Can Group Consciousness Predict Styles of Political Involvement?

Grievances and the feeling of being left-behind have been linked to the political behaviour of both ethnic minority and majority populations. For the former, the sense of grievance has been often used as the basis of the ‘group consciousness’ hypothesis, which predicts higher political involvement (especially non-electoral) based on ethnic sentiments (such as strong sense of ethnic identity and the perception of sociotropic discrimination). For the latter, the feeling of being left behind have been frequently associated with the rise of the support for the populist parties, and, in the UK, with the support for Brexit. In case of the majority population, the grievances are generally based on the sense of national identity and the feeling of being unfairly treated and/or forgotten by the mainstream political parties (often accused of favouring ethnic and immigrant minorities). Although both group consciousness hypothesis and the left-behind hypothesis have been used to predict political party (or Brexit) support, they have not been tested in terms of their predictive power of the general democratic involvement of either majority or minority populations. In this paper, using a uniquely comparative and nationally representative surveys of ethnic minority and majority groups in the UK (2010 British Election Study and 2010 Ethnic Minority British Election Study), we ask whether the indicators of ethnic group consciousness and the indicators of the left-behind sentiments can be used for predicting different styles of democratic involvement. Based on the Latent Class Analysis, we distinguish four main types of the majority and minority voters (namely, “dutiful voters”, “critical, non-electoral participants”, “efficacious all-rounders”, and “uninvolved observers”), characterised by distinct styles of political behaviours and political attitudes. At one end of the political involvement spectrum, there are “dutiful voters”, who are highly likely to execute their right to vote and share ‘good citizenship’ norms such as the sense of duty to vote but are highly unlikely to participate in extra-electoral activities. They are also relatively satisfied with political system and have strong mainstream political party identity. At the other end, there are “critical, non-electoral participants”, who are the least likely to vote and the most likely to participate in non-electoral political activities. Unsurprisingly, they are also the most likely to be critical of the British democracy and the political system. We show that the strong sense of ethnic group consciousness (among the minority voters) and the strong sense of being left behind (amongst the majority voters) are the strongest predictors of the ‘“critical, non-electoral’ style of involvement. The subjective sense of being unfairly treated is a much stronger predictor of the critical, non-electoral style of political involvement than the objective material deprivation or social class.