We need to be politically engaged every day not just at election time

I USED to have a colleague in the UK who, whenever he was asked what he did for a living, answered that he worked in a laboratory, looking after rats.

Apparently, having said this, he could usually be sure that no one would want him to talk to about his work. I find it quite hard to lie outright, so try to achieve the same effect by being vague. If I’m pressed, I say that I work in the university and then, thanks to the conventions of sexism, it’s usually assumed that I’m some kind of clerical worker and I’m not asked for any more information. This is sufficient to get me out of most awkward situations.

Nine times out of ten, if a woman of my age is alone with a man making small talk, she’s in a taxi or having an appliance fixed (if she’s alone with a woman, they’re both just enjoying the peace). For those rare occasions where more information is demanded, I blurt out quickly: “Actually I teach politics — but I’m all right really”. Well, it’s that kind of a job isn’t it? Only social deviants and misfits are interested in politics these days. Clearly I’m some kind of weirdo.

So there you have it. Politics — the process by which most of our lives are governed — is an activity widely despised by the majority of Irish people. This has long been the case, but seems even more so now. There was the briefest of interludes, during election weekend, where for a couple of days we all felt that we’d really made a difference; but after this short respite, we mostly got back to the job of full-time cynicism, despair and depression.

I still find it surprising that after perhaps the most significant election since the foundation of the state, with massive political upheaval and change, most people are fixed in their opinion that little has really changed and that “all politicians are the same”.

Let’s just recap and restate: for one day, Irish voters engaged with the political system en masse, and effected huge change, then returned to their conviction that nothing could be changed. Well call me some kind of weirdo, but I want to know what’s up with that? Why do we have so little faith that anything will change? Obviously, this is not one of those two-plus-two sort of questions, where we all agree that the answer is four.

There are many different answers for the current disenchantment with politics. But amongst them for sure is an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness. One the one hand, it seems a common consensus that with the IMF and EU calling the budgetary shots, there are no real decisions for government to make. And on the other hand, there seems to be an equally strong consensus that we, the ordinary people, are being made to pay for the mistakes of others (bankers, builders, politicians, Eurocrats and assorted international technocrats). What we have here is a classic case of denial.

Denial that we did anything wrong, and denial that we should now pay the consequences. As with all roads to recovery: the first thing we have to do is recognise that we have a problem.

In the case of the EU/IMF bailout, it’s time that we copped on and understood that when we’ve spent all of our money and they lend us theirs, the responsible thing to do is to agree to pay it back. If you went to the trouble of lending your mate a couple of grand to sort out her debts when she hit rock bottom, you wouldn’t think much of her if she then set up a Facebook vote to see whether everyone agreed that she should pay you back! But at least if she did, the cost of the poll would be free. If the Irish state goes to the bother of a referendum on debt default, we’ll all be paying an unnecessary sum of money to mount a campaign to answer a question that shouldn’t need to be asked. And, of course, if we still insist on perpetuating this state of denial about our collective responsibility then it’s no wonder that we feel we are not in control.

If we must mount national campaigns about the decisions of government, then let them be about decisions that matter: how, for example, should the burden of our collective responsibility be shared? Are all forms of tax income being considered? Are all forms of income being taxed? Are we sure that we know and understand all of the options available to government? Is the decision-making process transparent? How will these decisions facilitate a renewal of confidence in government? There are many questions we could ask of our Government, important questions, which, if answered to our satisfaction, might make us feel we had more control over the national crisis with which we are currently confronted. However, the kind of citizens who ask these questions, are the kind who feel that they have a stake in the process of government. Most Irish people, by contrast, consider themselves quite removed from government or politicians. “They”, it seems, have nothing to do with “us”. “They” got “us” into this mess and “they” are all as bad as each other. “We” were badly done by and none of it was “our” fault. It’s the equivalent of hearing an alcoholic claim that it is “The Drink” that drags “her” down. Whereas we all understand that the alcoholic will not recover, until she admits that she is responsible for the drinking; we seem unable to understand that government will not get any better until we admit that we are responsible for the voting. If we refuse to acknowledge this responsibility, we have only ourselves to blame if we are badly served by our politics.

STILL, whatever our motivations, the changes we made in the last election have given us the widest range of political opinions ever to be offered in the Dáil. All politicians are not and need not be the same.

There are many important decisions to be made by our Government and we all have a role in holding government to account. Alcoholics know that sobriety is not easy. It may be a struggle, hard fought and won every day. Democracy is much the same. Change can happen, but it is a choice made by politically engaged citizens every day.

- Maura Adshead is Head of the Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Limerick, the PPA Summer School on Democratic Renewal and Civic Engagement runs from June 13-17.