A live debate on engaging voters in politics and policymaking will be taking place on Friday 28 March with David Blunkett MP.

The Labour MP David Blunkett will be joining The Guardian on Friday 28 March from 12 noon –2pm, following a lecture on bringing politics alive and a Twitter conversation via #askblunkett at the University of Bristol on 27 March. He, and the rest of an expert panel, will discuss:

• Why it is so difficult to engage the public in politics and policymaking
• The role of the internet in political participation and engagement
• Whether the way political processes and institutions are set up hampers efforts to engage citizens
• Good examples of citizen engagement in politics and policymaking, both within the UK and overseas
• What government and politicians should do to tackle disengagement among citizens

Mr Blunkett, Visiting Professor for the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics, will be joined by Matthew Flinders, Professor and Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics, along with other panellists including Sarah Birch, Anthony Zacharzewski, Cristina Leston-Bandeira and Richard Berry.

This debate takes place in the comments section below the article here.

Following the sad news that Tony Benn has passed away at the age of 88, Professor Matthew Flinders pays tribute to the veteran politician.

The news that Tony Benn has died at home at the age of 88 has stimulated intense reflection and discussion about his career. But when reading the obituaries and listening to the various television and radio discussions I cannot help but think that too many commentators are missing the deep and enduring reason that Tony Benn really did become a national treasure. He listened, he spoke and he connected with the public in a way that most contemporary politicians can only dream of.

It’s too easy to focus on the obvious landmarks in a career that spanned well over half a century and overlook the deeper and richer features – often the personal and professional contradictions – that made Tony Benn such a remarkable man. And there is no doubt that he was remarkable. In a period when politicians are increasingly distrusted, reviled – even hated – he was regularly voted the most popular politician in the country.

The burr of his voice, the look on his face, the cheeky smile, the smell of his pipe, the glint in his eye; these were the things that made Tony Benn such a special man; a man of politics but increasingly not in politics.

Tony Benn’s life seems defined by an almost stubborn desire to swim against the tide. His privileged education (Westminster School followed by Oxford University) was rejected at a stroke with the words: “Education – still in progress” in his Who’s Who entry in the early 1970s.

He insisted upon “Tony Benn” rather than the full name, Anthony Wedgwood Benn, he had been given at birth, and later renounced his peerage. In June 2001 he famously left the House of Commons to “spend more time on politics” – and in a sense this decision defined both his personal values and his approach to politics.

In a period when politicians take the temperature of the nation through focus groups and online surveys Tony Benn spent his time talking to and listening to the public in a manner that is curiously rare among today’s professional politicians. Indeed, in a period when the relationship between the governors and the governed is dominated by twitter and blogs and conducted within a fairly narrow model of a market democracy, Tony Benn could often be dismissed (even slightly ridiculed) as a political dinosaur.

But that conclusion in itself would miss the great power he had to captivate an audience, to make people think and reflect upon their assumptions, to inspire a sense of capacity and a belief in change for the better. He could unite social divides and talk sense to the senseless. As he demonstrated in relation to a range of issues – not least in the Stop the War movement – he was a man that would march with the public and was not afraid to stand on the barricades.

Politics for him was not a spectator sport but a vital element of the art of life. It was also an art form that took many forms, as demonstrated by the popularity of his diaries, his poetry, his one-man show and his appearances at events as varied as pop festivals and school assemblies.

Put simply, he possessed the rare gift of being able to connect with the public in a manner that most contemporary politicians simply cannot do.

In a new post for the Oxford University Press blog, Professor Matthew Flinders discusses voter registration and public disengagement from politics, and asks: “How do we re-establish a connection between ordinary people and politicians?”

Hands up if you’ve heard of National Voter Registration Day? And in the somewhat unlikely event that you have, did you realise that it took place last month?

If this momentous milestone passed you by, you’re not alone. Whatever 5 February means to the people of the United Kingdom, it’s safe to assume that electoral participation doesn’t figure prominently. This is not a surprise; it reflects a deep-seated public disengagement from politics, as indicated by the fact that only two thirds of eligible voters in the 2010 general election actually voted. Throughout the twentieth century, general election turnouts almost always exceeded 70%, but that’s a level of participation that has not been seen since 1997. Incidentally, the highest turnout since 1900 was 86.8% in January 1910, though only rate-paying men over the age of 21 could vote.

Low voter turnout is clearly a problem, but arguably a much greater worry is the growing inequality of that turnout. As a recent report from the Institute for Public Policy Research makes clear, the United Kingdom is very much a ‘divided democracy’, with electoral participation among the young and the poor declining dramatically. In the 1987 general election, for example, the turnout rate for the poorest income group was 4% lower than for the wealthiest. By 2010 the gap had grown to a staggering 23 points. A similar pattern is observable in relation to age groups. In 1970 there was an 18-point gap in turnout rates between 18–24-year-olds and those aged over 65; by 2005 this gap had more than doubled to over 40 points, before narrowing slightly to 32 points in 2010. ”If we focus on participation within these age-groups,” the IPPR report concludes “we can see that at the 2010 general election the turnout rate for a typical 70-year-old was 36 percentage points higher than that of a typical 20-year-old.”

If this isn’t bad enough there is little evidence that young people will simply start voting as they get older. On the contrary, the IPPR’s research suggests that “younger people today are less likely than previous generations to develop the habit of voting as they move into middle age.” These trends mean that politicians tend to address themselves to the older and richer sections of society – the people, in other words, that are most likely to vote. This, in turn, reinforces the views of the young and the poor that politicians don’t care about them. And that, naturally, leads to even greater political estrangement.

So what’s the solution? How do we re-establish a connection between ordinary people and politicians? In particular, how do we persuade the young and the poor that the political system really does have something to offer them?

- See more at: http://blog.oup.com/2014/03/look-beneath-the-vote/#sthash.jA4aGCvd.dpuf

The arts are an integral part of our humanity and much of the value they offer us is challenging to articulate, it’s often emotional or experiential and our language is ill-equipped to deal with its complexity. It being difficult, we often ignore much of the intrinsic value of the arts. When something is inexpressible, it can easily be forgotten or ignored. However, this is not all there is to say of the value of the arts. There are instrumental aspects of the arts which are more easily measured and described: this is especially apparent in the benefits of the arts in education. The sheer scale of evidence portraying the benefits of the arts education is significant staggering.

These are not ‘fluffy’ or biased reports: many use the same rigorous, unforgiving scientific data as their ‘STEM’ (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) counterparts (CASE 2010, Catterall et al. 2012) and some use datasets collected through more qualitative methods, which arguably present the subtleties of the value of the arts more holistically (Matarasso 1997, DICE 2010). There is evidence, laid out in the language of government, sometimes even laid out BY government, eg. CASE commissioned by DCMS.

Some explore the economic importance of art in schools. This is especially apparent in the Cost/Benefit report (2010) on Creative Partnerships. Creative Partnerships (CP) was an initiative put forward by the New Labour government, from the recommendations of Sir Ken Robinson, to put creativity at the heart of the school environment. The report estimates that for every £1 that was put into this project, £15.30 was gained. This was made up of savings on costs of truancy and bad behaviour, savings on recruitment (for teachers who stayed because of the initiative) and likely economic benefits for students receiving 5 A*-C GCSEs (students from CP schools performed better in their GCSEs: including in maths and science). I am personally sceptical of reports which attempt to make the complex values of creativity fit into an economic model such as this. But for those policy makers who respond to numbers, this is pretty black and white, and is certainly not the only of its kind.

The STEM agenda also has an incredibly limited notion of what our economy actually looks like: our creative industries are growing and in 2011 already had an ‘aggregate turnover of £12.4 billion’ (ACE, 2014). That is a pretty sizable asset, and can be built upon, but not if we fail to value the arts and culture from an early age.

But I do not want to focus only on the economy and the economic arguments as they are only the very tip of the iceberg of what the arts may offer our education system, and this argument has been made. The value of the arts goes far beyond its monetary returns.

Ironically, the arts also play a huge role to our proficiency within the subjects mentioned in STEM. Maria Miller in her recent speech calling for STEAM (the ‘A’ standing for Arts) over STEM used a Steve Jobs quote to hammer home this point: “It is in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough. It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.” Creative thinking is needed for truly excellent scientists, engineers and mathematicians, and how better to foster this than a rounded education, which includes arts subjects? Neuroscience has shown the importance of art not only for itself, but for encouraging and fostering the imagination needed for excellence in other fields: “One of Einstein’s great insights, which was the basis of relativity, occurred when he imagined he was riding a light wave.” (Professor Kagan, Harvard) We learn more than how to paint or play piano in music and art: we learn to use our brains.

A simple place to begin is to ask what we actually want from our education system. Of course we want a huge range of things but a few themes keep coming up: a system which prepares the next generation for the working world, a system which teaches our children social and political values needed for civic and community life, and if we’re feeling ambitious, one that actually improves the general welfare of our children.

In terms of the first theme, we need students graduating with skills relevant to employers. Indeed, it’s how the whole STEM debate began. In the USA, and in the UK, there is an apparent dearth in competent maths and science teachers, and in those adequately equipped with the skills necessary for the recent and dramatic rise in computing jobs. However, reports have also shown that, along with maths, our literacy rates are shockingly poor. Where is the literacy in STEM? Employers may want technologically savvy staff, but they also want staff who are able to write articulately. They want staff who can work in teams, think critically and who use their imagination to create new products and services. These are all skills proven to be fostered by arts education, and not through biased research: by scientists, sociologists, psychologists and employers themselves.

Indirectly, I am still focussing on the economic benefits. Still I am looking at our students as the ‘workforce’ which earns our country its GDP and makes us competitive on the world’s economic stage. I hope it will not appear too artsy or soft to now move on to a discussion of the importance of the arts in creating a healthy democracy, with happy citizens. The United Nations Development Program has recently introduced the ‘Human Development Paradigm’ model, which emphasizes the importance of the access of all citizens to health, political participation and education. The arts and humanities play a key role in this. With declining civic engagement and increasing distrust of the political system (especially amongst young people), now is certainly not the time to be downplaying the importance of the arts.

At the Crick Centre, we are currently researching the potential for participatory arts to facilitate political participation, with particular emphasis on young people. The theory follows the work of a number of thinkers from a variety of disciplines and explores a number of datasets and studies which claim a connection between the arts and empathy, arts and building confidence, arts and social capital, cultural capital and civic engagement. But one theme for me feels particularly relevant in terms of the STEM and STEAM debate: the important role the arts play in building upon our capacity for imagination. We need citizens who are demanding, who are creative and innovative. We need citizens who are engaged and challenging. But most of all, we need citizens who can imagine a different world. Otherwise, the STEM tools needed to get there become quite meaningless.

A public evidence session into how successful the Government’s public service reforms are is due to be held in Sheffield.

MPs from the Public Administration Select Committee will question local organisations involved in delivering public services in Sheffield at a session held Monday 3 March 2014, 2pm to 3.30pm.

The evidence session will focus on:

• Opportunities for communities to get involved in public service design and delivery
• How successful the Government has been in devolving power away from Whitehall and into local communities.

Evidence gathered at this event will inform the Committee’s current Citizen and Public Services inquiry.

The public session will take place in the Sheffield Select Committee Suite, ICOSS, University of Sheffield, 219 Portobello, Sheffield, S1 4DP. Places are limited so booking in advance is essential. To register for this free event, email or call 020 7219 1650. Please be aware that the session will begin promptly at 2pm.

Professor Matthew Flinders

University of Sheffield

If you are reading this blog then you’ve obviously survived ‘Blue Monday’. That is, the day in the third week of January when suicide levels tend to peak and demands for counseling rocket as a result of post-Christmas debt, dashed New Year resolutions and the inevitable sense that this year is actually unlikely to be much different to the last. The publication by the coalition government of its ‘Priorities for Essential Change in Mental Health’ underlines the fact that mental health is likely to become the defining ‘super-wicked’ problem of the twenty-first century. But what does the politics of mental health – and particularly the mental health of our politicians – tell us about the state of our society?

It is estimated that approximately 450 million people worldwide have a mental health problem. Nearly 60 million Americans suffer from some form of mental illness and in the UK the Office for National Statistics estimates that one-in-four British adults experience at least one diagnosable mental health problem in any one year. This might range from anxiety and depression to more extreme forms of psychosis or schizophrenia but whatever the specific condition mental illness is scary, painful and exhausting – and it’s woefully under-funded. ‘There is a substantial gap’ the opening line of the latest version of the World Health Authority’s Mental Health Atlas states ‘between the burden caused by mental disorders and the resources available to prevent and treat them’. Even today only one penny is spent on mental health for every pound spent by the NHS and mental health services seem to have borne the brunt of the ‘age of austerity’.

But what makes the experience of mental health arguably far worse is the social stigma and almost ridicule that often accompanies even the merest hint of a mental health condition. Those lucky enough to have supportive friends and family will generally find that recovery is not only possible but that the whole experience may also have unexpected positive side effects in the sense that experiencing the lows of life can add new vitality, colour and understanding to even the simplest things. Sunbathing in the Rain by Gwyneth Lewis is undoubtedly one of the best books I’ve ever read. But those who lack supportive families, friends or lots of money frequently find themselves shunted between a bewildering range of services and the spiral of decline into unemployment and homelessness or worse can be rapid.

But what about those individuals who have roles in society that could almost have been designed to undermine their mental health? The work-life variables associated with mental breakdown and exhaustion are relatively clear from the rich seam of literature in the field of organizational psychology – high-stress and unrealistic expectations, divided and incompatible loyalties, a high-blame low-trust work environment, living away from home, long hours, an adversarial atmosphere, unpredictable hours, precarious employment, low levels of public regard, etc. – and in many ways the role of a modern politician ticks every one of these boxes. It is not therefore surprising that stress levels amongst politicians tends to be incredibly high and the life of an MP is frequently associated with poor-decision making, ruined health, family break-up and the occasional bizarre walk upon Clapham Common. For those MPs with young children, ministerial duties and constituencies many miles from London the pressure can be intense – even brutal.

And yet how MPs manage their mental wellbeing and cope with the pressures of their profession remains a largely hidden topic. This is reflected in the manner in which periods of poor mental health are generally admitted only in the past tense in memoirs and autobiographies. John Biffen, a Cabinet Minister under Margaret Thatcher, suffered from debilitating depression for most of his career but this fact was only recently revealed six years after his death in his posthumous autobiography  – Semi-Detached.  More recently, Jack Straw, the former Foreign Secretary, has written of his secret battle with depression but – as Alastair Campbell has explained – it remains incredibly difficult for a British politician to stand-up and admit to being human – by which I mean one of the one-in-four of us that will at some point experience a mental health condition. But it’s not only the adversarial culture of Westminster and Whitehall that explains this reluctance to speak out. Its also the social context because the public understanding of mental health issues remains very poor and the dominant narrative (perpetuated by the media) is that ‘Mad=Bad’ when in fact (like flights on airplanes) the vast majority of mental health patients are completely safe and manage their conditions through a mixture of talking therapies, medication, fitness, art, writing, singing or whatever else helps relieve their condition.

The 14 June 2012 is therefore likely to go down as a significant moment in parliamentary history as a number of MPs used a debate on mental health in the House of Commons to discuss their own psychological problems. Charles Walker MP described himself as a ‘practising fruitcake’ while outlining a battle he has been fighting with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder for more than three decades, Kevan Jones MP admitted to having suffered from bouts of depression, and two female MPs (Sarah Woolaston and Andrea Leadsom) also discussed their experience of post-natal depression. If we add Jack Straw and the Labour MP John Woodcock, who last December admitted to suffering from depression, this makes a grand total of six out of 650 MPs who have acknowledged their own mental health challenges when in reality the available data on mental health, in general, and stressful occupations, in particular, would suggest that a far higher number of MPs will actually have experienced (or be experiencing) some form of mental disorder. Obviously it is a decision for any individual to decide on the boundaries between their private life and public duties but what’s really interesting is that we actually know very little at all about the mental health of our politicians. David Owen has written about ‘the hubris syndrome’ and the poor decisions made by those intoxicated with power but for most politicians, politics is – if we are honest – generally quite dull. It is the ‘slow boring of hard wood’ and the gradual realisation that the challenges of winning office are nothing compared to the realities of actually driving through significant change. That is not to agree with the recent statement of the Conservative MP for Penrith, Rory Stewart, that an MP has less power than ‘someone running a small pizza business’ but it is to acknowledge the stresses and strains of political life.

There are, however, signs of progress. In 2007, Section 141 of the Mental Health Act – whereby MPs who were incapacitated through mental illness could be automatically removed from the House of Commons after six months – was considered and then retained by Parliament (even though there was no equivalent legislation to govern physical incapacitation). This example of institutionalised intolerance and inequality was repealed in February last year with the passing of the Mental Health (Discrimination) Act 2013. More recently, a small budget has been agreed within the Palace of Westminster to cover the costs of counseling for MPs that are understandably reluctant to seek help within their constituency. But even with this small step in the right direction, the stigma surrounding mental health remains acute in Parliament. The hook, twist or barb in this argument is that recent surveys suggest that significant sections of the public would not vote for a political candidate that admitted to previously suffering from mental health problems. And yet at the very same time the public constantly demand that they want MPs to be ‘normal’ people – an adjective generally followed by the phrase ‘like you and me’ – but normal people suffer from mental health problems. The tension is obvious and as a result the secrecy and stigma surrounding mental health continues. It’s mad politics at its worst.

Professor Matthew Flinders is Professor of Politics and Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics at the University of Sheffield. He has suffered from depression throughout his adult life but generally manages to keep his black dog on a fairly tight leash. 

Jose Angel Garcia

PhD Researcher, Department of Politics

University of Sheffield.

A couple of weeks ago Matthew Wood wrote an interesting post about what seems to be the contemporary “crumbling” in confidence in democracy around the world; a disenchanment fuelled by a “ceaseless government accountability”. Wood’s point is similar to Flinders’ argument in Defending Politics, which states that societies around the world are living in an era of high governmental accountability which, ironically, has produced the unintended effect of a generalized and increasing political distrust among the population. In other words, more information creates more questions. This constant skepticism or “corrosive cynicism” towards politicians has a twofold effect; on the one hand, citizens with increasing demands, bigger expectations, but less willing to cede rights or give more power to politicians. On the other hand, politicians locked in a “no-winning” game, where political competition, finger-pointing and a major public scrutiny, has forced them to inflate their political promises, giving more opportunity for future political disappointment.

Nevertheless, it is undeniable that accountability is a necessary condition for the development of a healthy –and I would argue, more effective democracy and a major confidence in politics. As noted by Helvia de la Jara (http://inicio.ifai.org.mx/Publicaciones/Transparencia_y_Confianza14.pdf, trust; therefore, political trust can only flourish in a society free of fear, where uncertainty is at its lowest possible level, and where political institutions demonstrate their capacity to act. Then, it is only through accountability processes that it is possible to establish and determine the levels of confidence over institutions, ensure their compliance with their socio-political objectives, and guarantee their institutional consolidation, even continuity. By knowing the what for, for whom and how, society and government can decide over the existence and efficiency of institutions, and identify and penalize any of their possible deviations, which otherwise would be detrimental for a country’s democratic development. Several cases can be analyzed to demonstrate both the positive and negative political effects of an “over accountability”. Nonetheless, I will limit myself and refer to the Mexican case.

Mexico, which became an “internationally accepted” democracy in 2000, has been recently recognized for its Institute for Transparency and Accountability (IFAI). With an increasing number of public information requests, from an average of 24,097 in 2003 to almost 110,000 in 2013, this federal institute is now fully autonomous and has one of the biggest budgets in the sector in the world (almost £24,000,000). Although it has become a precedent in government openness and accountability, the situation in Mexico is not quite different from other countries where, paradoxically, a major accountability tends to be accompanied by a major disenchantment or distrust in politics.

As the OECD states, trust is a very subjective issue, but key for the functioning of any government and the efficiency of its public policies. Therefore, it is important to make a distinction between politics, politicians and what people consider “the” government in general. Regarding politicians in Mexico, in 2000, three years before the creation of the IFAI, 3% of the population trusted the Congress “a lot”, 18% “more or less”, 34% “a little”, 44% “nothing” and 1% “didn’t know”. By 2011 there were less people trusting the Congress than 16 years before, but more people who trust on it since the beginning of the Mexican accountability era in 2003.

Although the peaks in public confidence in Congress match the declines in the number of information requests, it would be too simplistic, even unscientific to establish a correlation between –a possible over– transparency or accountability and public confidence in the Congress. As Flinders points out, too many external forces have an effect over societies’ perceptions and demands, such as economic crisis, increasing education levels, media negative or positive over-coverage, etc., which can augment or reduce public confidence in politicians, government institutions, democracy and politics itself. This is why promoting the understanding of politics by the population has been considered a necessary condition for the development of stronger and more efficient democratic institutions. But how to do it? How to trigger their interest in understanding politics? This is precisely why effective accountability processes are important. With a more available, up to date, and validated information, citizens can participate in the public sphere. Open and public debates incentivize a major interest in the daily socio-political events in which each one of the members of the society is immersed or affected by. Furthermore, it is through the identification of the contemporary social, political and economic issues that an informed, participative and challenging civil society, capable of working in synergy with the government, emerges.

The existing accountability process in Mexico is far from perfect; in fact, there have been some corruption claims inside the institution. However, in such a maturing democratic system, it has allowed government and society to improve, or at least attempt to progress in the provision of public services, apply a fairer system of justice, and provide or demand a better (and achievable) level of life, something unimaginable just years ago. It is due to this accountability policy that the Mexican society now has a clearer, unfortunately still not perfect, knowledge about the number and names of drug traffickers caught (http://bigstory.ap.org/article/mexico-releases-list-top-arrested-narcos), or even corrupt practices inside government agencies, such as the use of public funds to buy expensive towels by a former president (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1399825.stm).

This, therefore, make us think that accountability can promote political punishment or cynicism from the population; but also, an opportunity for improvement of political processes.  With major, but mostly, efficient levels of accountability, it could be possible to envisage a political where politicians do not feel the need, but more importantly, cannot make unfeasible promises; and where more informed citizens shift from being passive recipients or consumers of public goods, into politically responsible actors.

Dr Jack Corbett

Australian National University

Historians, a colleague of mine is fond of saying, do not predict the future, they only predict the past. History should, in theory, provide lessons for the future but as David Runciman’s latest offering The Confidence Trap illustrates, democracies aren’t very good at learning their lessons; when it comes to crisis democracies tend to support that other cliché about history: it repeats (although not always in the ways we expect).

Aside from being eminently readable, The Confidence Trap is a timely contribution for all the obvious reasons. As outlined recently by Matt Wood on this blog, public confidence in democratic government has reached record lows. On the back of the 21^st century’s first major crisis – the GFC – and in the face of one of its greatest challenges – climate change – this shouldn’t really come as a surprise. We are all anxiously watching and waiting to see how things pan out. Can democracy meet these challenges? Can we find a way out of this mess? Will democracy emerge from this ‘moment of truth’ triumphant or defeated?

If history is an accurate guide – and Runciman is cautious about whether it should be – the answer is neither. Democracies, he argues, don’t face ‘moments of truth’; this is why they are durable. They sidestep them, wriggle through them, lurch from one extreme to the other in order to avoid them and ultimately, in the absence of a grand strategy or any propensity to learn from their mistakes, they muddle through. This is both the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of democracy: its flexibility enables it to find a way but in the long run (over)confidence in the capacity of that same flexibility to meet any challenge breeds complacency, which means we are left unprepared for the crisis moment. It is the recurrence of this cycle that is the essence of the ‘trap’.

This view of democracy in crisis flies in the face of much conventional wisdom (if you don’t want to read the whole book you can find a summary of the main arguments here). Since antiquity, the assumption has been that democratic government, with all its talk of freedom and equality, only has superficial appeal. Underneath the surface it is chaotic, irresponsible and prone to the worst excesses of mob rule. Runciman turns this argument on its head. Democracy isn’t seductive on the surface; on the surface it is all the things its detractors claim: messy, petty, without a clear sense of where it wants to go or how it might get there. On the surface, democracy is a ‘confidence trick’ and its inability to respond decisively to crisis exposes this endemic failing. But, he argues, there is much more to democracy than what the humdrum of day-to-day politics permits us to see. History tells us that democracies aren’t bad at responding to crisis, they are actually very good at it, and it is this capacity to muddle through against all the odds that illustrates this perverse strength (although exactly how it does so remains somewhat of a mystery as politicians in particular tend to stumble on the right choices for all the wrong reasons). And yet, the very muddled way that democracies deal with current crisis sows the seeds for future calamity: the upshot is that democracies tend to win the day but miss the lesson.

The Confidence Trap makes this argument through a series of case studies drawn from the last century starting with 1918 (the end of the First World War) and ending with 2008 (the GFC). Along the way we take in 1933 (the World Economic Conference), 1947 (creating the post Second World War world order), 1962 (the Cuban Missile Crisis and others), 1974 (inflation, economic uncertainty, political unrest) and of course 1989 (the end of the Cold War). No doubt some political scientists will question the case selection – defining what constitutes a crisis, Runciman argues, is part of the problem for democracies who are faced with a cacophony of competing naysayers – which focuses almost exclusively on politics in the ‘great powers’ (predominantly America but Russia, Britain, France, Germany, India, China and Japan all get a moment in the sun), just as some historians will no doubt take issue with his brief treatment of the crisis events themselves. But, this misses the point of the book and in particular the freshness of the argument.

To guide us through this history of crisis Runciman relies on Tocqueville. It is Tocqueville, he claims, who best understood the paradoxical nature of democratic government. When he first arrived in America, Tocqueville observed much in the day-to-day practice of democratic politics to satisfy the worst fears of its critics; everybody was living in the moment with little care for the future. But, he changed his mind once he peered beneath the surface. Democracy wasn’t a ‘confidence trick’. It was the real deal, and would remain so as long as people had faith in what democracy could achieve. The problem is that once that faith was established democracies tend to become fatalistic and overconfident. The capacity of democracy to consistently survive crisis emboldens its populations who believe that, when the time comes, they will find a way through anything, leading to complacency and inertia.

So what does the confidence of democracies in a crisis tell us about the crisis of confidence that currently besets many democratic regimes around the world? The answer, in short, lies with the promise of history. Where much of the current literature on democratic disenchantment focuses on what is new about anti-politics in particular, this book provides an insight into what it constant. To that end, its contribution sits with other recent works – John Kane and Haig Patapan’s The Democratic Leader and Stephen Medvic’s In Defence of Politicians for example – which also focus on the traps and paradoxes endemic to this way of governing. We are naive, these authors tell us, if we think we can avoid crisis of confidence, as this type of hypercritical introspection is one the perverse strengths of democracies: it shakes up the system without breaking it. The best we can hope is that this knowledge can afford us some perspective (although The Confidence Trap even remains sceptical about this).

Runciman, we can infer, would see much of the current disenchantment with democracy as a typically democratic problem: it’s a symptom of the ‘trap’. We have every reason to be confident in democracy at the very point in history when it appears to have seen off its greatest rival (the autocracy of the Soviet Union) and is on the march around the globe. And yet, paradoxically, we remain anxious and uncertain. That’s the problem with muddling through: democracy is never confronted with its ‘moment of truth’. This means it is never defeated, but it never really wins either. We may have survived yesterday’s crisis but, the naysayers claim, this success is setting us up for the next fall.

The emphasis on muddling through won’t be unfamiliar to many readers of this blog. In many ways this is the argument that Bernard Crick (who curiously doesn’t rate a mention in The Confidence Trap) is most famous for. Perhaps the reason for his omission is that whilst Crick consciously sought to defend democratic politics, Runciman does not. In this sense his analysis lays claim to being clear-eyed, albeit in a slightly resigned way. But ultimately his equivocality about the future prospects of democracy lets us draw our own conclusions. History is, after all, better at predicting the past.