Abstract John Boswell examines in an innovative way the forms of ‘survival politics’ that people adopt in dealing with the administrative state, and demonstrates that its failings feed into the wider contemporary sense of disillusionment with government and politics. Drawing on my experience as a town councillor, I observe that people can and do mobilise and participate effectively when local government plans affect them negatively. Nonetheless, I accept that there is widespread alienation from the state in all its manifestations, participatory as well as administrative. Some of Boswell's solutions for addressing the problem of lack of effective participation by the meek are convincing, but I question his interpretation of populism as disengagement. Populist parties have succeeded in raising voter turnout: a mundane indication of democratic renewal. The challenge is to understand the appeal of Reform UK better and extract the positive lessons for democratic politics.

The Chilcot report set out in detail its finding that the Blair Government had been prone to groupthink in its decision-making processes when leading Britain into the Iraq War. Subsequent British prime ministers have been in no hurry to change their style of governing in ways that might broaden decision-making circles and introduce the ‘challenge’ that Chilcot said had been lacking. This article draws on the literature on the psychology of group decision-making to examine the extent to which groupthink remains embedded in the processes of cabinet government in the UK. The article argues that the strongest driver of groupthink is the psychological disposition towards conflict of individual prime ministers. Drawing on interviews with ministers, civil servants and special advisers we suggest that the political authority of the prime minister interacts with their psychological predisposition towards debate to encourage groupthink, polythink or a more positive style of ‘vigilant’ decision-making.

Some political economists explain the apparent downplaying of the importance of economic issues in political events such as Brexit with reference to the growing anger or despair people on low incomes feel about the economy. This ‘everyday political economy’ article draws on an ethnographic study conducted between 2016 and 2018 with residents of an English city to explore what people think about the phenomenon of the economy. It reveals significant differences in how interested high- and low-income participants are in the economy and its role as a bedrock for welfare. Low-income participants are more negative about the economy, particularly contesting politicians’ claims that it is distinct from the human sphere, when they view it as controlled by the rich. However, reasoning is based on post-2008 crisis economic conditions, and any lack of interest in the economy may be more calculative and temporary than is often assumed.

This introduction to the everyday economy collection provides a brief summary of the concept as advanced by Julie Froud, Karel Williams and their collaborators at Manchester's Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, followed by an overview of articles by Anna Coote, Tess Lanning and Rachel Laurence, Sarah Longlands, Alex Colas and Jason Edwards, David Edgerton, Christine Berry, Luke Raikes and Anna Killick.

The everyday economy approach has influenced key members of Labour's economic team, notably Rachel Reeves. One potential benefit of the everyday economy approach is that it advocates changing how voters perceive the economy by making it connect to social and environmental goals. Voters, many of whom feel alienated from the material economy measured by indicators like gross domestic product (GDP) that politicians tend to refer to, might find everyday economic language more appealing. However, analysis of qualitative research on how voters see the economy suggests Labour should be cautious about attempting to replace terms like 'economy' and 'growth' with everyday economy terms like 'liveability'. Instead, the party should fight the Conservatives on economic competence using conventional economic terms.

The Political QuarterlyVolume 92, Issue 3 p. 393-395 Introduction The Politics of Power and of Support: Introduction to an Andrew Gamble Inspired Special Section on the Conservative Party Anna Killick, Search for more papers by this authorDeborah Mabbett, Corresponding Author d.mabbett@bbk.ac.uk Search for more papers by this author Anna Killick, Search for more papers by this authorDeborah Mabbett, Corresponding Author d.mabbett@bbk.ac.uk Search for more papers by this author First published: 27 July 2021 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.13040Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume92, Issue3July–September 2021Pages 393-395 RelatedInformation

Anna Killick draws on an ethnographic study with residents of an English city in the two years following the referendum to explore what people think about ‘the economy’. She finds that low-income residents are less interested in and more negative about the phenomenon of the economy compared with high income residents. However, their reasoning is based on post-2008 economic conditions, and any lack of interest in the economy may be more calculative and temporary than is often assumed.

Why are houses so expensive? Is our banking system going to collapse again? Should we be worried that robots are going to take all our jobs? And just what exactly is the economy anyway? Economists and politicians would have you believe it is a rarified topic best left to ‘the experts’. The experts are wrong.

This chapter interprets the four preceding findings chapters. It outlines a divergence between the high-income district understanding of 'the economy', which can be described as formal and related to the mainstream politicians' approach to 'the economy' as a neutral term for impersonal forces on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the more substantivist version that emerges from the low-income district of 'the economy' as 'rigged' and more closely related to human relations. Low-income participants mention social groups, particularly 'the rich', far more than high-income participants in talk about 'the economy'. The chapter explores whether gender, age, political beliefs or education shape underlying understanding of 'the economy', concluding that they do in some respects but that income or experiences of 'the economy' have a stronger impact. Further research would need to be undertaken to test these findings and probe why participants with similar underlying understanding of 'the economy' often go on to support different economic policies. Explanations for the deeper distrust among low-income participants outlined in Chapter 6 are considered, with some support for the thesis that distrust is rooted in negative experiences of 'the economy' and that some experts are 'out of touch'.

‘Place-based explanations’ of politics in the U.K. tell sweeping narratives about ‘Two Englands’, or of sizeable regions of the country that have been ‘Left Behind’, reinforcing popular accounts of a North–South or city-town divide. We introduce the concept of nested deprivation – deprivation that may occur in just one housing estate or even one row of flats within neighbourhoods that are otherwise affluent. We report on intensive fieldwork in 8 neighbourhoods varying in relative affluence and density of population (including urban, suburban/satellite, market town or rural village). Three key themes and consequences emerge for those living in nested deprivation in relatively affluent and geographically dispersed contexts: (a) either disconnection from or entrapment within the local economy; (b) social isolation and atomisation; and (c) powerlessness to affect politics. ‘Place-based’ explanations of rapid and radical changes to political participation in Britain need to take fine-grained geographical distinctions much more seriously. Our study provides evidence that the rising tides in affluent areas are drowning some residents rather than lifting all boats. Where deprivation is dispersed and then nested within mostly affluent constituencies it does not allow for the political mobilisation among communities of interest that is a necessary condition for pluralist representative democracies.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of understandings of the term ‘the economy’ in political contexts. Political scientists have always debated how important ‘the economy’ is to voters, with a strong strand of argument during the Brexit process that some voters must be foregrounding their non-economic goals. However, political scientists often take what the term actually means to people for granted. They assume most people will interpret ‘the economy’ as neoclassical economists do, as a neutral term for impersonal forces, which is also reflected in analysis of mainstream politicians’ speeches during and since the referendum. The chapter makes the case for political ethnographic empirical research to explore underlying understanding of the term. It outlines some more substantivist approaches to ‘the economy’, such as in the Polanyian tradition, which view ‘the economy’ as more rooted in human relations. The chapter previews the main finding from the empirical research in the rest of the book: that there is an income divide in how people understand the term ‘the economy’. It flags up the implications of that finding for how we categorise what is economic when studying political behaviour. It ends with a plan of the book.

This chapter draws on sections of the fieldwork interviews about debt, government spending and taxation. It outlines the dominant strand in political economic writing which explains acceptance of austerity in the immediate years after the 2008 financial crisis as based on a 'common sense' moral revulsion for debt. The findings reveal low-income participants do not share the strong moral opposition to debt of higher-income ones. The 'household debt analogy' does not resonate with them. They tend to fear personal debt, do not see government debt as a serious problem, and feel bitter about the effects of austerity. Across both districts there is some common opposition to tax avoidance and the perceived low burden of tax on the rich. The chapter also suggests political economic writers who assume voters support simple ideas should do more research into what people do actually find to be simple; participants in this study did not appear to find neo-Keynesian ideas about debt less simple than the pro-austerity narrative, as is often suggested.

This thesis is a political interpretivist ethnographic study of everyday actors’ understanding of the term ‘the economy’. Political scholars have neglected this subject despite its central relevance; often treating the economy as if it is an uncontested concept. I conducted fieldwork with sixty residents from two contrasting districts in a city on the south coast of England between 2016 and 2017. When people are asked to define ‘the economy’, answers are often thin, along the lines of ‘to do with money’, but using methods like participant observation, semi-structured interviews and focus groups reveals fuller and more nuanced understanding. The thesis suggests that the dominant pattern in how everyday actors’ understandings of the economy vary is based on their economic circumstances. High income participants, regardless of their political beliefs, understand the economy to be an umbrella for potentially benign forces. Their distrust of economic expertise is growing but not deep-rooted. In contrast, low income participants, regardless of their political beliefs and despite expressing deep economic concerns, contest the official discourse on the economy. Most low income participants understand ‘the economy’ to be a rigged system in which wealthy elites, including politicians and economic experts, ‘write the rules’. They are three times less likely to use the term ‘the economy’ than higher income participants and less likely to label their own political behaviour in relation to recent political events as ‘economic’, even when their wider reasoning has been about issues that would usually be interpreted as economic in analyses of political behaviour. The thesis reveals that both high and low income participants entwine their moral and economic beliefs, which raises questions for how we as political scientists categorise what is economic and non-economic and interpret trends in current political behaviour.

Facchini uses a behavioural approach to analyse the political beliefs of French people, who he believes are ‘more or less incompetent’ in economics. In this article I focus on his premise that the public are incompetent and that therefore their views, such as being opposed to the market in the case of the French people, should be interpreted as ‘perception bias’. Other economists may echo Facchini, claiming that people who voted Leave in the UK and for Trump in the USA did so because their lack of economic knowledge contributed to an ‘anti-foreign bias’. However, I argue here that the existing empirical research showing that people lack economic knowledge is flawed. Many economists adopt a questionable approach to the interpretation of public knowledge and the evaluation of what knowledge is important.