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Ruling the Void Peter Mair Summary
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Ruling the Void summary. Numbers in the headings refer to the numbers in the book.
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1Ruling the Void - Peter Mair
Introduction 2
Democracy and indifference (p.17) 2
Indifference and renewal (p.21) 2
Redefining democracy (p.26) 2
Chapter 1: The Passing of Popular Involvement (p.30) 3
Citizen Disengagement (p.32) 3
Electoral Participation (p.33) 4
Electoral Volatility (p.40-41) 4
Party loyalties (p.46-47) 4
Party Membership (p. 49) 4
Conclusion (p.52) 5
Chapter 2: The Challenge to Party Government (p.57) 5
Do Parties Matter? (p.62) 5
Declining Electoral Cohesion (p.65) 6
The Problem of Party Government (p.69) 6
The Waning of Party Government (p.75) 7
Chapter 3: The Withdrawal of the Elites (p.83) 8
The Century of Mass Politics (p.84) 8
From Civil Society to the State: the Location of Parties (p.89) 8
The Functions of Parties (p.94) 9
Conclusion (p. 10
Chapter 4: Popular Democracy and the European Union Polity (p.104) 10
Being Safe For, or Safe From, Democracy (p.104-5) 10
The EU Polity (p.108) 10
Politicization and displacement (p.112) 11
Europeanization and Depoliticization (p.116) 11
The Puzzle of Apolitical Europe (p.120) 11
The EU as a Construct (p.125-126) 12
Euroscepticism and Polity-Skepticism (p.134) 12
In-class notes 13
, 2
Introduction
● Age of party democracy has passed; parties have become disconnected from wider society &
compete with each other in a way that they are no longer capable of sustaining democracy
● Ruling the Void deals with this issue in contemporary European democracy
● Position: control over political decision-making sometimes lay beyond the reach of the
ordinary citizen
○ (Semi-)sovereignty is slipping away, people are becoming non-sovereign
○ Democracy ‘easing away from the demos’
Democracy and indifference (p.17)
● Non-sovereignty: indifference towards politics & indifference towards democracy
● End of 1990s: start of anti-political rhetoric, neither citizens nor policy-makers privileged
the role of political decision-making
○ Populist rhetoric, but also: society is now sufficiently well organized through its
self-organizing networks that any attempts on the part of government to intervene will
be ineffective and perhaps counterproductive
● Democracy also becoming more of an issue on the everyday agenda; renewal of interest
Indifference and renewal (p.21)
Political discourse in 21st century shows a popular indifference to conventional politics, and evidence
of an unwillingness to take part in conventional politics that is seen as necessary to sustain democracy.
How do we make sense of these developments?
1) They are related: the growing intellectual and institutional interest in democracy is in part a
response to the expansion of popular indifference
2) The renewal of interest in democracy and its meanings at the intellectual and institutional
levels is not intended to open up or reinvigorate democracy as such; the aim is rather to
redfine democracy in such a way that it is easier to deal with
a) Attempt to define democracy without emphasis on popular sovereignty (a democracy
without a demos in the centre)
Popular and constitutional democracy no longer bound together: e.g illiberal democracies
● Not elections make the democracy, but rather the courts
● NGOs (non-governmental organizations) + judges = democracy
○ Emphasis on civil society acceptable, but elections are not of the essence
● Seems to suggest that democracy is being redefined to downgrade its popular component
→ but why?
Mair suggests that the shift from popular to constitutional democracy and the concomitant
downgrading of politics and of electoral processes are at least partly the consequence of the failings of
political parties.
● Due to the failings of parties, popular democracy cannot longer function in the way we have
known it; and how it has functioned up until now.
Redefining democracy (p.26)
● Schattschneiders proposition: democracy without parties is unthinkable, even if problems are
facing parties, they will continue to survive as long as democracy survives
○ Survival of democracy will guarantee survival of parties; but also → since the
survival of democracy is guaranteed, survival of parties also
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