Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy

by Peter Mair

In the long-established democracies of Western Europe, electoral turnouts are in decline, membership is shrinking in the major parties, and those who remain loyal partisans are sapped of enthusiasm. Peter Mair’s new book weighs the impact of these changes, which together show that, after a century of democratic aspiration, electorates are deserting the political arena. Mair examines the alarming parallel development that has seen Europe’s political elites remodel themselves as a homogeneous professional class, withdrawing into state institutions that offer relative stability in a world of fickle voters. Meanwhile, non-democratic agencies and practices proliferate and gain credibility—not least among them the European Union itself, an organization contributing to the depoliticization of the member states and one whose notorious ‘democratic deficit’ reflects the deliberate intentions of its founders.

Ruling the Void offers an authoritative and chilling assessment of the prospects for popular political representation today, not only in the varied democracies of Europe but throughout the developed world.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Political Science, Sociology, Philosophy, History, Theory

192 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2009

About the author

Peter Mair (March 3, 1951 – August 15, 2011) was an Irish political scientist. He was professor of Comparative Politics at the European University Institute in Florence.

Career

Peter Mair was born in Rosses Point, county Sligo, Ireland, and studied history and politics at University College Dublin. He continued to work as assistant professor at the University of Limerick, Strathclyde, Manchester and the European University Institute in Florence during the 1980s. In 1987 at Leiden University he gained a doctorate, which as The changing Irish party system became a standard work on the Irish party system. In 1990, he co-authored the book Identity, Competition and Electoral Availability with Stefano Bartolini. It was awarded the ISSC/Unesco Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research. He continued to work at Leiden University becoming professor of comparative politics in 1994 when he held an inaugural address entitled "Party democracies and their difficulties". In 2001 he became co-editor of the journal West European Politics. In 2005 he returned to the European University Institute to invest time in his research into democracy, indifference and populist parties.

He specialized in comparative politics and specifically in the study of parties and party systems.

Mair died suddenly while on holiday in Connemara with his family.

Reviews

[C M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I am a former PhD student of the late Peter Mair and profoundly influenced and shaped by his brilliant thinking.

Peter Mair was an Irish comparative political scientist whose work on comparative politics, parties and party systems, and increasingly European and European Union democracy was and remains of incredible significance. He had been working on a book on the plight of democracy in Europe for years, but tragically died before finishing it. Ruling the Void is to a large extent the unfinished manuscript, edited and ended with part of an earlier working paper.

Ruling the Void is mostly a summary of his most important theses on political parties in Europe, summarized in the seminal cartel party thesis with Dick Katz (Party Politics 2015), and his more recent work on EU democracy (in line of his thesis in West European Politics, 2000). Scholars familiar with Peter's work won't find that much new in this, although his tone is more somber than in much of his earlier work. It was clearly more geared towards a broader audience, who could profit from his unmatched clarity of argumentation and writing style.

Most original is the last chapter, which tries to further develop his argument about the interrelationship between the national and European levels of electoral politics, and connect the EU democratic deficit to a more general national democratic deficit. I was particularly intrigued by his notion of 'polity-scepticism' as well as the idea that the national democratic deficit is in certain terms larger than the European democratic deficit. Unfortunately, this is also the chapter that is the least finished, including several ideas, and part-ideas, which were to be developed over time. Time that he was unfortunately not given.

Ruling the Void is an good book for people interested in party democracy in Europe. It could have become a brilliant book, had Peter been given the time to finish it.

[Matthijs Krul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Mair's "Ruling the Void" is one of the foundational texts for understanding what has often been called the 'democratic deficit' in parliamentary politics today. The book focuses in particular on the changing role of political parties and systems based on party-mediated representation since the mid-20th century or so. In this sense, it is a classic work of political science rather than of political economy or philosophy. Although most of the contents of the book were written before the current post-crisis centrifugal acceleration, most of the insights are nonetheless just as relevant in our age of EU referenda and New Right ascendancy.

The main lessons can be summarized quite simply: the disillusionment and disaffection with parliamentary democracy is a process that has gone both ways. In the old approach, not only were natural constituencies based on class and religious factors more cohesive and also more ready to respect and accept leadership within mass organizations in politics and civil society, but the parties themselves also played a major role in constituting such constituencies 'for themselves' by organizing them on an ideological basis. Since the decline of the welfare state, parties have actively withdrawn from civil society and from this organizing role, becoming oriented primarily to ad hoc coalitions to win elections rather than a representative function based on membership and ideology. Equally, the citizenry has become more diffuse in identity and interests, and as ideological and socioeconomic contestation has narrowed to a very small Overton Window, they have increasingly given up on parties and party representation as a means of expressing interest in favor of lobby groups, NGOs, and so forth.

The result is that the parties have shifted, Mair argues, from being apparatuses of civil society to becoming annexes of the state. In many cases, they now almost function only as flags of convenience for the recruitment and distribution of personnel for leading offices and positions, with only a faint connection to any political causes. Opposition, outside anti-systemic forces, has largely disappeared because parties are increasingly inclined to offload political responsibility onto government institutions, QUANGOs, European level authorities, and technocratic offices, none of which are open to direct political contestation and which tend to be consensus-seeking and technocratic. The rise of 'populist' formations of left and especially right (still somewhat understated in this book) has not provided an adequate response, however, because such parties trade precisely on being opposed to the nonrepresentative nature of the political system while simultaneously having the same kind of ad hoc, electoralist party structure as the 'core' parties. As a result, any occasion that sees them actually join government quickly reveals the hollowness at their own core, and they tend to collapse or become indistinguishable from the 'elite'.

Although Mair is not generally normative in this work, it is clear that these tendencies can count on his disapproval, and he is appropriately scathing about the liberal technocratic justifications of this political system in the literature - usually based on the notion that too much democracy just gets in the way of 'responsible' people getting things done. The final chapter, his discussion of the European Union (in part a posthumous composition), is similarly negative about the potential for democratic reform within it. Not because it is unique or lacking a citizenry, Mair argues, but simply because the EU's institutions were designed as an alternative to national democratic processes in the first place, and are therefore not amenable to reform towards such a system. At least, not without abolishing the democratic deficit 'at home' as well. This means recreating a politics based on representation, membership, and oppositionalism, rather than on electoralism, lobby group coalitions, and technocracy. But Mair remained until his untimely death sceptical that this could be achieved: as he suggested, the time of mass democracy may well be over.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a reason this book and its author are so highly lauded. Ruling the Void is a nuanced, well-supported and careful argument about what is happening to democratic governing bodies in the West, with particular attention to Europe. Very much worth reading, and very tragic that the author died so soon.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Politicians are opportunists, cynics clamouring after power for power's sake. The people are disillusioned, many pathologically distrustful. Some seem browbeaten by the hopelessness of it all, others manifest a learned indifference to a domain that seems to have long since eschewed any representative function. For many, the object of blame seems clear. The culprit is late-90s Third Way politics, its rhetorical strategies of triangulation, bringing power to the people by granting to markets what was once the role of government.

Yet Mair is not content laying the blame at the feet of a particular political dead-end. The question he poses is wider. How did we reach the state of affairs where such a political culture has become not only viable but for many the sole imaginable form of political organization? On the one hand, Third Way rhetoric was backed up by an array of specialist literature, in particular the growing field of democracy studies which flourished after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Nonetheless, Mair's text resists the urge to read all this as some kind of nefarious plot emanating from the academy. In democracy studies, he instead finds an attempt by political scientists to redefine democracy in such a way that it can more easily account for, cope with, and adapt to a climate wherein popular interest and engagement with politics are in apparently terminal decline.

One particular success of this emerging field was its firm establishment of a distinction between constitutional democracy for the people, and popular democracy by the people. Broadly speaking, the texts Mair summarises tend to privilege the former over the latter, de-emphasising electoral accountability in favour of formally de-politicized decision-making bodies – so-called 'non-majoritarian institutions' such as the EU, WTO, and the IMF. This intellectual tendency certainly granted legitimacy to the ongoing process of 'depoliticization' associated with the Third Way. Nevertheless, it did not create the climate in which such a distinction was deemed necessary. What, then, is the origin of the increasing alienation of the electorate?

Mair argues that it is the consequence of the decline of the political party as a mode of organization. He follows American political scientist Elmer Eric Schattschneider, for whom democracy was unthinkable without parties. Schattschneider posited that the survival of democracy guarantees the survival of parties, and vice versa. But surely this just defers the question, leading us to now ask why political parties are failing. Nonetheless, the political party is a concrete form of social organization, while democracy in the abstract is, as we have seen, imprecise and malleable. Focussing our attention on the party indicates the possibility of a stance from which we can gain a more empirically grounded insight into the sociological trends that inform the weakening of democratic accountability.

To begin with, Mair explores the relationship between a political party and its social constituency. The mass party emerged as enfranchisement became more widespread, and was set the task of representing electoral constituencies which were strongly homogeneous, organized, and partisan. However, it was the party form itself which facilitated their stabilization into collective political identities. Particular social institutions led to the formation of social collectivities which gradually developed into the closed social communities out of which the political community emerged. The impetus for this latter shift was impelled by the party institution, which, uniquely, stands 'at once representative and governor' (71), guaranteeing through its formal structure both representation –government by the people – and procedural legitimacy – government for the people.

In contemporary times, we find that the social base of these constituencies has contracted as a result of socio-economic and socio-cultural developments over the last thirty years. The breakdown of the Bretton Woods system, followed by the oil-price crisis, led to widespread deregulation and privatization. Thus began the tendency of delegating 'decision-making authority' regarding economic matters to 'ostensibly non-partisan bodies', adopting 'binding rules [...] which deny discretion to the government of the day' (50). No longer wielding meaningful control over a domestic economic environment enmeshed in a world economic system, governments quietly slipped into a new role as gatekeepers of the party-neutral management of the economy for production and distribution.

Yet political parties were not passive in this. To the contrary, this trend was accelerated by a loss of will on their part to resist the erosion of governmental control over domestic policy. With economic distribution no longer constituting the focus of policy, the left-right axis became increasingly bereft of the interpretive power it once had. Faced with a traditional constituency losing the foundation of its political identity, parties responded by attempting to broaden their appeal, thereby shedding the wider network of social groupings upon which they used to depend: trade unions, churches, business associations, and so on. Parties increasingly understood themselves to be self-sufficient, unrestricted by duties towards their membership or affiliates. The aforementioned economic shifts were further reinforced by the zeal of political parties to abandon the traditional space they occupied within wider society, through which the political articulation of a community would become manifest, and where political education would take place. Without such support, managerial politics and the global economic system were ascribed a mystifying complexity in the popular imaginary, allowing them to break free from the realm of popular understanding and hence scrutiny. Over the last thirty years, the representative functions of political parties have tended to fade into insignificance, while their procedural functions – the exigencies of governing – have been pushed to the forefront. Parties today are no longer the primarily social actors they used to be, having instead relocated to the heart of state power.

Mair defines effective party government as follows. A party or parties win control of the executive through competitive elections. It is by and through parties that political leaders are recruited. Parties offer voters clear alternatives in policy. Such policy is determined by the party or parties in the executive. Parties hold the executive accountable (60). What has changed? Parties still, generally speaking, win control of the executive through competitive elections. However, the leader is linked to the electorate in a more direct way, rather than mediated by the organisational structures of political parties. Accordingly, he or she is more likely to draw resources from external public institutions than from those of the party. Constrained by multinational institutions and uncertain over the constitution of its social base, the party itself proves increasingly unwilling to offer partisan policy alternatives. Differences between parties are levelled, resulting in 'an opposition of form rather than of content' (62). For Mair, this eventually culminates in the emergence of a new party organisation – the cartel party, an interpenetration of party and state. Technocratic fixes become the goal of politics, while inter-party competition focuses on the effective management of the polity and the provision of spectacle.

All of this provides context for Mair's closing discussion of the European Union, among the most eminent of the emerging political structures formed around a constitutional, procedural form of democracy. Despite providing various channels for electoral input, the EU is structured in such a way as to privilege institutional pluralism and reasoned decision-making over elections. The rationale states that its organs must be shielded from an excess of electorally-mandated input, which may threaten their working efficiency. In practice, the EU functions as 'a protected sphere in which policy making can evade the constraints imposed by representative democracy' (85). Yet the predominance of such a powerful institution has a further corrosive effect on domestic politics. Mair describes how the labyrinthine structures of the EU provide a medium through which domestic politicians can defer decision-making, avoiding contention in order to secure the broadest possible support amongst the electorate, gradually hollowing out the sphere of domestic party politics through which policy was once shaped with the goal of future implementation. In the meantime, acting in the name of an indeterminate demos yet secured against popular accountability, the EU is structurally alienated from conditions on the ground, turgidly bureaucratic and resistant to reform.

Could the EU be democratised? For Mair, the democratic deficit is an absolutely fundamental feature of the union. It has developed as it has in response to a crisis of democracy that preceded it, and therefore if the EU could be democratised, it would surely be unnecessary. Mair's unexpected death in 2011 means that it is impossible to know what he would have made of developments since this time. He notes in passing that resistance to 'Europeanization' in the United Kingdom has some sway over domestic politics, while on the continent such pockets of resistance are more typically confined to the fringes of European institutions themselves, where they have the least possibility of resulting in any fundamental change. However, the rise of various forms of anti-European populism across the continent seems to indicate that this is no longer the case. Some have written of the chilling nature of Mair's text for the ostensible reason that the increasing voiding of our politics seems to a large extent an unstoppable, self-perpetuating process. Yet the growth of these populisms may signal an unexpected new development. Ideologically heterogeneous, they may indicate the gradual re-emergence of an agonistic political space, but nonetheless find themselves pitted against deeply entrenched discursive orthodoxies, with the economic orthodoxy of the EU constituting one emblematic example. Whether this will result in a more favourable state of affairs remains to be seen, but Mair's text provides an invaluable tool to account for the historical trajectory that has led to the present moment.

[Samuel Brander]

Bleak reading about the end of the mass politics and model of popular democracy of 20th century Western Europe, and its gradual replacement by something else starting in the 1990s. The focus is very much on how the crisis of the political mass party leads to a crisis of democracy, because of the central role that parties (whether socialist, christian, agrarian and so on) played as intermediaries between their respective cohesive social constituencies, and party government or political power.

Mair's shows how since the end of the 20th century, parties have become increasingly distanced from society. Through a mutual withdrawal by electorates, on the one hand (into the private sphere), and by the political and party elites on the other hand (into governing institutions), parties become more like semi-official institutions, closely connected to the state. This takes the expression of declining participation in election, decreased party membership, and more chaotic voting patterns, across all Western European countries. Indifference to conventional democratic politics, in short. All this leads to a de-politicized, anti-ideological mode of governance and policymaking in the west (Tony Blair's politics of "what works"), in which the procedural aspect of democracy remains, but the representational side, rooted in civil society, dies out, which in sum means an enormous change in the way popular democracy has been understood in Europe since at least 1945.

In general I found the descriptions of the lively, self contained world of political parties, with their connected networks of civil society organisations (again, whether churches, trade unions, clubs etc.), very interesting. It suggests an all-encompassing political form of life, which is basically impossible to imagine today because of the individualism and escape into particularized forms of existence during neoliberalism, to put it bluntly. This is type of political activity and its meanings to those engaged in it in the age of mass politics, is something I might like to do research on one day myself, probably focusing on a party of the left in Europe after the war.

[Filip Wijnings · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic Jäger

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compelling. Many civil servants would benefit from reading it.

[Eren Buğlalılar · Rating 4 out of 5]

90'lı yıllar demokrasinin, demokratikleşmenin en çok konuşulduğu yıllar oldu. Bu dalga Türkiye'yi de etkiledi ve bir yandan hapishanede ölüm oruçları devam ederken, ne kadar da demokratik ve AB normlarına uyumlu hale gelmeye başladığımızı tartışır olduk.

Fakat bu yıllar eleştirel yazarların, siyasal muhalefetlerin, devrimci hareketlerin de demokrasinin dünya çapında darbeler aldığından şikayet ettiği yıllardı. Demokrasi getirecek denilenler olağanüstü haller ilan ettiler. Meydanlarda en çok demokrasi diye bağıranlar en anti-demokratik politikaları uyguladılar.

Peter Mair'e göre buradaki çelişki yalnızca görünüşte. 1990'dan itibaren Avrupa ve Amerika'da demokrasinin anlamının değiştirilmesi için kapsamlı bir ideolojik seferberlik başladı. Demokrasi, yurttaşın hükümet politikalarını seçim yoluyla belirlemesi olmaktan çıkartıldı ve "paydaş danışma toplantıları" sonucunda uzman kuruluşların, teknokratların yön verdiği hızlı, etkili bir yönetim sistemi haline getirildi.

Yazar kitabını tamamlayamadan yaşamını yitirmiş. Geriye bıraktığı kısımlar kitlelere nasıl adım adım siyasetten el çektirildiğini, sol ve sağ partilerin nasıl aynılaştığını ve aralarındaki seçim rekabetinin siyasal içerikten yoksun bir "futbol maçına ya da at yarışına" döndüğünü, oy verme kriterlerinin nasıl apolitikleştirildiğini anlatmış. Peter Mair meselenin özüne inebilecek Marksist bir bakıştan yoksun. Batı demokrasisinin kayboluşunu "çünkü siyasi partiler başarısız oldu" diyerek, kendisi de sınıf mücadelesinin sonucu olan bir nedene bağlamaya çalışıyor. Yine de, kitap burjuva demokrasilerinin boyalarının dökülmesine dair güzel bir teşhir olmuş.

[Scott Holstad · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was not what I initially expected, and certainly not what some nationalistic generalized stereotypes might have us believe. There is certainly enough to ensure many neolibs and various other liberal democrats remain somewhat anxious with this book upon its 2009 publication, I'd wager it might seem tamer and a lot more fitting and applicable a decade later now and that much of the book is directly applicable to so much undergoing change (or some would say "assault") from both within and without and there we have it, I guess.

Don't get me wrong. Things won't stay as they are in May 2024. On the contrary, I believe we are riding a transitory time throughout nearly all of the traditional western liberal democracies, and one in which several states have led or begun their somewhat predictable (and seeming impossible to contain to many) transition to/toward forms of autocracy ranging from a lightish model to those approaching stereotypical old school Soviet block-era militant dictatorships which have shown a willingness to rush toward Putin while thumbing their metaphorical nose at NATO and the west, yet while many are [newer] members of such. This is leading to inflamed passions within both politician and people with increasing fears of a regional tinderbox requiring very little to set off what could become "the worst" on a larger scale than even Mair might suggest, a big part of which has conceivably been triggered by Russia's Aleksandr Dugin-inspired Eurasianistic lethal hostility to the west and more recently to/within Ukraine, following Putin's actions in Crimea and Georgia, among others. (See my brief response to Dugin's classic Основы геополитики. Геополитическое будущее России [with a doubtless imperfect Russian-language translation effort on my part] -- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9....)

Or course Eurasianism is not truly original, though one might argue similarly about the western Modernists and their affiliates, foremost of whom would be Guénon and Evola, the latter of whom seems to annually grow in influence among many neo-Nazis and their ilk within traditional liberal democracies, perhaps most notably the United States. And despite the simplicity as well as possible gritting of teeth by various political philosophers over technical (and unintentional) ideological differences, I'm inclined to view Mair’s ideology (some of which seemed merely observational while his views on party democracy seemed to bear out until a perceived recent turnaround yet with some caveats) as having some influence with perception of that lot, with my emphasis on Benoist, Yockey, Sam Francis, and perhaps Oswald Spengler too. Indeed, I doubt I’m alone in viewing current Modernism as more likely to mirror Eurasianism than grossly differ and a primary action that potentially lends credence to that outlook lies in Steve Bannon’s “secret” meeting with Dugin in Egypt some years ago, the specific details of which remain unknown to many while the symbolism of such remains great.

Back to Mair, this book is known everywhere for its importance and influence and while I recognize that, as someone who is not a professional political scientist or philosopher, I’ve had to wander along on my own and in so doing have found others to be more germane to understanding the past century and efforts to remake nearly everything in the west for me personally, some of whom I’ve already mentioned. That said, I think this book is an important read for anyone interested such things and as such, I feel inclined to recommend it for those exploring these ideological and political movements, etc. Cautiously, four stars.

[Jasper Le Comte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting read, glad I finally finished it! This book was recommended on De Morgen's politics podcast, Lopende Zaken (just rebranded to 'Het is maar politiek'!), and I'm glad I picked it up. It makes a lot of interesting points on voter disengagement, the functioning and effects of the 21st-century party system, and the workings and democratic deficit of the EU. That said, this is a book that could well be required reading for a political science course at uni, and it shows 😅

It's not that the points and arguments being made are insanely complex, although you are presupposed to know the basics of parlimentary democracy and the functioning of the EU. What made it a tricky read for me at times is that a lot of the arguments are quite nuanced, while also being quite abstract. Mair does use some examples, but almost exclusively to provide data, not necessarily to illustrate or make an abstract point more concrete. Admittedly, I can see how that wouldn't always be easy, but I am convinced an extra sentence or two here and there to clarify sentences with abstract vocabulary like polity, disengagement, etc. would have done wonders.

This, however, is not a pop science book, and should not be treated as such. As you can clearly see from the formatting, language, and extensive use and citation of sources (so the last thirty pages were 'free' reading, thanks to the bibliography ;) ) this is essentially a hefty academic article. Did that make this easy, breezy reading? Absolutely not. You really can't let your mind wander at all and you need to give it your full attention if you want to really grasp the many points, concepts and nuances Mair conveys. Did reading this book make me feel super smart, sophisticated and refined? You betcha :P

All in all: an interesting, albeit perhaps a little dated read (Mair passed away in 2011) that is nonetheless still very relevant and will be of interest to anyone looking to dig deeper and understand some of the complex inner machinations of the European political systems. Oh, and bonus sophistication points if you read this while listening to a soundtrack like the Oppenheimer or Queen's Gambit soundtracks ;)

[Rianne Heartfilia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ruling the Void has been split into an introduction and four chapters. Mair explains in the introduction what the problems is with the democracy in the twenty-first century, he talks about an indifference because of a widening gap between rulers and ruled, but also about the fact that decision-making is no longer done by institutions or governments that are directly picked by the citizens of countries. The decision-making process is done on the level of the European Union, with the Commission making the proposal and the Parliament and Council deciding if it will be approved or not. The description Mair gives of the distance because this makes a lot of sense to me. The way he writes it, even with assumptions to be able to understand the situation all equally and thus being able to make a clear point about the consequences of the two important problems. Mair states that he “assumes that withdrawal and disengagement are symptomatic to a growing indifference to conventional politics.” Which is the exact description of the problems with which Mair start, indifference and disengagement. Mair immediately explains how he came up with the assumptions, which is based on the number of votes in the past decades, the tables that Mair displays are the voting percentages from the 1950s to 2009.

In the voting tables, it is clearly visible that there is a steady decline in all countries considering the percentages of volatility. Mair explains that this has to do with a couple of things, such as party loyalty, which is something I realize as well. It is not common anymore to be loyal to one specific party and that means that some voters pick a different political party every time they have to vote. It also means that political parties keep shifting through their campaigns to just get the most votes, not particularly standing for one specific meaning anymore such as in the 1960s. Mair continues this discussion about party members and political parties in the second chapter of the book, wherein clear tables the percentages of the electoral participation, volatility and party membership is visible. This is not the first time that Mair wrote about the change in electoral participation. In 1999 Mair wrote another book about the Party System Change and how parties try to gain and keep their own momentum, how the party system tries to survive in the modern form of democracy and thus the idea of how to change the party system in case it is necessary. The book of 2013, Ruling the Void, might be the answer on the question if it is necessary considering the declining of the electoral volatility. Looking at the list of books that Mair wrote, he seems to especially focus on the idea of the party system, political parties and the effect of the modern democracy on that. Which is also shown with the question “Do Parties Matter?” With the question, if it is needed to be able to control the responsibilities that a country has or keeps even when there is an institution within the European Union as well as the question if there is a social need for parties within the country. This can be compared to as the specific words that Mair uses; the supply side of a party as well as the demand side.
The supply side from the political parties mostly has to do with the partisan policy-making, this determines whether parties make a difference. The difference depends on the change of circumstances of the party differences, a left-right opposition still plays a major role in this policy-making. Depending on who has the highest authoritative in the coalition, depends on what kind of supply the parties can give. The demand side is linked to the electoral level. The idea of what “the social constituencies of political parties in constitutional democracies have distinctive preferences and successfully feed the process of policy formation with these preferences as well as that the policy orientations of political parties broadly mirror the preferences of their social constituencies.” Meaning that the parties need to keep in mind what would be beneficial for the society and also point out that the demos, the voters, know that as well. It is linked with each other hence the word demand, it is the request of what the social constituencies need.

The book builds up with the setting of the decline in voting for many countries in the European Union as well as the discussion of the popular politics idea of populism, where Mair starts with the names of the leaders of such parties in a group of countries within the EU. The last chapter of the book speaks about Popular Democracy and the European Union polity. There is the problem with the EU that there is the question about political influence, there is no direct way that the voters and EU citizens can tell their opinions. The influence that they have is by either making an appointment with the European Commission, which is not frequently done or what does have effect but less weight of their own voices is voting for the European Parliament. Except that voting for the European Parliament is not going that well either considering the tables with votes percentages that Mair gave in the first chapter. The highest turnouts for the European Elections were in the 1970s to 1999, with a steady decline every election.

What surprised me is that these statistics are not mentioned in the book, does this not add up to the void of western democracy? Especially considering that this is exactly what Mair mentioned in the first few chapters, the decline of people voting for their national elections. Based on the idea of statistics and how in my opinion, Mair seems to be rather neutral about the whole concept and the void of this western democracy, the last chapter seems to do the exact opposite. Considering that in the first part of chapter 4, Mair immediately starts with that the conventional forms of democracy and representative government are difficult to apply at the level of the EU and might make it so that the Union is not even entirely necessary. Apart from stating it like this in a short sentence, he seems to be sceptic about the aspect of the EU and calling it non-democratic, falling within the category of being a Eurosceptic himself, even if Mair adds that Euroscepticism would also be about the scepticism and opposition towards our own national institutions and modes of governance. Especially because it is at the instant of the first chapter that the negative view of the European Union comes to mind. The book itself is written in a good set up, starting from the introduction to the explanation of what void he means and what the importance of the parties are. However, the last chapter with the change of demeanour as well as leaving out statistics that I think would matter, makes it a rather quick end.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ruling the Void : The Hollowing Out of Western Democracy (2013) by Peter Mair looks at how political party membership is declining, electoral turnouts are declining and how major political parties are losing influence. Mair was European Professor of Political science.

The book has a focus on the decline in Europe but something similar has happened over much of the developed world. Mair also writes about how the EU Parliament is interacting with the states within the EU and is arguably reducing popular political participation even further.

Mair describes how bodies of experts such as the ECB and others usurping more and more of the function of government. This is feeding into a disaffection of people with their parties and may also result in parties being more tools of political apparatchiks.

Ruling the Void is an interesting look into how democracies are changing and possibly declining. It’s well worth a read.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good Overview of the EU and Democracy

The author writes about how Western Democracy has been hollowed out since the early 1990s. He especially looks at the formation of the EU and how its charter was created political parties to be undemocratic and eventually ignored it. I think it exposes lot of problems the EU is experiencing but also the US. Elites and private entities have more power than governments do. Good book.

[Dante]

like Jacques Ranciere for people who care about 'evidence' and 'data' (joking, kind of). A seemingly venerated text, understandable given the concision and clarity of argument.

[Leif · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, first things - this is a posthumous volume and it collects some essays as well as fragments of a book. Thus, there isn't the kind of throughlines or modern armature that might comfort a modern reader.

But how trenchant, how prescient, how important now where one can begin to count the number of truly functioning democracies with fewer and fewer digits - and after witnessing, most importantly, the oligarchic takeover sponsored by technofeudalists jealously capturing what remains of the commons for their platform-based attention prisons.

[Finlay · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic book that clearly lays out the symptoms of a decline in democracy, the changes to civil society that have engendered this, and the potential changes to our current settlement of mass party democracy that are to come.

[Wise_owl · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting little book, if one that is probably only of interest to those invested in political science or history.

Ruling the Void is essentially about two observed trends and how they impact European democracies. These are the disengagement of the population from democratic processes(i.e. voting) and party politics in general(the erosion of party membership and identification); and the near simultaneous retreat of elites from popular participation and towards non-democratic forms of governance. The European Union is held up as an obvious example, where facets of the Union constrain the options available to democratically elected governments and indeed to the Union itself.

Mair posits that these two things are not distinct, but related phenomenon in which the divorcement of the masses from the political apparatus means politicians become a class unto themselves, with their own interests divorced from prior party democracy norms. He contrasts the 1950's, in which you might have parties with vastly different policies, to the slow hollowing of those parties toward some sort of errant 'centrisim', now being attacked by right and left wing populism because the 'traditional' parties can't, or won't, operate outside of those narrow bounds.

One quote stood above others for me in this book, to paraphrase "If we consider the State and the citizenry to be two distinct entities the Party use to be the way the Citizenry talked and influenced the State, and now the Party is the way that State talks to and influences the Citizenry."

[Simon Copland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really fascinating read on the growing disillusionment in politics -- both from our population and the political class. Lays out the foundation for 'anti-politics' extremely well. Would have liked some additional work both on why this is happening and why this is a good (I think) or bad thing. Some greater critique of the modern state would be good. But enjoyed this book!

[Woody R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book to be well-written and thought-provoking, despite disagreeing with some of its core ideas.

The book’s main thesis is that liberal democracy, particularly the one associated with mass parties, is being hollowed out by a set of circumstances: the rise of external institutions (such as the EU, the WTO, the UN, and so on), along with their increased complexity; the liberalization of capital flows; the preference for technocratic governance to the detriment of clear political choices; and the entrenchment of mainstream political parties in power. To support his thesis, Mair refers to various data, such as the loss of party membership (Table 4 of Chapter 1), record-high levels of volatility from 1950 to 2009 (Table 2 of Chapter 1), and record-low levels of turnout from 1950 to 2009 (Table 1 of Chapter 1). The worst performances have been recorded between the mid-nineties and the early 2000s, when the process of “hollowing out” began.

According to Mair, the most striking example of technocratic governance and democratic hollowing out is the European Union, whose institutions are outlined in Chapter 4 (which, in my opinion, is the most important one). He argues that “the EU should not be seen as particularly exceptional or sui generis, but rather as a political system constructed by national political leaders as a protected sphere in which policy-making can evade the constraints imposed by representative democracy.” This is due to the overlap of different competences among the European Parliament (which, for Mair, is important in policy-making but has limited say over the appointment of the executive and the constitutional structure), the European Commission, and the national governments. According to Mair, the “opposition” to the institutionalization of Europe comes from the Parliament, not from the executive, meaning that citizens effectively have no control over the policies emanating from the executive. Another contributing factor to the “hollowing out” process is the harmonization of national policies, which can diminish the influence of national political parties.

Now, while I do think that Mair has some valid points, I don’t believe he’s right in everything. He omits the fact that making bold political decisions has become increasingly difficult. Politicians from the “golden age of democracy” (from the forties to the eighties) didn’t have to worry about issues like climate change (which has only been considered a serious problem in the last decade), housing (since there was much more free land available), or rising “dependency ratios” (due to a significantly smaller aging population). They also mostly had fast-growing economies in their hands (as there was more catching up to do), meaning they could spend tax money more freely. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case anymore.

Currently, a large portion of European countries’ budgets goes to old-age spending, demand for housing is rising (which is mostly in the hand of well-off baby boomers), and house prices are climbing. At the same time, the free flow of capital (a point Mair makes in the first chapter) has made taxing the rich more difficult—despite capital always being easier to move than labor. Cutting entitlements is deeply unpopular with voters, as is building more housing (both public and private). Raising taxes on the rich (which would involve harmonizing capital gains taxes with income taxes) is seen as quite difficult, as it would require greater global consensus on tax policy. This means politicians often resort to empty promises and almost zero governance.

In this regard, I also disagree with Mair’s view on the heavy reliance on technocrats. At least in my country, Italy, politicians only supported technocrats when the situation was bad (macroeconomically speaking). However, after the crisis subsided, they cast aspersions on them in the next electoral cycle. A good example of this is Elsa Fornero, the architect of the 2012 pension reform, who became a target for many parties, with most of them pushing to repeal or weaken her reform (which, in an aging country like Italy, I wouldn’t consider to be a “fact-based” policy).

Moreover, I would have liked to see more discussion on the effects of mass media on the weakening of traditional mass parties—something akin to Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death. Additionally, some of the points on electoral participation haven’t aged as well. For example, electoral participation has actually risen in countries like Germany and France, where the political system is both deadlocked around “mainstream” parties and challenged by right-wing populist parties (such as the RN and AfD).

However, despite all of this, I still enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone interested in understanding the decline in participation in contemporary politics.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I know European nations tended to have more parties and often have a more parliamentary form, I'm largely unfamiliar with Mair's other focuses. Some of his academic presentation may have contributed to finding less clarification. As best as I understood, his explanations seemed hollow inside.

The book deals with how politicians / parties relate to carrying out government functions and/or acting as public representatives; and how / why the electorate do/don't participate in parties / elections. He discusses this in terms of national governments and international bodies such as the European Union.

He talks of the public disengaging from politics, and politicians disengaging from being representatives. Often, it seemed he viewed these as 2 trends independently starting at a similar time (and then contributing to each other.) He says it's mutual, but later statements could be interpretted as s stronger role by politicians... The way it's presented, I'm not sure if I was reading my own view into this or his academic form simply made the conclusion less pronounced. Mair says this process included politicians becoming more inclined to seek higher offices, but I didn't grasp a cause for such a change being presented. He doesn't provide demographic analysis on whether some groups disengaged earlier / more extensively than others - perhaps, providing clues to causes. Trends mentioned later in the book might be suspected of influencing changes in the public and politicians, but I'm unsure Mair felt it's the underlying cause...

He says that globalization seems to have restricted options nations have for following their own economic policies. He says welfare policies have become less progressive, and moves to deregulation and privatization follow. He notes the growing tendency for international bodies (explicitly or implicitly international business organizations) to have decision-making powers. It can be an economic bloc (such as the European Union), the IMF, World Trade Organization, free trade partnerships, etc. He doesn't delve much below this surface.

when discussing why the European Union was designed with less elements of popular democracy, he presents 3 possible reasons. He favors the idea that popular democracy became incompatible with the needs of "policymakers." "Policymaker" hasn't been used / defined much. If he means policians, is this their need for salary, benefits or other compensation? Does he mean voters oppose spending for, say, infrastructure, so politicians fund it in ways voters don't have a say? He's talking about the EU, so the decisions could be more like those of international bodies linked to free trade pacts which may face popular opposition. In that case, do the "needs" of "policymakers" refer to policies that benefit multinational companies at the expense of working people? I didn't feel this was clarified.

There's a section in which he says European parties have become less dependent on traditional sources of support and now get more support from government sources. Readers interested in more public funding of candidates in the US may want to learn more about what kinds of government support European politicians have received and what effects that has had on European politics.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting, if incomplete, book on political parties, or party democracy, to be more specific. Mair more or less approvingly quotes Elmer Eric Schattshneider, who wrote in 1942:

The rise of political parties is indubitably one of the principal distinguishing marks of modern government. The parties, in fact, have played a major role as makers of governments, more especially they have been the makers of democratic government. It should be stated flatly at the outset that this volume is devoted to the thesis that the political parties created democracy and that modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of parties. As a matter of fact, the condition of the parties is the best possible evidence of the nature of any regime. The most important distinction in modern political philosophy, the distinction between democracy and dictatorship, can be made best in terms of party politics. The parties are not therefore merely appendages of modern government, they are in the center of it and play a determinative and creative role in it.

Mair states, however, this era of mass parties, where citizens unite in common interests to form a government that is structurally for the people and by the people, is conclusively over. Schattshneider later updated his theory of party democracy with what he called a "realist's view," and concluded that the best citizens can really get from a competitive party democracy was "semi-sovereignty." But now, Mair states not only have citizens turned away from politics, but politicians have turned away from citizens, and concludes that "even semi-sovereignty is slipping away, and that the people, or the ordinary citizenry, are becoming effectively non-sovereign." Many trends are analyzed to make his case, but the reasons behind this phenomenon are not explored very far in this text. And towards the end he even admits he has no idea how to fix it.

So their are problematic parts of this book, but they at least in part due to the fact the author unexpectedly died after having written only about half of it. Originally it was going to be seven chapters, but after Mair passed the editor shrunk it to five, and grafted a few parts from other texts Mair had written (albeit fairly seamlessly) in order to flesh out some of his key concepts.

With all that in mind, I found Mair's point of view both informative and compelling, and this text an excellent introduction to his work (which I am quite interested in reading more of).

[Louis Devine · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The age of party democracy has passed. Although the parties themselves remain, they have become so disconnected from wider society, and pursue a form of competition so lacking in meaning, that they no longer seem capable of sustaining democracy in its present form."

What an opener! I had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately, they were let down.

Mair contends that ordinary citizens and political elites have mutually "withdrawn" from one another. As a result, political parties that used to be a bridge between civil society and the state have become hollowed out. They exist today more as apparatuses of the state, whose sole purpose is to govern rather than represent the people.

Mair presents an overwhelmingly body of evidence that suggests declining interest in conventional electoral politics. Voter turnout is down. Party membership is down. Party identification is down. All these trends can be observed uniformly across multiple countries.

And yet Mair offers little to no explanation as to *why* this is occurring. Ruling the Void is about as empirical as social science can get.

This would be fine if the book was intended merely as observational data. But it is not. Mair clearly views these trends as concerning, but he lacks the broader theoretical framework to explain why. Facts do not speak for themselves.

Moreover, his analysis is not very applicable to Australia, which (mostly) retains a traditional two-party system - although admittedly this shows signs of weakening.
Compulsory voting has also prevented the drop in turnout seen elsewhere.

Where I most disagree with Mair though, is his thinly veiled criticism of left-wing parties for becoming "government-seeking" parties rather than oppositional movements that seek to represent specific interests.

If you don't get into power, your representation is inept and worthless. The Australian Labor Party learnt this lesson in the 1970s:

"Some elements of the Party were happier to lose and remain pure than win and accomplish reform. Some in our movement would settle for nothing rather than power. Therefore, that's what millions of Australians had. Nothing."

[Rhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ruling the Void shows how the decline of mass-party politics is a dialectic (or at least a non-virtuous spiral) of the shift from representative democracy to regulative democracy. The electorate has less and less interest to participate in political parties because they are not represented or can see no difference in the parties; and the parties, seeking a position of power, broadens and shallows their platform to appeal to greater spans of the electorate, thus making it less interesting to the electorate. Mair argues that the elite, meanwhile try to maintain the pretense of democracy, but are equally disinterested in maintaining an active party as they become more directed towards regulatory and arms-length government bodies. In the end, says Mair, there is a mutual distancing from the mass political party. Mair asks (rhetorically?) if this is the end of democracy.

"The safe havens that are being sought in the wake of the passing of the mass party may be different; the withdrawal is mutual, however, and this is the conclusion that needs to be most clearly underlined. It is not that the citizens are disengaging and leaving hapless politicians behind, or that politicians are retreating and leaving voiceless citizens in the lurch. Both sides are withdrawing, and hence rather than thinking in terms of a linear sequence in which one of the movements leads to the other, and hence in which only one side is assumed to be responsible for the ensuing gap – the crude populist interpretation – it makes much more sense to think of a process of mutual reinforcement. The elites are inclined to withdraw to the institutions as a defence against the uncertainties of the electoral market."

[Patrick Unwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally made the time to get through this - definitely not bedtime reading, but well worth a read for anyone interested in politics. The early sections dealing with electoral turnout and volatility are quite data heavy, but there are some interesting insights throughout. It builds to a great conclusion on the EU - as both cause and symptom for democratic decline. In Mair's view, the biggest threat isn't an authoritarian or populist bogeyman but our own pervasive apathy and disengagement. I'm not sure about the argument that higher electoral volatility points to declining popular engagement with politics. Voters definitely seem to be becoming more fickle, but maybe this is just a different type of engagement from the mass politics of the 20th century. Steadfast attachment to a party at the ballot box certainly points to loyalty and partisan feeling, but blind loyalty in of itself could also mean a lack of critical engagement. There is an interesting mention of the development of the 'catch-all' party, exchanging effectiveness in depth for a wider audience and immediate electoral success - I immediately thought of the 2019 and 2024 general elections - which I would like to learn more about.

[Emily Eller · Rating 4 out of 5]

class reading in the first book I’ve actually read in a while and it was pretty interesting and insightful. It was a little hard for me to fully understand the theories presented in section 4 because I’m not from the EU and I don’t have the full history so it is a bit more difficult for me to retain.

I did find the section on how parties and citizens voting and having a say in politics to not be able to work in the EU because it’s too spread out and it wouldn’t function. Since moving to the Netherlands, I’ve been thinking a lot about a similarities and differences between countries and each country feels like a different state in the the US in that the US is roughly the same size as the EU, the states are the same size as the countries, and I would say each state really has its own culture that could be comparable to living in other countries, but I digress. It was very interesting to hear how a citizen voted representative government would be very difficult for the EU and it just made me think about the problems facing the United States today with our democracy crumbling.

overall, I really enjoyed this reading, even though it was so difficult to actually sit down and read as a PDF and not a physical book

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started off much more intriguingly than it concluded, for sure. Arguably, the book's form and content could/would have been different if it had been completed before his death, so there is a bit of hedging on any major critique from me. Still, the main take I have is this: As hard to believe as it may be for those who tend to believe democracy is best, I am a firm believer that those who have power, had power, and seemingly will have it for the foreseeable future have always had merely their own selfish interests at heart. The system of democracy may look benign from the outside, but remember this, a very select few ever see ANY of the inner workings os the system they are so quick to praise. One could even argue that the over-lauded benefits of democracy - rights, freedoms, etc. - are mere slag from a system meant to maintain solid, long-term control of the majority of the citizens of the world. Call me a cynic if you must. But ask yourself why the same people (White, Male, Wealthy, "christian") are still in control of the systems of government, business, and law hundreds of years after their introduction into human society...

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an American with little understanding of EU politics, this book was enlightening. The concept of the EU was not clear to me until later in the book, but the break down of democracy was present early. The author did discuss American politics in comparison to the EU a little, but I think this another book until itself.

The structure could have been more clearly defined in the beginning and the facts and figures comparing the different countries in the EU were informative, but the most important part discussing how democracy relates in EU politics was not until the end of the book.

Some of the issues with representation and citizens are similar to those in the US and heavily demonstrated in the most recent US presidential election. I enjoyed reading Mair's remedies and thinking of how these can be applied to American politics.

[Alberto Strummer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sin aportar nada nuevo a nivel teórico, es una buena aproximación desde la ciencia política a la crisis de desafección política de principios de siglo. Un ensayo que apoyándose en múltiples estadísticas explica el alejamiento de la ciudadanía occidental de la participación pública.

Lo más interesante es la comparativa histórica que hace y el desarrollo de los datos a lo largo de las últimas décadas, es el principal sustento de sus tesis.

Sus grandes errores se encuentran en las predicciones que hace de cara al futuro, pues tras la crisis de 2008 el panorama que surgió es bastante diferente al que él dibuja.

Pd.: este caballero debía tener un ego por las nubes, la mayoría de las citas que realiza son de estudios propios!

[Johann Lensing · Rating 3 out of 5]

So wichtig das Buch für das Verstehen der politischen Entwicklung vor der Euro-Schuldenkrise ist, so sehr lässt es Perspektiven vermissen, die für die Repolitisierung nach 2012 gilt. Mairs Perspektive ist die eines Parteienforschers und als solcher betrachtet er die Faktenlage. Die Schlüsse die er zieht, mögen richtig sein, und doch vermisse ich die Einbeziehung anderer Dimensionen in seine Erklärung, wie die Rolle der Medien und der Veränderungen in der politischen Ökonomie. Gleichzeitig muss man anerkennen, wie sehr das Buch auch ein Produkt des Herausgebers ist und ich frage mich, wie anders es gewesen wäre, wenn Mair es noch hätte beenden können.

[Viktor Sidorov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Mair is claiming about parties and mass politics decline in western democarcies. People are leaving "politics" and politicians are isolated from people in political institutions. Mair provides clear empirical evidence on this.

Far-right populism arise from that "empty politics". If elites could not find the way to mobilize people - populist would do.

The final part of the book is about EU. Institutional design of EU is the best example of non-majoritarian (non-political) institutions.