However, Americans, regardless of all these progressions, feel unhappier in their government as they feel that their country has a fundamentally flawed political system; and have declining faith in their democracy. The Implications of this are that political participation has declined dramatically, since the 1960’s the voter turnout for presidential elections has fallen 20%. Voting is the least demanding of civic duties, other civic duties include party membership or participation in a school council. The past 40 years has seen an even more dramatic decrease in these kinds of political engagement. Some people blame this loss of faith in democracy on Watergate and Vietnam; however the doubt in government began before these events.
In what ways has political participation declined in the UK in recent years? (10 marks) Political participation is when the general public are involved in the decisions that the government make. This can take the form of simply casting their vote at a general election or becoming a member of pressure groups or political parties in their local area. Political participation has declined in the UK over the past 30 years, this has occurred in a number of ways. The first way in which political participation in the UK has declined is through the fall in the number of voters at the general elections.
By finally giving in and devaluing the pound, Labours coherent reputation and authority was damaged. The whole issue surrounding the devaluation of the pound weakened the Labour party further by causing divides within. This weakening contributed to the election defeat in 1970. Furthermore Source 2 however does show direct evidence why labour had lost the election as it states “began for me as badly as it could of done” this tells us that the day had gone badly Roy Jenkins had done a relatively okay interview which didn’t relatively well amongst the public. However in the afternoon it became apparent that the export figures were down £45 million.
I am going to address how each party has been involved in some sort of controversy concerning funding. All parties receive membership subs. But that is not enough to pay for modern campaigning - especially with the general decline in membership over recent decades. The Conservatives rely mainly on donations from individuals and companies. Labour also receives these, but a large chunk of its income comes from trade unions.
Although this happens infrequently there have been cases where Commons has voted against government. Good examples of this are with the Gurkhas row in 2008 and more prominently Blair’s plans to extend the The powers of the whip and party loyalty are diminishing during this coalition. Reports suggest that the voting behaviour of coalition MPs show that rebellion is at a postwar high. Similarly the last Labour government towards the end had major difficulties from backbenchers, with 112 Labour backbenchers going against the government at least once. Backbench rebellions have been more frequent than any since the second world war and for some MPs rebellion against the coalition is becoming a habit.
For decades now most democracies have stood by and watched as the voter turnout among youths has steadily decreased. This presents a major problem to democracies around the world as youths are not being properly represented thanks to the declining percentage of participants. In Canada’s 2008 federal election only 37 percent of the general population ages 18-24 participated (Barnes, 2010). This diminishing voter turnout among the youth can be explained by examining contributing factors such as the post-materialist values of this generation in a world where politicians cater to the materialistic values of the generations before them. Other factors include a lack of political knowledge and interest among the young due to a belief that certain political issues do not affect them, as well as low internal and external efficacy that afflicts today’s young voters.
As well as a decline in the total number of marriages, there is also a decline in marriage rates (the number of people marrying per 1000 of the population aged 16 and over). In 1994, the marriage rate was 11.4 but this had declined to 10.3 by 2004. The male rate declined from 36.3 in 1994 to 27.8 in 2004 whilst the female rate declined from 30.6 to 24.6. Once again, even though there is a decline, British Social Attitude Surveys indicate that most people, whether single,
In the modern era, many are new social movements, appearing and disappearing as quickly as one another. The pressure groups, especially now, have allowed political participation to rise, however, possibly at the cost to general political parties themselves : The political participation of people are now less inclined towards political parties than they once were, and instead care about pressure groups. The membership change has been entirely and devastatingly negative: since thatcher, the membership of the party had halved, and since 1945, the membership has quartered. The majority of the people have become disillusioned with their political party. Now, people have been joining pressure groups instead: Greenpeace has doubled its members since 1950.
However, according to the Pew Research Centre, there has been a notable slip in the public majority favor of social safety net having slipped by 10 % between 2007 and 2012. Apart from the public, there have been different elicited views on social safety net programmes among the democrats and the republicans. These views originate from the funding and spending models used by either parties with the Republican adopting less spending policies on some important programs and the Democrats developing policies aimed at taxing wealthy programs as a means of decreasing the government debt. However, it is important that citizens really understand the importance of these
Finally, freedom of religion has become freedom from religion. These are three problems that I feel are bringing our country down. First, the middle class has no official definition, but the government considers a person middle class if your annual household income ranges between $25,500 and $76,500. Over the last 30 years, the middle class has shrunk tremendously. This is due in part by the average pay hasn’t increased enough