Originally posted by schmeichel01
No one else has any oppinions, when I can be arsed Ill share my rather long oppinion.
Rhizome? anyone?
Sorry, been away camping on a beach for a week....
Anyway, has participation in politics become a minority activity...
Well, at first glance I guess it could be said that participation has lessened somewhat at the grassroots level of political parties since the primary reason for their existence, the 'class war', has effectively been won in favour of capitalists. Seriously, the political parties we are familiar with in most western democracies were for most of the twentieth century formed along class lines, wiht one speaking in favour of labour and the other in favour of commerce and land owners. Although the brits have to stuff this up by having large numbers of blue collar workers voting Conservative... but never mind, the basic premise still stands.
But since the class struggle has lessened somewhat, politics has become more diverse, especially with the rise of 'middle class' movements such as environmental, peace and the like. People no longer identify themselves in strictly class based terms, especially since service industries have increased in numbers as manufacturing and primary industry has been shipped off to the developing world. And the rise of environmental groups has been translated into an overtly political movement with the formation of green parties etc...
But has participation outside of voting become a minority activity? Well, I don't really know about that.... because much of the political activity that was once undertaken in the service of political parties, whether labour-based or conservatives, now takes place in groups that might not be aligned to political parties but is nonetheless political in nature.... I am thinking here of the massive numbers of people who protested against the war in Iraq, or the large numbers of people who attend protests at IMF and World Bank meetings and the like... these are large numbers of people taking part in a political movement.... also all the volunteers who do work for Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, or maintain websites centred on politics or people who participate in online forums... these are all political activities, they are just not expressed in terms of political parties and parliamentary representation...
Anyway, I guess it could also be argued people increasingly choose to abstain simply because they don't really see the choice... over the last 20 - 30 years the media, which is meant to be the institution that keeps a check on political power, has increasingly failed to do just that, being consolidated into the ownership of a few wealthy businessmen and preferring to focus on sensationalism at the expense of information. Thank god for the web.... but the fact remains most people get their news from tv, and that is simply disgraceful in its content. Except for maybe the BBC world service...
Also, most places remian dominated by two major political parties, but they have increasinly 'lost' the electorate and people don't feel they are represented by the 2 big parties anymore... and that is why i favour proportional representation, which we have had for 8 years now, because there are a larger number of voices and people can see their votes are useful in making up the parliament... we currently have 7 parties in parliament from across the spectrum... from the greens to a bunch of right wing nutters....
anyway, thats ebough for now... in conclusion, I guess I wouldn't see it as becoming a minority activity, just that the activities now occur in domains outside of the influence of political parties.... if I think of anything else I will add it...
but Labor is my general preference 
but that was funny 
