Essays on Political Actors and Attitudes: Do They Constitute Distributed Reflexivity? Part 1: Median Voter Theorem vs. Competence Fields

AbstractEuropean political elites are faced with a loss of trust and the emergence of a growing number of sometimes rather obscure new political movements. How is this to be explained? What is the relationship between the logic that guides political attitudes of constituencies and the logic of political actors whose legitimacy is rooted in electoral choice of the constituencies? In this essay we approach this question from a systemic perspective, regarding this relationship as a problem solving feedback cycle. Classical approaches, such as the median voter theorem, view political actors as passively mirroring voters' preferences. An alternative approach that we suggest, assumes that the perception of competences of political actors on the part of constituencies is key in the sense that it does not only reflect voters' preferences, but it is also manipulable through the agency of political actors themselves. More generally, we argue that the perception of competence is socially constructed and contextually dependent.Keywords: political philosophy, deliberative democracy, competence fields, median voter theorem1. IntroductionEuropean democracies seem to be facing a crisis. In Greece the political system of the last 40 years is called into question. Loss of trust in the leaders of the party system of the last 40 years has led to the emergence of new political actors that nearly entered the government. After being governed by experts without democratic legitimacy, Italy seems to be lost in a permanent political crisis. Beppe Grillo's Five Stars Movement gained considerable support for a programme which is considered by many as a boycott of politics in general. 2010 municipal elections in Reykjavik, Iceland, were won by the Best Party, a quasipolitical assemblage led by a comedian, with a political "platform" full of absurd promises such as free towels in swimming pools, acquisition of a polar bear for the local Zoo, and construction of a Disneyland near the city airport. A candidate at 2009 Croatian local elections gathered sizable electoral support with a cynical slogan: "Everything to me, nothing to you! " Another, somewhat less successful candidate at 2011 Croatian parliamentary elections, based his campaign on complete avoidance of public talk, under a quizzical slogan: "Silence is gold. I'll talk in the Parliament! " (Srbljinovic, 2013). Politicians in Romania do not seem to perceive political competitors as legitimate. Numerous additional examples of bizarre would-be political leaders and caricatural political parties can be found in many European countries. In Eastern European countries there is also a growing body of literature on loss of trust in political actors as a consequence of poor performance and corruption of political actors who are not believed to serve the interests of the common public (Voinea, 2012; Atanasov and Cvetanova, 2012). The first Croatian 2013 elections for the EU Parliament were marked by a very low turnout (around 20%) and an unusually high number of invalid ballots (more than 5%), most of which were intentionally spoiled as an expression of outrage at ruling political elites, both those of the ruling coalition as well as those in the opposition. It is somewhat paradoxical that in case those ballots were cast for the same party, this hypothetical "Party of the Disaffected" would enter the EU Parliament.Where does this apparent crisis of political representation and representatives come from? Can this be analysed in a systematic manner, instead of simply blaming political leaders of being morally corrupted? While this moral argument might not miss the point entirely, it needs further explanation. For this reason we shall try to approach this problem from different angles in a number of essays in the following issues of the European Quarterly of Political Attitudes and Mentalities. Our thesis is that the crisis is twofold: on the side of constituencies, trust in politicians is low. …