When democracy stops feeling participatory

The confusion surrounding Scotland’s recent elections revealed something deeper than civic ignorance. In a political culture dominated by Westminster spectacle, many people no longer feel like participants in democracy at all.

What shocked me most about these elections was how many people genuinely believed they were voting for the next Prime Minister, as though this were a UK general election. You could hear it everywhere: voters in England discussing wanting a new leading party, rather than a new leading party in their local councils, people in places like Motherwell framing their vote around Westminster leadership, even friends who did not fully realise these elections were about Holyrood rather than Downing Street.

The easiest way to misunderstand political disengagement is to assume that people are stupid. Every election cycle produces the same complaints: voters do not understand how government works, they cannot distinguish between devolved and reserved powers, they blame the wrong institutions for the wrong problems, they vote emotionally, tribally, and irrationally. The conclusion often drawn from this is that the public themselves are the problem. If only people were better informed, more rational, more institutionally literate, democracy would function properly again.

But this gets the relationship backwards.

The real issue is not that ordinary people are uniquely ignorant. It is that modern political culture increasingly treats ordinary people as spectators rather than participants. Political disengagement is not simply an individual failure; it is partially a product of a political system that has steadily stopped expecting democratic participation in the first place.

Most people are not unintelligent about politics in the broad sense. They understand instinctively when the country feels unstable. They understand when they are poorer than their parents were, when housing feels unattainable, when public services are deteriorating, when political elites appear detached from normal life. People are often emotionally and socially perceptive about power even when they lack detailed institutional knowledge.

And crucially, the evidence repeatedly shows that many people are not apathetic at all. They are alienated.

A recent paper on political engagement in Britain argued that what is often described as apathy is more accurately a feeling of exclusion from formal political structures. People still care deeply about political questions, but increasingly feel that politics is something done to them rather than by them. The authors note that conventional measures of participation, such as party membership or elected turnout alone, often miss more informal or episodic forms of engagement. Politics has not disappeared from people’s lives; it has simply become detached from institutions that no longer feel accessible or responsive.

The same theme appears repeatedly in research on political literacy. Hugh Bochel’s work on citizenship education notes that political literacy is not merely knowledge of institutions, but “being able to have an input and being able to exercise rights and responsibilities.” Yet modern democratic culture increasingly strips people of any sense that they meaningfully shape outcomes.

This did not emerge accidentally.

From roughly the 1990s onward, mainstream politics across much of the West increasingly reframed itself as managerial rather than ideological. Politics ceased to present itself as a contest between radically different visions of society and instead became a competition between supposedly competent administrators. The language of technocracy replaced collective political action. Citizens were encouraged to see politics as something best handled by experts, economists, advisers, and professionals. The role of the public became narrower: vote occasionally, consume political content, trust expertise, and otherwise leave governance to specialists.

If politics is constantly framed as boring administration carried out by professionals, why would people develop deep institutional literacy? Why would they spend time learning the complexities of local government structures, devolved powers, constitutional arrangements, or electoral systems? People absorb the political culture they are taught to absorb.

This is particularly visible in Britain’s highly centralised media environment.

In Scotland, Holyrood directly controls huge areas of everyday life: health, education, housing, justice, elements of transport, social policy, and local government structures. Yet Westminster still dominates political consciousness. UK political coverage overwhelmingly frames politics through Westminster drama: party leaders, PMQs, cabinet gossip, leadership contests, polling swings, and Downing Street personalities. Politics becomes increasingly presidential and personality-driven. Local government and devolved institutions receive comparatively tiny amounts of sustained coverage.

The consequence is predictable. Many people begin to internalise the idea that ‘real politics’ happens only at Westminster. That is not evidence of stupidity. It is evidence of political conditioning.

“People are often emotionally and socially perceptive about power even when they lack detailed institutional knowledge. ”

Turnout figures reveal this clearly. Turnout in the 2026 Scottish Parliament election was 53.2%, significantly below the 84.6% turnout recorded during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. The contrast is striking. When politics felt existential, participatory, identity-linked and genuinely consequential, people engaged at enormous rates. When politics returns to managerial normality, participation collapses again toward average levels.

This undermines the lazy narrative that people simply do not care.

Research on young people reinforces the same point. The 2026 UK Youth Poll found that 49% of young people disagreed with the statement that “politics is not relevant to my life,” while more than half believed their vote could shape the future of the UK. nearly three quarters had participated in some form of political or community activity over the previous year, including petitions, volunteering, demonstrations, ethical boycotts, advocacy, and local engagement.

Again, this is not apathy.

But the same poll also found deep alienation from formal politics. Young people reported low trust in politicians, a belief that they are not listened to, and feelings that politics has become too divisive. Nearly half said they avoid discussing politics because they worry about how others will react. Only 16% believed school had adequately prepared them to make political decisions as adults.

That combination is important: people care about politics while simultaneously feeling excluded from politics.

Even the framing of disengagement itself can deepen the problem. Bochel highlights research that media narratives around youth ‘apathy’ can become self-reinforcing, legitimising the idea that politics simply is not for ordinary people. When citizens are repeatedly portrayed as ignorant, irrational, extreme or disengaged, democratic culture begins to hollow itself out further.

The rise of ragebait politics worsens this dynamic. As political media becomes more emotional, tribal, aesthetic and algorithmically driven, institutional understanding matters less than symbolic affiliation driven, insitutional understanding matters less than symbolic affiliation. politics increasingly operates through identity performance and emotional alignment rather than structural understanding. People are encouraged to ask not “which level of government controls this issue?” but “which tribe feels culturally aligned with me?”

This is one reason populist movements often flourish in politically alienated environments. Parties like Reform UK intuitively understand that many voters feel excluded from institutional politics. Their appeal is often less about policy detail than about rejecting a political class perceived as culturally remote and professionally managerial.

At the same time, the public’s relationship with local power is more complicated than simplistic disengagement narratives suggest. Polling on English devolution and local government reorganisation found that while many people are confused by institutional reforms, they are also significantly more likely to trust local government than national government. Large majorities support the principle of devolving more power locally, even if they struggle to explain the structures themselves.

Again, the contradiction is only apparent if politics is understood narrowly as institutional knowledge alone. In reality, many people retain strong democratic instincts while lacking confidence in formal political systems.

The problem, then, is not simply educational, though civic education clearly matters. It is cultural. A democratic culture cannot produce politically confident citizens while simultaneously encouraging passivity, hyper-centralisation, technocracy and spectatorship. It cannot reduce politics to elite management while expecting widespread institutional engagement from the public. Nor can it sustain healthy democratic participation while politics increasingly resembles a form of permanent culture war entertainment.

Political literacy does matter. But political literacy is not simply memorising constitutional arrangements or understanding parliamentary procedure, as the original Crick conception suggested; it is about learning” how to make themselves effective in public life.” And that requires something modern politics increasingly struggles to offer: the belief that ordinary people are participants in democracy rather than merely its audience.