Democracy: participation to passivity - can things change?

Event Name Democracy: participation to passivity - can things change?
Start Date 1st Jul 2008 6:00pm
End Date 1st Jul 2008 7:30pm
Duration 1 hour and 30 minutes
Description Our panel includes: Paul Ginsborg, Professor of Contemporary European History, University of Florence, Peter Oborne, political commentator, Catherine Fieschi, director, Demos and Richard Reeves, writer, commentator and author of John Stuart Mill - Victorian Firebrand (Altlantic, 2007).

Chair: Matthew Taylor, chief executive, RSA

Political parties have lost swathes of members and effective power is ever more concentrated in the hands of their leaders. Behind these trends lie changing relationships between economics, the media and politics.

Electoral spending has spiralled out of all control, with powerful economic interests exercising undue influence. The "level playing field", on which democracy's contests have supposedly been fought, has become ever more sloping and uneven. In many 'democratic' countries, media coverage, especially that of television, is heavily biased. Electors become viewers and active participation gives way to mass passivity.

Can things change? By going back to the roots of democracy and examining the relationship between representative and participatory democracy, political historian Paul Ginsborg shows that they can and must.