Spectres from the Past: Class, Democratic Legitimacy and Perceptions on Active Citizenship in Germany and England

The massive structural and economic transformations in Western European countries in the past 50 years or so have seen the white working class (WWC) move from the centre to the fringes of political attention and social and cultural acknowledgement. This decline manifests itself in a continuous shrinkage since the 1970s, a lack of political representation and a set of values and beliefs widely shared within that class which position it in the authoritarian corner of the ‘new politics’ cleavage (Evans & Tilly 2016). A common theme with regard to the consequences of this marginalisation is the “backlashing” of said class in terms of opinions on lifestyle choices and identity politics leading to a highly polarized political landscape with a strong effect on the outcome of elections and referendums in recent years. The consequential assessment of a “culture war” raging especially in contemporary US but in different (and less explicit) ways also in other Western societies has been considered to one of the main driving factors of the erosion of the civic culture (Norris & Inglehart 2019). But how does this erosion show itself in the ways that members of the WWC engage politically and how does it affect notions of legitimacy with regard to the democratic system and its deliberative core? Footed in a wider theoretical conceptualisation of emotional or affective politics, the paper at hand addresses these questions in proposing a research agenda that seeks to establish a linkage between class and political attitudes with special regards to democratic legitimacy in selected, economically vulnerable regions in Germany and England. In addition, it seeks to identify the nodes which exist to fill the presumed vacuum between political will and representation, namely the various civil society organisations that have moved in to fill the gaps. In a comparative approach, the paper focusses on two target regions in Eastern Germany and North England. Using a qualitative approach, the paper shows how distinct collective identities and accompanying values shape perceptions of democratic legitimacy and affect the political culture in the respective regions and communities. Given the size of this electoral group, its role for a functioning political culture can hardly be overestimated and, thus, getting it back in the boat of politic deliberation within the democratic system will prove vital to the functionality of Western democratic systems. References: Evans, Geoffrey & James Tilley (2016). The New Politics of Class. The Political Exclusion of the British Working Class, Oxford: OUP. Norris, Pippa & Ronald Inglehart (2019). Cultural Backlash. Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism, Cambridge: CUP.