6: Better the Devil You Know (Part II)

Determinants of Political Apathy:

- Physical – geography, population density, weather, ease of access to sites of political activity
- Socioeconomic – age and demographics of citizens, wealth/poverty, employment rates
- Institutional & Political – structure of government and political processes (e.g. electoral methods), relevance of political issues in discussion
- Sociological – perceptions of danger, futility, or alienation in political processes

In today’s post, wrongness intersects with the topic of political apathy. I am beginning this discussion with the above list for several reasons:

i.) I want to illustrate that there are multiple causes of political apathy—my discussion on wrongness attempts to find it as an underlying factor in some, but not all, of those causes.

ii.) Most of these variables were, for due diligence, pulled from research literature (Merrifield 666, Rosenberg 350, Dean 186) but I am confident that most readers could just as easily have named them on the spot—they are, after all, conveniently aligned with all the excuses we make for being politically inactive. What this suggests is that our intuitive and emotional response to politics should not be taken for granted.

***

American sociologist Morris Rosenberg took this qualitative approach for studying political apathy. He collected his data through seventy open-ended interviews that were designed “to encourage the respondent to reveal his views regarding the political process with a minimum of direction and a maximum of spontaneity” (350).

From the interviews, Rosenberg identifies threats to interpersonal interaction as one of three predominant deterrents voiced by participants. These include: threats to harmony between families, friends, and communities; threats to business or occupational success; and finally, threat of ego-deflation (353). Some of his interviewees expressed that they didn’t like to talk about politics with their peers because they didn’t understand much about politics or didn’t think they were capable enough to take part in it. Or, by Rosenberg’s clinical evaluation:

…there are [those] who, facing the prospect of revealing factual ignorance
or committing gross logical errors, seek to avoid the feeling of defeat,
abashment, humiliation, or other discomfiture by staying far away from
such discussions. (353)

***

I’ll admit: I ended the previous post with little more than personal experience, and a general hunch, to go on when I claimed that the prospect of wrongness makes us underachieve instead of overachieve. What I’m now trying to do is establish at least one example of a common site of “error aversion”, and I think political apathy is a good one. But why should that be the case anyway? What makes political participation (by which I mean participation in a normal environment—not in, say, a radical protest) such a high-stakes endeavour?

Rosenberg writes at length about the potential hazards of discussing politics as perceived by his interviewees—these range from suffering embarrassment at a dinner party with the in-laws to losing the business of customers on the other side of the party line. Rosenberg makes no effort, however, to examine why politics is so charged to begin with. He seems to take for granted that politics is intrinsically contentious and prone to unhappy disagreement.

To be sure, our personal politics are indeed a sensitive matter. Please excuse, again, the arbitrary terminology—by this I mean our opinions on questions that point back to the core of our society, such as the issues of gay marriage, capital punishment, or stem cell research. These topics are sensitive because, in describing our own ideals of society and governance, we also expose our fundamental beliefs and ideologies. Paradoxically, however, these personal politics are the easier variety to talk about because they require little more than our own “moral compass” as guidance. Everyday conversation is proof that most people are adequately comfortable voicing their political views at this level, even if they are ambivalent or uncertain. So when Rosenberg’s interviewees admit that they don’t understand politics, I am inclined to interpret that they are talking instead about public politics, which has more to do with aligning one’s personal views with this politician or that party, or with this bill or that piece of legislation.

Having just established that “sensitivity” may not be the only concern holding us back from political conversation, we are tasked with finding alternative culprits. My hypothesis, in light of this research on wrongness, is that misinformation makes us very anxious. Indeed, economists Matthias Benz and Alois Stutzer propose that citizens rarely sort through “real” political information, but instead use a variety of shortcuts to lower their costs (time and effort). These shortcut political indicators include generalized party ideologies, past performance of a government, reputations of candidates, recommendations from interest groups, or information collected as a by-product of mass media consumption (32).

I believe that we are all aware of our own failings at heart. Having taken shortcuts to arrive at a shallow understanding of whom or what we’ve decided to support, to voice our allegiances is to tread extremely treacherous waters. We are less fearful of expressing our own opinions, of which we are at least master, than we are in letting our opinions be spoken for by people and parties we don’t fully know, lest we are unaware that they completely misrepresent us on another matter. Debates of politics at the public level, then, are prone to defensiveness and animosity, since we really can’t be sure that we’re sure about what we’re talking about.

To be continued… (What is the solution, and does it have anything to do with wrongness?)

Works Cited

Benz, Matthias, and Alois Stutzer. “Are Voters Better Informed When They Have a Larger Say in Politics?: ‘Evidence for the European Union and Switzerland’.” Public Choice 119.1/2 (2004): 31-59. JSTOR. Web. 30 Nov. 2011.

Dean, Dwight G. “Alienation and Political Apathy.” Social Forces 38.3 (1960): 185-9. JSTOR. Web. 30 Nov. 2011.

Merrifield, John. “The Institutional and Political Factors that Influence Voter Turnout.” Public Choice 77.3 (1993): 657-667. JSTOR. Web. 30 Nov. 2011.

Rosenberg, Morris. “Some Determinants of Political Apathy.” The Public Opinion Quarterly 18.4 (1954-5): 349-366. JSTOR. Web. 30 Nov. 2011.