How do we measure political activism?

Recently Gary Younge published a long article in the Guardian on electoral politics, with particular focus on Portugal and Haiti. In particular I was attracted to this passage:

“The basic assumption about electoral politics in a democracy is that the process connects popular will to political power”.

In the absence of that fundamental assurance, disaffection and the cynicism that comes with it are almost inevitable.”

Gary Younge was making a point about the political process. If people feel something has no relevance, they don’t show up.

He made the point about the last Portugese election, where the outgoing government had its EU bailout package knocked back by the parliament. Yet during the caretaker period, the Prime Minister went back to the EU and struck a deal.

The Portugese people responded by not voting – turnout tell to 58%. What was the point of voting when the winner of the election would be hamstrung by that decision?

I’m interested in this issue as part of a broader debate about political activism in the social democratic movement. Many recent articles on reform of the Australian labor party have cited the decline in branch structures and membership. But the problem is not unique to the ALP.

Here’s an interesting question:

How do we measure the engagement (or disengagement) of the public with their political system?

In most democracies, there’s one very easy way – look at election turnout. Recent General elections in the United States and United Kingdom saw what were considered a very high level of turnout (60-65%), as compared to elections in the previous decade.

In Australia, we don’t ever have to worry about turnout. But far from making people engaged, compulsory voting can also make us more complacent about how healthy our political system really is.

Compulsory voting means Australians must show their disaffection for the political process in other ways that can be harder to measure quantitatively.

We could look at the rate of informal voting. We could attempt to find out how many people still attend local precinct committees or council meetings. We could look at the overall rate of political party membership per head of population.

On the social democratic side we could look at why the Australian Labor party has a much lower rate of membership per head of population than the British Labour party does. We could look at how many people join unions and become active members. We could also look at single issue action groups like the ACF or Greenpeace.

But there are other measures too. In the 21st century, the internet has transformed political debate and activism.

How many Australians regularly read political stories in the newspaper or online? How many Australians read political blogs, and how many are out there with an Australian focus? How many Australians donate to political parties or activist groups like GetUp! online?

Our country needs to examine this question because we are complacent about political activism. We cannot assume that people are politically engaged just because we force them to vote. How many Australians would actually vote if they weren’t forced to?

We need a more sophisticated measure of civic engagement. Perhaps it’s time for an audit of our democracy. Just how many people are participating? And if the numbers are low, what does it say about our political system, and what can we do about it?

Later this year the federal government will be bringing out the five yearly census.

I argue that the Australian government should consider including further questions on the census around how many Australians are politically active in a modern 21st century context.

Do you agree? What sort of questions do you think should be asked? Send us your thoughts by posting in the comments below.

Posted in: activism,australia,census,democracy,election turnout,online activism