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Year: <span>2014</span>

Contact Democracy: A new way of doing politics?

At Tuesday night’s Policy Network public debate, key note speaker David Farrell praised the value of Peter Mair’s pessimism about formal politics excellently expressed in Ruling the Void, but went on to ask five questions which might put things in a more positive light: 1. Were things ever really better? …

Anti-Politics, or Popular Understandings of Politics?

This week, we have been considering how we might address the challenge of combining a deductive focus on anti-politics with an inductive focus on popular understandings of politics. On the one hand, the project seeks to explain the rise of anti-politics and political disengagement that appears to have taken place …

Slow And Steady Wins The Race

Since the Fiestas del Pilar, my project has been moving along slowly but steadily. I have been to the local library to research the history and origins of the Jota and have enrolled in a Jota dance class, and attended a couple of lessons so far.

Citizens may have never been enchanted with politics, but change and decline in public attitudes are observable.

Last week, Gerry Stoker presented two papers that introduced a framework of analysis for developing a better understanding of public disengagement with formal politics in contemporary democracies. Speaking at UCL, Gerry pointed out that whilst citizens may have never been enchanted with politics, new insights from research showed observable change …