Introduction: Political Cultures

Abstract

If the 2009 MPs expenses scandal was the acme of how remote Parliament seemed from the people, it also revealed more enduring popular frustrations with formal politics — that far from confined to Britain, were common to many liberal democracies. Musing on ‘the contemporary condition… of political disaffection and disenchantment’ in 2007 Colin Hay argued, ‘“Politics” has increasingly become a dirty word’.¹ And, as Lawrence’s timely history of electoral conduct contends, both politicians and the modern media have effectively marginalized the public from political debate. Representative politics has been challenged not just by falling party membership and participation, but has been a victim of a secular decline in a range of other forms of associational activism. Given diminishing trust and interest in party, part of the alleged falling stock of social capital and health of the public sphere, and studies like Why We Hate Politics, a political version of Callum Brown’s The Death of Christian Britain thesis might recommend itself to cultural historians aiming to capture the essence of politics’ history since the 1950s.²