Failure to Engage
BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson’s latest blog post is interesting. Turns out even politicians and party members don’t show up to listen to a roll of speeches at conventions. Colour me surprised. Even at academic conventions the best part of panels is often the Q & A session.
But here’s the problem – if even the above mentioned hacks aren’t engaged with the main substance of these conferences, why the hell would anyone else be? If, even when you join a party you’re not getting to discuss or debate the issues, because the leadership are too scared of being seen to be uncertain or disorganised, what is the point of joining at all?
If decisions are made by those who show up, and the number of people showing up is getting ever smaller, what happens to the quality of decision-making?
The BBC and other media cover all the conferences, so you get some sense of the broader debate between the parties, and in parliament, thank heavens, they all still yell at each other a lot. But how do the parties come to their decisions? Well, right now it seems like two or three guys in a room with a lot of polling data. Which is a pretty crappy way to decide anything, even with the wonders of modern statistical analysis and polling. Plus, what about the things they don’t poll on? John Zaller once asked, “If the public had an opinion and there was no pollster around to measure it, would public opinion exist?”(1) It might not as an entity, but it would as individual opinions; but would these actually ever get reflected in policy-making? Almost certainly not. And is that really representative democracy?
Dear Politicians,
Do you remember that line in exam questions? It used to feature notably in maths and science. SHOW YOUR WORKINGS. When the media and the public are interested in debate and dissent, it isn’t (just) because all they want is scandal and gossip. It’s because that’s the most interesting bit – the bit that shows HOW and WHY you got to the policies you did. To take the exam analagy to the edge of sanity, it enables those of us marking you to decide whether we want to give you points for your workings, even if we’re not totally convinced the end result is right. Maybe if we get to ask you some more questions about it, you could fix that. If you know, you had workings that you could build on. The workings, the debate and, yes, even the dissent are the bits that make the answer – your policy. If you miss them out, you’re over-confident, and we don’t know we can trust you. So bring ‘em back. K?
Me x
(1) John Zaller (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (Cambridge) p.265
