Saturday 20 March, 1.45pm until 3.00pm, The Great Hall The Battle for Politics
Gordon Brown’s bid for re-election has included the launch of a ‘new politics’, embracing: an Alternative Vote system; new e-petitions to allow the public to suggest topics for MPs to debate and devolving control of public services to local people. This is part of a package aimed at restoring public trust in Westminster. Indeed all mainstream parties support initiatives to connect with our concerns and win our votes. While flattering us as active political subjects, though, they increasingly view us as more like objects: cross-party enthusiasm for behavioural science means our brains and psychology are studied with anthropological zeal. George Osborne enthuses about new scientific disciplines that allow politicians to ‘to develop a new approach to policymaking, based on empirical evidence about how people really behave’. But should the public be flattered by such close scrutiny of our behaviour? Is there a danger of viewing the ‘public’ as lab rats in need of nudging to entice us to make the right choices, incentivised to engage more pro-socially and vote for the right parties? Isn’t this view of the public patronising or manipulative? Or is such scepticism old-fashioned? Do we need to refresh our views of how to engage the majority in decision-making beyond ideological choices? How can we best restore the electorate to their rightful place as subjects and masters of their democratically elected representatives? Whither the demos?
 | Gerry Stoker professor, Politics and Governance, University of Southampton; director, Centre for Citizenship, Globalization and Governance; author, Why Politics Matters: making democracy work |
 | Brendan O'Neill editor, spiked; author, Can I Recycle My Granny and 39 Other Eco-Dilemmas |
 | Richard Wilson founder and director, Izwe; founder, leading public engagement think-tank, Involve |
 | Matt Grist director, RSA's Social Brain project; author, Changing the Subject - how new ways of thinking about human behaviour might change politics, policy and practice |
| Chair: | |
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Claire Fox
director, Institute of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze |
Parliament vote through technical reforms to reconnect with the voting public.
Stuart Wilks-Heeg, openDemocracy, 5 March 2010Who and where are the voters who will decide the outcome of the general election?
Bagehot, Economist, 18 February 2010Politics has grown stultified in the hands of the political classes: Power2010 sets about returning it to the people
Helena Kennedy, Guardian Comment is free, 9 January 2010The reason policy makers might be interested in brains and behaviour is that policy has to do (but not only to do) with aggregate level effects of individual actions. So if it can be shown that brains have certain shortcomings or potentialities not previously understood, then this is useful for informing policy direction.
Matt Grist, New Humanist, November 2009Politicians are looking to social psychology and behavioural economics in order change public behaviour and achieve their policy goals.
Martin Rosenbaum, BBC News, 15 September 2009
Achieving mass democracy was the great triumph of the twentieth century. Learning to live with it will be the greatest achievement of the twenty-first century. A rising tide of discontent is posing a major crisis for systems of mass democracy: the evidence is clear to see in reduced turnout and party membership and in opinion surveys.
Gerry Stoker, Palgrave Macmillan, 7 July 2006
ComRes pollster analyses the differences in voting behaviour between men and women.
Andrew Hawkins, Total PoliticsAmerica, Obama and the recession
"There was an astonishing range of opinions expressed while I was there, some of them pure nonsense, others profound, all of them provocative."
Daniel Moylan, Deputy chairman, Transport for London
