Why socioeconomic polarisation is a bigger problem in the political sphere than we think …
So we’ve gone over the issues concerning young people and political engagement but now we turn to other issues that have an effect on the populations democratic engagement. The polarisation of social and economic status’s in the UK has proved to be beneficial only for the few not the many. With global trends leading to the concentration of wealth landing in an increasingly small number of hands, socioeconomic inequalities are without a doubt one of the biggest factors that come into play when discussing the differences in political engagement. This blog aims to show how socioeconomic disparities of the population are analogous to political polarisation and tries to delve into how higher levels of inequality in a given population negatively affects it’s political participation and the possible solutions for bridging the gap of the increasingly growing divide in political participation.
Social inequalities in voter turnout…
In the 2019 general election, the ‘DE’ social group, which is defined as the ‘semi-skilled and unskilled manual occupations, unemployed and lowest grade occupations (Ipsos Mori, 2019), had a substantially lower voter turnout of 53% when compared to the other social groups. C2- the ‘skilled manual occupations’ social group was at 59% and C1 – ‘managerial, administrative, professional occupations’ social group had a turn out of 68%. The statistics from the DE social group show us that the turnout was also down when compared to the 2017 voter turn out. From this we can see that as you go down all the social categories there is a lower voter turn out and that having a qualification does indeed make you more likely to vote. This establishes that there is a clear relationship and correlation between peoples socioeconomic background and their voting intentions in the UK. However it is not as black and white as this. It’s easy to use these statistics and say that people with no qualifications don’t bother to vote and just dont care about politics but Porter (2014) suggests that those with a lower socioeconomic status do not vote exclusively on the basis of their own economic interest like the upper and middle classes do, but instead, like the youth, they are more likely to be swayed by issues that aren’t as directly related to their socioeconomic status such as legislation to do with the environment, police reform and other social issues. Porter goes on and says that political figures see the statistics that show the lower classes voting less than the upper and middle classes, and this in turn reduces their ‘electoral clout’ in the eyes of these elected representatives and so they don’t prioritise the issues that the DE social group care about the most (Porter, 2014).
The consequences of democratic inequality…
We’ve seen the statistics and they paint us a picture of socioeconomic status and its effect on voter turnout, however the relationship between the economy and politics is more complex than this. The strength of a democracy relies on having political engagement from all citizens of any social background but because of the disparity in political participation there are also large socioeconomic inequalities in who has power and whose voice is heard the most and this puts the health of democracy at risk. As a result of this disparity, democratic institutions tend to lose responsiveness and legitimacy from the social groups who do not participate as much, in this case those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Those who don’t participate simply don’t feel part of the system and in some cases feel as though the rules do not apply to them. This can lead to feelings of alienation and distrust towards the political elites or even local politics (Hoskins, 2022).
This could be dangerous within a democratic process because a decline in social status can also induce changes of social behaviour, potentially triggering conflict between isolated groups; causing them to be mobilised into populist groups which begin to appeal to those on the fringe of society as these groups portray themselves to be the unheard outsider and use this to relate to voters. We’ve all seen in recent times how populist movements have polarised against mainstream political movements – across the pond we had Donald Trump and the MAGA fiasco, and in the UK we saw Nigel Farage become the face and voice of Brexit. More often than not the pitting arguments of these populist groups are focused on social identities, racial, ethnic and nationalistic hostilities of their economic anxieties (Stewart, McCarty and Bryson, 2020).
Can citizenship education help?
Creating social justice and minimising inequality is not something that we can expect to be guaranteed to happen merely through legal rights, but rather it requires us to have active and informed participation in the processes of decision making (Donbavand and Hoskins, 2021) and citizenship education is one way in which we can instil these qualities into society in order to bridge the socioeconomic gap that we see in politics today. Political learning can happen in two ways; participatory processes or through knowledge acquisition. These methods allow for an open class climate by having group activities e.g mock debates, voting for a class representative – all which aim to engage students.
However, even though education could be part of the solution doesn’t excuse it from being part of the problem. Since education as an institution has been proven to contribute to social reproduction of inequalities, this also applies within the context of politics. Schools can fall into reproducing the accelerating effect – where they provide learning opportunities that benefit the students with higher socioeconomic backgrounds and leave the disadvantaged children to play catch up since the middle class have more experience at home, leading to feelings of alienation (Hoskins, 2022). So what can schools do to tackle this? They could increase access to political disadvantaged students by placing a greater priority on political learning activities in schools with a higher intake of disadvantaged students in order to engage them and get their voices heard.
Other possible solutions for underrepresentation in politics…
It is proposed that voters don’t demand more socioeconomic equality because they do not realise how deep the inequality actually is (Porter, 2014) however the political representatives and policy makers are well aware. So, what can policy do to tackle this inequality? One solution could be to reduce school choice and the factors that create differences between schools, giving equal opportunities earlier on that could change life trajectories. Another would be to prioritise democracy as an important aim of education and making citizenship education compulsory until the age of 18 and embedded in vocational training in order to increase engagement.
What do you think? Are there any other solutions that could be more effective?
Bibliography:
Donbavand, S. and Hoskins, B., 2021. Citizenship Education for Political Engagement: A Systematic Review of Controlled Trials. Social Sciences,.
Hoskins, B. 2022. Social Class, Education Trajectories and Political Engagement [Powerpoint Presentation for SOC020X331S].. University of Roehampton [Accessed 15 March 2022].
How Britain voted in the 2019 election. 2019. Ipsos Mori. [online] Available at: <https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2019-election> [Accessed 16 March 2022].
Luckovich, M., 2015. [image] Available at: <https://sevenpillarsinstitute.org/consequences-economic-inequality/> [Accessed 16 March 2022].
Porter, E., 2014. Why Voters Aren’t Angrier About Economic Inequality (Published 2014). [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/25/upshot/why-voters-arent-angrier-about-economic-inequality.html> [Accessed 16 March 2022].
Stewart, A., McCarty, N. and Bryson, J., 2020. Polarization under rising inequality and economic decline. Science Advances, 6(50).