Socioeconomic Inequalities and Political Engagement.

 

“The austerity policies initiated in 2010 by the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government have so far involved a systematic programme of public spending cuts and tax rises” (Fairclough 2016). Public spending cuts disproportionately negatively affect citizens who are at an economic disadvantage. So why are we seeing a significant disparity between voter turnout with those holding a degree level qualification having a voter turnout of sixty-nine percent as opposed to those not holding any qualifications at a mere fifty-nine percent? (Ipsos Mori 2019). Throughout this blog post, I’ll be utilising differential educational attainment and qualifications as a way to define social strata as “educational attainment is strongly correlated with social position” (Armingeon and Schädel 2015) and therefore“turnout inequality among educational groups also implies turnout inequality between social groups.”(Armingeon and Schädel 2015). We can see that those with higher levels of education have a higher participation rate in conventional forms of political engagement, So let’s explore the possible contributing factors towards the apparent lack of active citizenship, in people from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

The argument can be made that educational institutions are the first port of call for creating active citizens, however, the schooling process is not equal in the delivery of citizenship and political education as “Higher educated people are more active in politics due to their higher degree of cognitive resources”(Steinbrecher and Seeber 2011).  This is supported by the fact that those without qualifications have only a fifty-nine percent voter turnout as opposed to their degree-holding counterparts with a ten percent higher turnout of sixty-nine percent (Ipsos Mori 2019). This voter turnout statistic promotes the concept of less advantaged students simply not being socialised into having a political understanding from the education system as opposed to their peers. An idea that could possibly serve as a solution is if Universities with students who are less advantaged should aid in levelling out the playing field. (Sloam et al 2021). 

The counter-argument can be made that it is simply unfair to state that low-income individuals are just politically uneducated and therefore politically apathetic. We can explore the notion of a lack of political representation being a larger contributing factor towards the socioeconomic inequalities in mainstream political engagement. This is actively supported by the way in which we see politicians consistently be out of touch with real life issues facing the working class. The result of this lack of understanding by politicians is “vehemently criticised for their readiness to talk as experts on welfare and poverty”(Patrick 2017). There are multiple prime examples of this disconnect between political parties and working-class citizens, this is exemplified when we see that even the Labour party who consistently claim to want to “build a Britain that works for the many, not the few”(Labor Party 2017) have it’s members publicly saying things like “We are not the party of people on benefits. We don’t want to be seen, and we’re not, the party to represent those who are out of work,”(O’Connor 2015). Statements like these actively demonstrate the lack of political representation for the working class, understandably this disconnect leads to individuals living in poverty experiencing a sense of exclusion from the political process(Patrick 2017). This sense of exclusion, in turn, has a direct and significant impact on the levels of conventional political engagement among low-income individuals as the active choice is then made to not vote, as “a politicised expression of the extent to which politicians do not seek to represent them.”(Patrick 2017). There is an incessant and self perpetuating cyclical model that states that when low-income citizens are demobilised, their interests are not accurately depicted in the welfare policies presented by politicians(Piven and Cloward 1989). This describes the vicious cycle of being neglected as well as underrepresented and misrepresented in the political process and therefore not engaging in conventional forms of politics, such as voting. 

To sum up everything that has been stated so far, while there is a somewhat distinct lack of political and citizenship education in socially disadvantaged schooling systems that could possibly contribute to the lack of political engagement. It is arguably somewhat unfair to make an assumption of the levels of political education based on socio-economic inequalities as there is plausibly a visible and overt divide between politicians and the people they aim to represent, causing a disconnect and therefore the group can be seen as consciously unwilling to vote.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography 

 Fairclough, I.(2016). Evaluating policy as argument: The public debate over the first UK austerity budget. Critical Discourse Studies, 13(1), pp.57-77.

 

Ipsos Mori (2019). How Britain Voted in the 2019 Election.[online] Available at https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2019-election [Accessed 20 Feb. 2021]

 

Armingeon, K. and Schädel, L.(2015). Social inequality in political participation: The dark sides of individualisation. West European Politics, 38(1), pp.1-27.

 

Steinbrecher, M. and Seeber, G.U.(2011). Inequality and turnout in Europe. In APSA 2011 Annual Meeting Paper.

 

Sloam, J., Kisby, B., Henn, M. and Oldfield, B.(2021). Voice, equality and education: the role of higher education in defining the political participation of young Europeans. Comparative European Politics, pp.1-27

 

Patrick, R.(2017). ‘ How Poverty Makes People Less Likely to Vote’. The Guardian. 16 May. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rachel-reeves-says-labour-does-not-want-represent-people-out-work-10114614.html (Accessed: 20 March 2021).

 

Labour Party(2017) The Labour Party Manifesto 2017 [online]. The Labour Party. Available at: https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/labour-manifesto-2017.pdf (Accessed: 21 March 2021).

 

O’Connor, R.(2015). ‘Rachel Reeves says Labor does not want to represent people out of work’. The Independent. 17 March. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rachel-reeves-says-labour-does-not-want-represent-people-out-work-10114614.html (Accessed:18 March 2021).

Fox, P.F. and Cloward, R.A. (1988). Why Americans Don’t Vote. New York, NY: Pantheon.