Why Do People In The Poorest Communities Not Participate In Democracy

Why Do People In The Poorest Communities Not Participate In Democracy? Presented by: Dr. Dacombe Date: February 22, 2022 Outline - Why should we value participation? - Participation and socio-economic status - Some of the limitations of existing work - Research findings - Wider policy implications Democracy And 'The Poor': An Analytical Problem - Long-established tradition of studying democratic participation (many classics!) - Two major findings: Declining participation and inequality - Little explanation of the mechanisms that affect participation - Clear implications for the aspirations of many participatory democrats - Critical question: How does deprivation affect democratic participation? How Does Deprivation Affect Participation? - Need to avoid the tendency to treat deprived areas monolithically - Poor neighborhoods are 'ecologically and economically different' Wilson (1987: 58) - Particular configurations of social infrastructure and resources in poor neighborhoods - Fung (2006: 133) 'Initial Conditions' affecting democratic performance - Concentration effects - Socialization mechanisms Blackbird Leys - 5.9m, approx. 6,000 residents - Purpose built from 1953 - Pocket of deprivation in an affluent city - Rare chance to study a community from its inception - Huge amount of data available - Two relevant structural conditions: Isolation and reputation (but there are others...) Participation On The Estate - Mistrust of formal political institutions: • 'The scale was too big, the strings of power too remote, the motivation for involvement too low (Reynolds, 1986: 167) • 'No one cares. They think just because we live on Blackbird Leys we're not worth the trouble. It'll never change so I'm just not interested.' - But a rich history of other forms of civic action and community organizing: • Industrial activism/Blackbird Leys Festival/Good Neighbors Scheme/Church hall/'KKK' Structural condition: Isolation - 'Oxford's Offshore Island' - 'I went off for five years and I came back and people were doing the same thing. The same seats in the same pub'. - 'People who come from Blackbird Leys feel good about it. The problem really lies with other people from the outside. Maybe it is because Blackbird Leys is still out on a limb. Maybe it is because Blackbird Leys is not on its way to anywhere' - 'You don't ever meet new people really. Even [when I left school] I don't remember going out of the Leys'. A Difficult Reputation - 'Four years, acres of unlit building sites, inadequate police supervision, parental apathy and the provision of a public house catering mainly for young people, has provided a perfect setting for the idle, the mischievous and the more sinister night people' - Oxford Mail, 17 June 1962 - 'Terror on Housing Estate' - Oxford Mail, 10 October 1991 - 'Blackbird Leys has become synonymous with joyriding' - ITV News at Ten, 10 September 1991 - 'Mowed down on Joyrider Estate' - Daily Mirror, 15 December 2000 - 'Shit sticks' - BBL resident, interviewed 2016 Explaining Low Participation - Democratic participation is highly contextual - Norms of non-participation • The social environment can [...] encourage participation through the informal transmission of group based norms which turn participation into a social obligation' (Huckfeldt, 1977: 580-581) - Physical and social isolation - Reputation, isolation, democratic participation - Participation focused on informal localized action - Institutional design has a part to play Policy Implications? - Not all deprived areas are the same - We shouldn't assume that a distrust of formal politics means no participation - Democratic innovations will struggle to take hold without sympathy for local structural conditions - Top-down approaches to encouraging participation may not work well - Start thinking about the possibilities of co-design