Towards a deeper appreciation of - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Towards a deeper appreciation of citizens’ understandings of democratic politics

Margit van Wessel

Wageningen University

Margit.vanwessel@wur.nlSlide2

Problem I started out with:Citizens’ discontent about ‘not being heard’

How may this discontent be understood by looking closely to

citizens’ interpretations of democratic politics?Slide3

Recent literature proposes that:

Citizen’s’ political

disaffection and/or disengagement

can be understood

as rooted in an

underappreciation

of the

value

and

possibilities

of

democratic

politics

–

a

failing

‘

understanding

’

Which is

caused by certain large-scale developments

in politics and society,

which we can identifySlide4

E.g. ‘Distorted expectations because of individualization’

‘Discourse and practice of collective decision making sits very uncomfortably alongside the discourse and practice of individual choice, self-expression and market-based fulfilment of needs and wants’. (Stoker 2011)

‘Because of this form of individualism, people fail to appreciate the inherently collective characteristics of democratic politics’. (Stoker 2011)Slide5

E.g. ‘Increased expectations, in turn harder to fulfil?’ Range of systemic developments such as decline of citizens’ deference, globalization impacting role and capacity of politicians have led to an increase of citizens’ expectations of democratic politics that are in turn harder to fulfil. (Flinders 2012)

This is a problem of understanding: citizens need to become realistic about what they can expect, and see more of what through democratic politics has been achieved and can be achieved. (Flinders 2012)Slide6

E.g. ‘Depoliticization undermining democratic politics at the basis’ ‘Citizens hate politics because of elites’ practices of appealing to a variety of forms of depoliticization (e.g. delegation, privatization), removing our collective challenges and the possibilties of charting a collective future from the political arena’. (Hay 2007)Slide7

Consider the construction of ‘understanding’:

Citizens’ understandings are

reconstructed from from what analysts identify as the meanings available to citizensUnderstandings are shaped by those meanings in

ways we can predictUnderstanding as cognitiveNo role for citizens as interpreters, beyond the large-scale processes supposedly structuring their understandings

Citizen understandings as ‘wrong’ in the sense that with other cognitions made available, there could be more justice to the ‘true’ meaning of democratic politicsSlide8

So: misunderstanding as the problem?But....

How these developments really figure in people’s understandings is an open questionIn a previous project, working with Charles Taylor’s notion of “social imaginaries” I learnt that citizens, angry as they often are, approach politics with a measure of confidence, and a working orientation, suggesting we should also look into more practice-based understandings

Without having explored how an understanding makes sense to people, disqualification is problematic*

See my papers in Parliamentary Affairs (2010); Representation (2010); Citizenship Studies (2014)Slide9

Therefore: a project that approaches citizens as sensemakers – how do people understand?What reality do people see that makes a certain understanding sensible to them?

How come people living in an apparently singular democratic context come to very different assessments of it?What selection and interpretation of phenomena do we see going on here?

How can we relate to these interpretations when thinking about ways to change understandings? Slide10

Study designSelection of 76 Dutch citizens who in a survey evaluated government responsiveness

positively (30) or negatively (46)Selection to maintain representativeness of larger populations evaluating government responsiveness either positively or negativelySemi-structured interviews in respondents’ homes

Exploring selection and interpretation through an open questio: does government take into account

views of citizens sufficiently?

Comparative analysis of positive and negative interviewees’ selections and interpretationsSlide11

Negative citizensfailing government responsiveness as evident in the way government presents

itself to negatives:conditions of daily life as failing standards of normalcy

policy controversy as sign of govt. acting against ‘the people’confrontations with bureaucracy as ‘unreason’elite behaviours showing disregard for ‘the people’

See how democratic institutions and processes appear marginal to understanding; negatives hardly interpret politics from assumptions that these structure democratic politics – we are not partakers in democracy, but undergoers

Note: people know about parties, coalition politics but these don’t figure much in their understandingsSlide12

Positive citizens

Government responsiveness as evident in the way government presents itself to positives:(we can assume that) institutions of democratic government

guarantee responsiveness (existing, operational)No reason to question such assumptions: life is good; ‘things are running alright’; no reason to complain

Identification, sense of a shared cultureSee how politics and its tensions are remote: little talk of actual political differences, policy process or outcomes; orientation towards abstract ‘textbook’ understandings of democracy + performanceSlide13

That was the easy part...But how to get beyond identification of the differences?

Basic questions: why are these understandings so different?In their selection of phenomena that are relevant to one’s understanding?In the interpretation of these phenomena?Slide14

Hans Georg Gadamer (1)How understanding comes about:

Understanding as pragmatic Arising in practiceThrough everyday engagementBy people approaching the matter from their situation, within a horizon

With preconceived notions of what to expectUnderstanding is thus always someone’s understanding –

the understanding of someone seeking to understand, from a backgroundSlide15

Hans-Georg Gadamer (2)How a person’s understanding is a person’s truth, and how it could be changed:

The hermeneutic circle: we apply our preconceived notions to the parts of reality we are confronted with, which we project onto the wholeAs we we proceed in interpretation, we have our preconceived notions confirmed or disrupted, upon which we may adjust our understanding

Changing understandings starts with creating such disruptionsSlide16

Back to negative citizens…Failing government responsiveness as evident in the way government presents

itself to negatives:conditions of daily life as failing standards of normalcypolicy controversy as sign of govt. acting against ‘the people’

confrontations with bureaucracy as ‘unreason’elite behaviours showing disregard for ‘the people’

Now:

Selection and interpretation reflect presupposions that one is an outsider to, and undergoer of, democratic politicsSelection and interpretation emerge from everyday engagements Selection and interpretation

reinforce

presuppositions of exclusion

In everyday engagements presuppositions do not get challenged

As they do not offer an alternatively meaningful engagement with politics, e.g. interpreting through the lens of party politicsSlide17

…and the positivesGovernment responsiveness as evident in the way government

presents itself to positives:(We can assume that) institutions of democratic government guarantee responsiveness (existing, operational)

Life is good; no reason to complain ‘Things are running alright’ Identification, sense of a shared culture

See how selection and interpretation reflect presuppositions of inclusiveness

Presuppositions are reinforced by: -experience of democratic instutions being there and operational (rather than actually responsive)

-embodied experience of one’s socio-economic conditions, govt. performance and shared culture

Understanding here is as far removed from dealing with the messiness, merits and disappointments of democratic politics as with the negatives!!

Slide18

In conclusion (1): Understandings of democratic politics are not simply cognitive, but rather a translation (Grondin 2002 on Gadamer) of democratic politics into terms that make sense to a citizen, from their position in the

worldUnderstandings

are what you have

learnt to be

trueUnderstandings are partialWe should therefore not be too ready to denigrate understandings that do not match abstract principles as ‘misunderstandings’ to be ‘corrected’

They have earned their validity for people

Their mistakenness is not exactly a givenSlide19

In conclusion (2): On this basis, we can consider what forms of intervention could help change understanding from another foundation: one that takes ciizens as sensemakers more seriously

Towards more constructive interrelatingDisrupting learned truths, starting out by acknowledging these not only as truths that need disrupting, but as truths to learn from

For this disruption to take place, politics need to take existing understanding seriously, and offer alternative experience compelling enough to be disruptiveWhich would amount to a dialogic process

of meaning-creation So, merger of horizons rather than ‘correction’ - demanding mutual engagement between citizens and government/politics