Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions V. 27

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27 Governance: An Int'l J. Pol'y, Admin, & Institutions 1 (2014)

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Commentary

Explaining Democratic Disaffection:

Closing the Expectations Gap

MATTHEW FLINDERS*

Democracy is perhaps the most promiscuous word in the world of
public affairs, Bernard Crick suggested in his Defence of Politics (1962).
She is everybody's mistress and yet somehow retains her magic even
when a lover sees that her favors are being, in his light, illicitly shared
by many another.... Indeed, even amid our pain at being denied
her exclusive fidelity, we are proud of her adaptability to all sorts of
circumstances, to all sorts of company. Fifty years later it is possible
to question whether democracy retains her magic and to suggest
that the concept's malleability-its adaptability to all sorts of
circumstances-may have been exhausted. The aim of this commen-
tary, however, is not to review the data on democratic attitudes or to
identify geographic or demographic anomalies or countertrends but
simply to explore three questions that are too often overlooked:

1. How has the nature of political rule changed in the last 50 years?
2. What do these changes indicate about the politics and manage-
ment of public expectations vis-A-vis democratic politics?
3. Does political science, as an academic discipline, possess a wider
professional responsibility to the public?

My argument-my big idea-in the context of these questions is
simple: Political science has generally failed to fulfill its broader social
responsibilities in terms of cultivating political understanding and
stimulating engaged citizenship. It is-at least in some limited
ways-to blame for why we hate politics (and therefore politicians).
Although possibly heretical, my aim in making such an argument is
not to contribute to the current flaying of political science or to the
general malaise of intellectual life but to explore the relationship
between the study of politics and public attitudes to politics. To make this

*University of Sheffield
Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, Vol. 27, No. 1,
January 2014 (pp. 1-8).
© 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.