out.

For respondents, policy is thus formulated with a certain blindness

to reality, which is nonetheless available to them if politicians

only bothered to take it into account. Politics thus not only works

on the basis of a rationality that is disconnected from reality as

citizens see it, but also is not open to messages from citizens that

could in fact lead to more democratic decisions.

Politics acts against the people’s will

The alleged rationality problem suggests a centrality of policy in

respondents’ political thought, implying that their thinking about

politics is actually about policy quality, and apolitical in nature.

Indeed, the talk of policy quality makes complaints appear

apolitical in nature: citizens ask for problems to be solved by

bridging distances through the gathering and processing of

knowledge: knowledge of problems as experienced by citizens. At the

same time, it can be seen that the supposed inadequacy of knowledge

leads not only to failure in the development of meaningful policy –

that is, policy experienced as meaningful by citizens - but also to

wrong political choices. Respondents also construct the opposition

between lifeworld and politics in terms of political perspectives,

identifying values and goals that conflict with those of politics.

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In those cases too, however, the reality in which citizens live is

the origin of their differing views. Policy measures fail where they

should succeed because it is clear and obvious what the right

choices are. Thus, from perceived or experienced policy

consequences, political conflicts arise about potential alternative

choices. And it is then not just policy that fails for respondents,

but democracy itself. Tanya works for a debt-recovery agency. She

responds to the statement ‘Things aren’t going bad in the

Netherlands, so they must be doing something right in The Hague’:

Things aren’t going bad in the Netherlands. I kind of disagree.I’m getting more and more busy at work and generally that is not a good sign, when a debt-recovery agency is getting busier.More taxes are collected. More revenue because of higher levies. Maybe that helps. Things aren’t going bad in the Netherlands. Depends on how you define ‘not bad’. Like I said, I’m getting busier. I also see requests for debt restructuring going up like crazy. We’re getting a clear divide in the Netherlands, really the poor and the rich. I hope they realise that in time, that we’re moving in that direction with what they’re doing. Because with what’s going on it only appears, tothe outside world and to them, that things are going all right.

Tanya’s identification of the need for policy alternatives arises

from her perception of policy consequences, that for her express a

connection with reality that politics, not acting from an

orientation towards that reality, lacks. The rationality of politics

remains diffuse here, but she looks upon it with disdain since it is

nonetheless clear that politics is not oriented to the goals that

really matter. What politics wants is irrelevant to the argument,

since what matters are the unacceptable social developments that

politics apparently is unable to engage with in a meaningful way,

because of a lack of orientation to them. Nevertheless, Tanya

herself presents a political position here: because of what is

happening to people, policy must change direction. Jeanette (25) and

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Maarten (34) reason in comparable terms, explaining why they are

dissatisfied with the level of influence they have on politics:

Jeannette: I always feel politicians do whatever they want, just force things through. Like, with health insurance. All of it changing. Now we are getting this ’no-claim’. That’s what it’s called, isn’t it? But no attention at all is given to people who are chronically ill. Not everybody chooses to pay somuch money for healthcare. No one really. Things like that, I think, all of that is decided just like that, but they don’t look at the consequences.

Maarten: National politics looks from above at what the Netherlands is like. And decide from above what should happen. But most are highly educated, don’t know what goes on among certain groups. Because they never had to live like that. We have this neighbourhood here. At one point it was clear that there was a problem with youth. But nothing happened for 15 years. But now this problematic group has grown from 10 to 200.And now there is this plan, nationally, to liberalise rents. Toencourage residents to move on. But in my opinion the only result will be that people will not be able to afford any houseat all anymore. And it’s hard enough paying the rent as it is. And that’s what I mean when I say ‘they don’t have a clue’.

Although Jeannette does not discuss the new healthcare policy as a

political decision, her own perspective on it is political. Maarten

does bring the rationality he sees behind policy into his argument,

but his own perspective is much more clearly political than the

perspective behind the policy as he sees it: the policy must change

or else people will suffer unacceptably. Confronted with policy,

Jeannette and Maarten present their views of it in terms of the

policy’s consequences as they see them. Although policy is hardly

identified or elaborated as political choice, with perspectives and

negotiations behind policy remaining largely outside of the picture,

respondents do qualify the rationalities behind policies and reject

them, contrasting policy rationality to their own rationally

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superior views that are political in their assertion of policy

alternatives.

Tanya, Jeannette and Maarten here describe the failing

rationality of politics in terms of unacceptable social

consequences, but do not clearly ascribe ill will to politics. In

other statements, however, we do find respondents ascribing to

politics this ill will. For some, it is not just that politics fails

because it is not oriented towards the reality of citizens, but also

that it is, illegitimately, oriented to something else, which can be

identified. Again, it is through the interpretation of policy that

respondents come to their views. As Henk (68), a retired teacher,

says, referring to changes in educational policy that have been

widely debated in recent years:

Politicians should listen to people a lot more. Talk they do, but listen, no. Education is a great example, those innovations. If they had listened to people in education they wouldn’t have had to go through with it. Would have saved a lotof money and misery. No listening at all. Because they were allinvolved with their own ideas. Me, me. That money and education, they don’t give a crap. They didn’t and they don’t. It’s all about getting their way and immortalising themselves.

Other respondents assume that other orientations can be detected

behind policy. Irene (43), for example, believes that politicians do

in fact work towards a societal goal, but still sees no legitimacy

because their orientation is still not to ‘the people’, in the sense

of reality as experienced by citizens in their daily lives:

Of course the politicians can’t go and meet every Tom, Dick andHarry and listen to their specific problems. But on the other hand, they work on the big issues but, this whole privatisationof healthcare21, that, eh, I’m sure it was with good reasons, but it was forced through with crazy speed, and such complete

21 Irene refers here to a recent set of healthcare reforms that, among otherthings, were meant to stimulate competition between insurance companies. The role of the state, however, continues to be extensive.

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lack of interest in the people’s problems…The welfare of the people, the man in the street. A lot of the time that’s not what politics is about. What it’s about is often the really biginterest of employment, hunger in the world, our position in the EU, often also from the viewpoint of people who are well off, can make ends meet easily and don’t have a clue about whatit’s like not to.

Many of the statements are political in nature, accusing politicians

of working towards democratically illegitimate goals: abstract

issues such as the budget deficit rather than the needs of people; a

focus on higher income groups’ needs rather than on those from lower

income groups; the needs of immigrants rather than autochthonous

Dutch. Statements are often also political in the sense that

opposition is not simply individual but also social, since

respondents often believe that their views are representative of

those of ‘the people’ more generally. Respondents tend to assume

agreement that an orientation towards the lifeworld would lead to

alternative and broadly acceptable policy decisions. They interweave

ideas about citizen’s reality with an image of a presumably

meaningful consensus among ‘the people’ about the nature of this

reality and how it relates to politics at present, with suggestions

of ‘many people’ sharing a specific experience of policy, ‘nobody’

favouring a policy, and ‘people’ being afraid of certain policy

consequences. For respondents, reality as it appears to citizens is

a touchstone; a truth against which politics is measured.

Respondents present themselves here as representatives of citizens

at large, able to represent on the basis of direct experience. Thus,

from experience of reality in its interaction with politics, a form

of political citizenship takes shape here. It is on this basis that

citizens demand to be taken seriously, not just as bearers of

knowledge, but as holders of political perspectives that should be

pre-eminent because they are rooted in reality as they understand

it, that is to them the source of policy legitimacy.

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Improving democracy by putting citizens’ reality at the centre

The interview did not explore respondents’ images of moral order

with regard to democracy only through statements about practices;

respondents were also asked directly about their ideas on how the

functioning of democracy could be improved. Their answers are in

line with the above. Priorities and policy preferences that,

according to respondents, exist in society should be given

precedence, so as to prevent policy failure due to lack of

orientation towards, and knowledge of, society. This can be achieved

by contact between politicians and citizens, again couched in terms

of conflict between politics and citizens’ realities, that is to be

mitigated through politicians’ immersion in citizens’ realities.

Seemingly, this amounts to a call for participatory democracy,

suggesting opportunities for revitalising democratic politics

through policy development. However, the idealisation of citizens’

realities directly informing politics, and the presumed consensus on

what ‘the people’ want, do not encourage the bridging of differences

through participation. Respondents’ statements suggest that they see

their personal knowledge, experience and perspective as exemplary of

common sense and the view of citizens more generally. With common

sense so central, ideas about needed contact between politicians and

people focus on meaning transfer from people to politicians, through

closeness and experience. Hans (47), a veteran, explains how defence

policy ought to be shaped by direct contact between office holders

and military personnel, discussing office holders’ knowledge

requirements and what it takes to obtain the necessary knowledge:

I doubt whether they really know. One can make a flying visit, but it’s not like you go on patrol with the men, talking, eating with the men, sleeping with the men, having contact withthem. You go to show your face. But there’s no contact with thefoot-soldiers. And that’s what it’s actually about. That’s

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where they should make a connection. That’s where you should know what’s going on, where you get your information from and that’s what you should base your policy on.

In the context of contact as a solution, political battles as fought

out among parties and office holders in The Hague are irrelevant.

What is central is the goal of politicians obtaining citizens’

experiential knowledge as policy input. Krista explains what office

holders should do in order to develop connection with society:

Make more visits. Really visit the people. If they’re ‘too busy’ they should prioritise, we all have to. Go to question time in parliament a little less. They should not just focus ontheir own little things like ‘I think it’s important that the budget deficit is solved’. If they want to get closer to the people, that’s where their priorities should lie. And reports can’t substitute for contact. They should see it with their own eyes, and experience for themselves, listen to the stories. Really talk to the people. Then you really know what’s going on.

.

This plea to put citizens at the centre does not imply, however, an

end to politics. Contact is seen not only as something that brings

valid knowledge to politics for better policy quality, but also as

something that can lead to shifts in policy that are political in

nature. Currently, policy choices, rooted as they are in faulty

orientation and consequently poor knowledge, lead to poor policy

quality but also to injustice, with groups and issues being

neglected or favoured wrongly. As we saw, the ‘other interests’ that

respondents see politics serving are often in a sense identifiable

for respondents: politicians are oriented towards the political

elite itself, to higher income groups, immigrants or abstract goals,

with little clear significance for society. An orientation towards

citizens could lead, therefore, to better quality but also to more

justice: decisions could come to favour presently neglected groups

and issues. However, the identification of interests other than

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those of citizens does not mean that the battle is one of interests

identifiably organised and actually involved in the political

battle. It is still rather a matter of politics’ faulty orientation

to reality that is rational in nature, with shifts in orientation as

the proposed solution. Complaints about policy may be accompanied by

a demand for alternative political choices, such as protection of

the rights of the autochthonous population, or protection of

economically vulnerable groups against poverty. The opposing stance

from which citizens formulate these demands is coined in terms of

orientation to reality: politics does not seem to ‘see problems’, or

‘does not want to see them’, or ‘would have made other decisions had

they realised’. A clear image of an opponent acting from alternative

identifiable ideas towards alternative goals is often notably

absent.

Discussion

This study explores the meanings that citizens attach to politics.

This implies that I did not set out to test theories. However, the

results can be significantly related to a set of theories and

current debates. To begin with, an important form of tension between

practices and images of moral order found in the study is analogous

to Habermas’ theory of communicative action, more specifically the

ideas about colonisation of the lifeworld by the systemworld that

forms an important element in this theory. Moreover, the analogies

with this theory that can be seen in respondents’ understandings of

politics, though not exactly confirming the analyses of Stoker and

Hay, have interesting connections to these authors’ insights.

For sake of the argument’s clarity, I first briefly discuss

Habermas’ theory and its relevance for the present analysis. For

Habermas, the lifeworld is the lived domain of informal, culturally

rooted understandings and accommodations. Coordination in the

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lifeworld takes place though shared practices, perspectives, values

and interactions. In Habermas’ view, this lifeworld is colonised by

the systemworld of economics and politics that unleashes an

instrumental rationality on the lifeworld. More and more, the formal

systems of politics and economics encroach on the lifeworld. More

and more, society is administered from a level at which intervention

by citizens is impossible. For the lifeworld, on the other hand, it

is impossible to intervene in the systemworld because the latter is

not geared to intervention by the lifeworld. For Habermas, this

amounts to a crisis of modernity, formed by the impossibility of

connection between the media of systemworld and lifeworld.

Coordination in the economy takes place through the medium of money.

Coordination in politics takes place through the medium of power.

The medium of the lifeworld is communication, but this medium cannot

steer the systems of economics and politics. At the same time, the

systems of economics and politics depend on the lifeworld for

legitimacy; it is only the lifeworld that can grant the systems this

legitimacy.22

Habermas’ theory has been criticised extensively. The goal of

bringing it in here is not its development or critique as social

theory, but its use for heuristic purposes. The abovementioned

analogies lie in citizens' understanding of politics. The interview

addressed politics, but over and over respondents chose to address

questions of politics with answers about policy. As shown below,

politics presents itself to citizens in the form of policy,

experienced as something administered from another world, reaching

the lifeworld through the imposed experience of the results of its

actions. Politics operates under rationalities (conceptions of

22 J. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume one: Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Beacon Press, 1985; J. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume two: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, Beacon Press, 1985.

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problems, goals, strategies) that remain unknown or illegitimate,

and obtain their (only) meaning, in a negative sense, in the clash

with rationalities of the world being colonised by it. To

respondents, political rationality therefore fails. The lifeworld is

constantly placed at the heart of political life, with the

complexities of politics and administration largely ignored, its

achievements measured through the prism of the lifeworld where

politics obtains its meaning through policy consequences.

Respondents present three different forms of this failure of

political rationality. With all three forms, through this experience

of asymmetrically connected realities, a construction of politics as

rationally oppositional entity takes place. However, this does not

imply that these citizens approach politics apolitically, thinking

in terms of administration rather than politics. Citizens do in fact

present their own views as political, in the sense of presenting

alternative political choices. But political citizenship is

experienced as without satisfactory articulation or significance in

the political arena in which policy alternatives, as political

choices, appear to be absent.

Citizens’ views match Stoker’s ideas about citizens not

appreciating the political nature of politics. They also, in a

sense, connect with Hay’s suggestions that the problem lies in

depoliticisation. Respondents often take a political position in

relation to policy, even while denying that political position to

politicians. With the perspectives that they have, formulated in

terms of common sense, they feel that they are standing together

with others sharing their lifeworld, but ‘alone’ in politics,

without political organisation that, according to political theory,

ought to integrate, aggregate and articulate their demands and

complaints for them. This does not leave respondents without

anchors, however. Politics here comes into opposition with society,

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in the sense of politics as opposed to society confronted with the

acts of politics. A stable centre of orientation is found in the

lifeworld, against which the actions of politics are assessed.

In view of the political science literature on the decline of

representative democracy, the confidence with which respondents

relate to democracy is surprising. The citizens in this study do not

appear to be suffering from the insecurity and confusion that might

be expected on the basis of the problematic complexities with which

democracy is confronted – with parties less able than before to

represent stable sets of preferences, and the pluralisation of

political and policymaking arenas making it close to impossible to

identify responsible actors and hold them accountable. With the

lifeworld central to images of moral order about democracy,

respondents clearly see landmarks and standards by which to define a

position. Because politics obtains meaning derived from opposition

to the lifeworld, complexity can be ignored. Politics and

administration can be delegated to the margins of arguments, as can

be seen with remarks being made about bad policy coming from ‘The

Hague or whatever’, politicians needing to look ‘further than that

positive picture of opening the gates, and, well, I don’t know what

positive things’, and politicians ‘needing to not just focus on

their own little things like “I think it’s important that the budget

deficit is solved”’.

Apparently, as far as these respondents are concerned,

democracy can be given shape through policy. For respondents,

demands are a matter of common sense and presumably shared notions

of ‘what every normal person can expect’. However, the frequently

suggested problem of political parties losing their role of

aggregating, integrating and articulating perspectives does raise

its head here. Respondents do not need to engage with the

complexities of politics and administration in order to develop a

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perspective on political reality and develop images of moral order

about democracy. But this orientation that seeks democracy close to

home, in meaning and recognition that can be experienced directly,

finds itself confronted with an institutional reality that is not

forthcoming. In other words, respondents often cannot experience

being part of democracy in the ways that they wish, in line with the

images of moral order that they hold on this matter. Political

citizenship for these citizens can be classified as a matter of

attitude that does not demand involvement in institutional politics,

social capital or action. But this citizenship as attitude does not

bring with it an experience of partaking in democracy. And this

experience is what, in the end, counts for these citizens’

evaluation of the functioning of democracy.

Respondents find that democracy is not geared towards their

democratic principles. The opposition that they see between politics

and lifeworld is one of isolated, individual demands that, as far as

respondents are concerned, are not aggregated and integrated into a

discourse that brings demands together and makes them part of

politics. In other words, their shared opposition to the

rationalities of politics is not translated into political terms

that are representative of this group of respondents as a whole.

Even the articulation in terms of conflicting rationalities as

presented in this article is an analytical construct developed by

the researcher. Respondents describe the problems rather diversely,

in terms of ignorance, obstinacy, incompetence, meaninglessness and

stupidity. The articulation of opposition, as political as it often

is, therefore remains limited to a poorly aggregated set of diverse

demands, a toothless solidarity of ‘the people’ versus ‘politics’.

The centrality of the lifeworld for respondents can therefore be

classified as problem as well as solution for them. Respondents hold

images of moral order about democracy, but they cannot see democracy

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taking shape with these images. In their political arguments,

respondents manage to keep at bay institutional politics, with all

its ‘messiness’.23 However, they cannot avoid the same institutional

politics when it comes to realising their democratic citizenship,

which, in the end, depends on the connection between arguments and

politics.

The problems of finding positive meaning in politics, that

Stoker (2006) and Hay (2007) suggest exist for many citizens, are

confirmed here. Citizens have difficulty giving shape to citizenship

by connecting with the politics on offer. However, the data also

show that citizens partly fill the void in meaning with which they

find themselves confronted by orienting their citizenship towards

‘big politics’, but without meaningful connection to the same. In

other words, although political, this citizenship is largely defined

by disjunction.

With 20 interviews as data, this study can provide only

indications of the meaning politics has for citizens rather than

strong and generalisable conclusions. However, the analysis does

show that the interpretative approach followed here can lead to new

knowledge. The openness to citizens’ interpretations that this

approach allows clearly can point to new directions and to

considerable refinements in understandings about the issue. Taking

seriously how citizens see, experience and evaluate the world of

politics and their own relation with politics, we can learn how

citizens’ perspectives make sense, and how different factors can be

seen coming together and interacting therein. Taking citizens’

interpretations as a starting point will help us develop a wider but

also a deeper understanding of political disaffection – a good

reason to engage in further research on this front.

23 Op. cit., n 6 (Stoker).

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.

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