Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- One Depoliticisation, governance and the state
- Two Rethinking depoliticisation: beyond the governmental
- Three Depoliticisation, governance and political participation
- Four Depoliticisation: economic crisis and political management
- Five Repoliticising depoliticisation: theoretical preliminaries on some responses to the American fiscal and Eurozone debt crises
- Six Rolling back to roll forward: depoliticisation and the extension of government
- Seven (De)politicisation and the Father’s Clause parliamentary debates
- Eight Politicising UK energy: what ‘speaking energy security’ can do
- Nine Global norms, local contestation: privatisation and de/politicisation in Berlin
- Ten Depoliticisation as process, governance as practice: what did the ‘first wave’ get wrong and do we need a ‘second wave’ to put it right?
- Conclusion Thinking big: the political imagination
- Index
Three - Depoliticisation, governance and political participation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 March 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- One Depoliticisation, governance and the state
- Two Rethinking depoliticisation: beyond the governmental
- Three Depoliticisation, governance and political participation
- Four Depoliticisation: economic crisis and political management
- Five Repoliticising depoliticisation: theoretical preliminaries on some responses to the American fiscal and Eurozone debt crises
- Six Rolling back to roll forward: depoliticisation and the extension of government
- Seven (De)politicisation and the Father’s Clause parliamentary debates
- Eight Politicising UK energy: what ‘speaking energy security’ can do
- Nine Global norms, local contestation: privatisation and de/politicisation in Berlin
- Ten Depoliticisation as process, governance as practice: what did the ‘first wave’ get wrong and do we need a ‘second wave’ to put it right?
- Conclusion Thinking big: the political imagination
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The study of governance has become almost a growth industry, particularly in public policy discussion and research (Chhotray and Stoker, 2009; Levi-Faur, 2012). There has also been an increase, which is clearly not unrelated, in work on political participation, looking particularly at the way in which traditional forms have declined, while new forms have emerged (Dalton, 2008; Bang, 2009a, 2009b, 2010, 2011; Norris, 2011). Both these sets of literature are clearly linked to the growing interest in the putative process of depoliticisation, which is reflected in this volume and elsewhere. For example, governance is often presented as a depoliticised and managerial process in which policy decisions can be reached through networked and collaborative interactions between rational and consensus-seeking policy experts (Torfing et al, 2012). Similarly, declining levels of individual political participation are often taken as evidence of a depoliticised citizenry which presents a major governance problem, reflecting a decline in the legitimacy of government and, thus, problems in developing and implementing policy. Given these three literatures are clearly related, it's surprising that there had been little attempt to link them. This chapter addresses this omission, arguing that, by juxtaposing these literatures, we can both illuminate important issues in each literature and, crucially, suggest how we can repoliticise processes of governance and political participation.
We develop this argument over three substantive sections. The first section reviews the depoliticisation literature, referring particularly to the Flinders and Wood chapter that introduces this volume. Subsequently, the second section focuses on the links between forms of depoliticisation and modes of governance, in essence arguing that a metagovernance approach can make most sense of the ‘evidence’ for depoliticisation and provide a way of understanding both why there has been an increase in depoliticisation and, at the same time, a process of repoliticisation. The final section then addresses the changing nature of political participation, arguing that we are witnessing both depoliticisation and repoliticisation, and that both political scientists and governments need to recognise and respond to both of these processes.
Depoliticisation: deconstructing Flinders and Wood
We agree with Flinders and Wood that: ‘empirical interest in the topic of depoliticisation has not been matched by conceptual precision’. They respond by identifying three faces of depoliticisation, although they place more emphasis on what they call the societal and discursive faces, because, they argue, the governmental face is: ‘the dominant lens’.
- Type
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- Information
- Tracing the PoliticalDepoliticisation, Governance and the State, pp. 47 - 70Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2015