Woher stammt der Vertrauensverlust in die Politik? Ist es, weil die Politiker*innen abgehoben oder korrupt sind? Weil sie inkompetent sind? Weil sie den Willen des Volkes missachten? Chris Clarke, Politikberater und Meinungsforscher, hat einen langen Essay zu dem Thema geschrieben, den wir hier diskutieren. In deutscher Übersetzung ist er bei Deliberation Daily veröffentlicht.
Transkript
00:00:00.44
Stefan Sasse
Hello, everyone, and welcome to a very special episode of the show. Today, i am here with ah Chris Clark. I found him on the Internet as an author of a huge essay series that he will present to us momentarily. And I’m taking the time to do this special episode, of foraying into politics in this language format, because I thought his essays were speaking on the deeper issues that rock. essentially the whole of the Western world right at the moment.
00:00:30.19
Stefan Sasse
And everyone should know about these ideas and should discuss them. Even if you do not agree with all those ideas, they should give you food for thought. At least they kept me awake for quite some time. And so I’m happy to introduce Chris Clark. Hi.
00:00:43.48
Chris
Hi, Stefan, thanks a lot for having me.
00:00:44.86
Stefan Sasse
So who are you and what are you doing?
00:00:47.32
Chris
Yeah, good, thank you. Good, thanks so much for having me on the show.
00:00:51.26
Stefan Sasse
So could you quickly quickly introduce yourself? Who are you and what are you doing professionally?
00:00:56.66
Chris
ah Yeah, my name’s Chris, Chris Clark. um i I live in the UK um and ah I am a kind of political researcher and social researcher. I’ve worked for the UK Labour Party in the past um And I’ve written a book called um The Dark Knight and the Puppet Master, which is about the risks of populism and populist narratives, particularly on the on the left, actually. And I’ve written um about ah the issues around trust and politics um in the kind of populist age fairly extensively over the last couple of or but the last four or five years, maybe.
00:01:38.65
Stefan Sasse
And I read one of these, which is your notes on trust series, I think it runs for five issues or six. not Not quite certain. And this, this series is really, really interested me. And for those people who didn’t read it yet. um I want you to give us a quick rundown. What’s your thesis? What are your notes on trust these days?
00:01:59.16
Chris
Yeah, absolutely. This was um something it was a series that I’d been looking to do for a little while because um over the course of doing lots of ah focus groups and discussion groups and interviews with the general public and the the voting public,
00:02:15.99
Chris
about politics, the most pervasive theme was the absolute distrust of politicians verging at points on ah on a hatred of of politicians and certainly that was very acute in the yeah UK context and my kind of way wider reading gave me the sense that it was the case elsewhere as well to a greater or lesser degree in a lot of countries. um ah So the the the series was aimed at um addressing really where these issues around trust come from. And it was broken up into five um notes on trust or five articles. um And the first one was about red herrings. ah Red herrings being a kind of decoy or a a false um explanation that gets put forward to. And I wrote this first one because I thought that
00:03:06.10
Chris
it’s really important to think about the, ah you know, to get past some of the the easy answers that get put through. um I think there’s four red herrings for low trust that are um that that are repeatedly put forward. um The first is the kind of will of the people, which sort of says politicians are distrusted because they’ve ignored the will of the people. um It’s actually, ah if if they just did what we all wanted, and followed that our particular niche ideology that we particularly believe, they’d be trusted. And it exists on particularly on kind of more fringe movements or more populist movements who say we’re the will of the people.
00:03:48.66
Chris
mistrust exists because your politicians aren’t doing what we’re saying. um The second red herring, the second false explanation for low trust in the modern age was um failure to deliver, which basically says if only government would, it’s more of a kind of centrist or technocratic argument that says if only government would sort out…
00:04:07.99
Chris
um deliver the economy, healthcare, care etc, and make everything run perfectly, they’d be trusted again. um Again, i think if you look at the kind of patterns of trust against government delivery over a long period of time, you see that isn’t really the case in periods where the government have done much less to deliver on kind of outcomes than they are now.
00:04:27.99
Chris
um They’ve been much more trusted. um The third is the idea, the third red herring is the idea of out of touch elite. So it’s the idea of kind of um a group who are not in touch with the electorate, don’t look sound, have no connection with normal people, don’t understand their lives. um And whilst that’s true of politicians to a certain degree, it’s certainly much less true than it was 30, 40, 50 years ago when politicians were much more male, much more upper class, much less rooted in their communities. um So again, it doesn’t really explain the the collapse in trust of the last few decades because if if we simply wanted politicians who looked and sounded like us, we wouldn’t have trusted them in the 1960s or 70s to the extent that we did because they looked and sounded a little lot less like us back then. um And then the fourth red herring is um the idea of corruption. Now, I’m not saying in the piece ah that that corruption in politics doesn’t exist or there isn’t a problem or we should all turn a blind eye to it. But what i am saying is that trust… a
00:05:43.13
Chris
the The collapse in trust, which if you look at a lot of the figures has really happened since about 2000 in a lot of developed countries, ah hasn’t coincided with a particular increase in political corruption. There’s always been political corruption. Arguably, there was a lot more periods in the past, although I think its nature has changed somewhat. um But it’s certainly we’re not living through a particularly corrupt period. And if you look at a lot of the countries that actually trust their politicians least, they’re some of the least corrupt countries. So if you look at national kind of indexes for corruption, European countries like Germany and the UK would have…
00:06:23.13
Chris
very low would be would would have comparatively very very low corruption but comparatively um much more cynicism and distrust of politicians despite that so it’s not simply that corruption equals distrust um so it it kind of the essay series starts by taking on those four kind of seductive slightly easy answers um And then it looks at the second instalment of the series, looks at the what I think of the root causes. um
00:06:54.58
Chris
The first one is a sort of decline in social deference. So people are much less deferential when it comes to things like social class, um professions, deferential to politicians, deferential to leaders. The kind of idea that you you should know your place is culturally being ah didn’t ceased to be a way that very many people really think about things. And I think that’s on balance a very positive thing. um people don’t People want to ask questions. They want to challenge. they
00:07:27.99
Chris
that They don’t say, oh, I know my place. I i i don’t. have a right to an opinion, that kind of thing, which would have been much more common um in the post-war era. um But the consequence of that is that the expectations and the the willingness to challenge politicians is much, much higher. So that’s the first root cause is less social deference. The second one is increased exposure. If you look at the exposure um the level of scrutiny that political leaders and in fact leaders of all kinds of subjects to in the age of the internet the smartphone the camera phone um the kind of live blog news feed 24-hour news etc it’s a completely different order even to what it was at the turn of the um the turn of the millennium let alone to uh in let’s say 1945 or a period like that um So but my but a core part of my analysis in the series is that it’s not that politicians‘ behaviour or conduct or ability to deliver or anything has necessarily got worse, but their failure when it exists, which it does exist, has been exposed much more regularly. um The third point is about the what I call the heterogeneous society or the the varied society, which is basically that societies have become much more differentiated thanks to higher numbers going to university, people living longer, higher levels of migration, meaning you’ve got much more ethnic or faith based communities. diverse societies. um Again, I think this is a really positive thing, but what it does mean is that you have a much, much more varied mix of people within a society, not just that varied in terms of um ethnically diverse or that kind of thing, but varied according to whole sets of life experiences that people have lived. um And this means that having a kind of consensus amongst the the population is much harder about about policy, is much harder for politicians to um to do. um And then the fourth issue is globalisation and government agency. Now, when globalisation has essentially limited the room for manoeuvre by progressive and conservative governments, theyve they’ve found it harder and harder to do what their left and right fringes respectively want them to do. And the consequence of this has been that populist movements who have over appeared saying, if they’re on the right, saying, well, why can’t you just sort out migration? That’s too high, just stop them coming. It’s as simple as that. um And on the left, similarly, arguments around inequality. Why can’t we just cap pay an amount we can all agree is fair? And the centre-left parties haven’t been able to respond to that because ultimately globalisation is an extremely complicated thing to unpick, as we in the UK saw with Brexit, of course, which has gone incredibly badly. um When you try and unpick it, you often don’t get the results you’re looking for whatsoever, and you’ve actually damaged the country very significantly. So globalization has meant that the internet is very, very hard to disentangle yourself to solve the problems that people want. um
00:10:39.74
Chris
So that’s the the kind of the core like the core issue is that not only have um deference and deference has declined and all those other things, but actually politicians room for maneuver has shrunk.
00:10:54.04
Chris
um as a yeah at the same time as that. So the demands have become more polarised, higher expectations, lower patience, but at the same time, politicians have got kind of got their hands tied to a greater degree than they would at previous points. um So those are the first two articles. And then the third, fourth and fifth are much shorter. But the third one looks at, very briefly, what I call Moynihan’s Law, which was a phrase coined by a US Democratic senator for the combination the the the concept whereby the more people are worried about an issue, the less they sometimes have to worry about. So it it argues potentially does high…
00:11:37.23
Chris
distrust indicate actually that um there’s less to be cynical or distrustful about i.e the very fact that we’re living in a society where where we can voice our distrust and criticize politicians and write angry articles in the newspapers with illustrates that actually we have a relatively transparent and positive societies in it it picks it doesn’t simply say oh everything’s getting better that article but it kind of seeks to say what, to unpick that question of whether distrust can just be written off as being a good, ah and a byproduct of a kind of transparent society. Then the fourth piece looks at the difficulty of, it compares airline pilots who are the most one of the most trusted professions of politicians, who are one of the least trusted, and looks at the difference. It basically argues that there’s…
00:12:30.68
Chris
um that the what politicians are trying to do is completely different and relies on them explaining and arguing much better and much more openly um than they do. If you compare what a politician has to do, which is marshal a set of arguments um versus what and explain the limitations of what they can do and argue for what they want to do, um versus what an airline pilot has to do, which is simply do a job effectively again and again. I don’t say simply because I think that’s simple, by the way, I can’t fly a plane, but I mean simply as in the expectation is quite straightforward. It’s very hard to do, but it’s there’s ah there’s a kind of realistic um expectation. Everyone on the flight wants the same thing. That’s not the same with politics. So we need to think much harder about the skill set. And then the final piece um looked at what I call politics is a game. And certainly when I’ve looked at the UK context, one of the real sources of anger and I’d almost say hatred or loathing of contemporary politicians is the sense that they’re always interested in politics ah as a game. They’re always trying to beat the other party. If the other party messes up, then their first thought is how can we use this to make them look bad rather than what can we do right for the country. um And that it’s kind of a constant sparring um over relatively small ground between two two parties in a kind of Manichian struggle, Manichian struggle, but over almost no substantive difference. That is the concept of politics as a game. I’m not saying politics is actually like that, but I think there’s ways that politics politicians can behave and political strategists can behave that removes some of these, that removes that sense of continually bickering and point scoring over nothing, which is the thing that causes, I think, people to go, absent become absolutely infuriated. um So in a very, very brief whistle-step tour, I’m going to take a a breath of air now, but that that was the kind of core argument of my Notes and Trust series.
00:14:40.06
Stefan Sasse
Thank you for the very succinct thing that you just that you just gave us. And I talked to you about this in our preliminary talk a little bit. A lot of these thoughts were speaking to me on so many levels because they coherently put together things that I had been throwing around in my head for years now, but never had been able to put into such a such a coherent picture. And I want to start at the beginning in your first essay because I think it is really important to discern ah between the root causes as you lay them out and the red herrings, because we discussed the red herrings way too much.
00:15:16.95
Stefan Sasse
um And I also want to characterize two of these four red herrings as what I think is essentially a an anti-democratic mindset. Because as you pointed out yourself, this will of the people idea, and I don’t want to linger too long on it, but on the face of it, it is a stupid idea.
00:15:34.84
Stefan Sasse
because it supposes that there is like a unified block within the population, usually ethnically or by class defined, like the working class as the true expression of the people, for example, would be a classic.
00:15:51.42
Stefan Sasse
But it is even more prevalent on the right because they don’t have the problem that they need to somehow fuse ah woke intersectionalism and old Marxist idioms. um they they can just go straight to the source and keep with the ethnicity based approach and then you just define everyone else out and then you have the true people and they have a true will and that you usually there is one leader who can discern it especially well but it might also be a party or a movement And that just needs to be found out.
00:16:04.13
Chris
Yes.
00:16:21.35
Stefan Sasse
And that is hogwash. I mean, we know as that society is a pluralistic in nature, even in dictatorships, and even when brainwashed, there’s still strands and them they are just suppressed.
00:16:34.11
Stefan Sasse
So there is no one will of the people, which we will come back to in the pilot metaphor, which I think really is the linchpin of your whole argument. But we’ll get there. um And then we have the other idea of the out-of-touch elites,
00:16:47.54
Stefan Sasse
which is also, as you just said, you just need to have a little bit of historic understanding. Like if you look at the 50s and 60s, and it really doesn’t matter which country, like you have these, um these very dignified persons that are running around, and they are nothing, their life experiences are so detached.
00:17:08.06
Stefan Sasse
from from the mass of the population. And if you look at old speeches, like go back to the 20s, if you like, or the 30s, but even 50s, 60s, the language that these people use is borderline incomprehensible ah to anyone who isn’t well-versed in it. like read a speech by Churchill by any means. These are highly complex language constructs and that that wasn’t considered a problem. It was more or less a proof of their competency. But today it is not.
00:17:39.55
Stefan Sasse
um And why is it not? Because and I think this is an outflow from the will of the people i idea, because there is this idea that politicians are out of touch. But at the same time, if we get a politician who is actually talking like the man on the street, and who is actually coming from low origins, they are instantly attacked for it and viciously attacked for it.
00:18:03.67
Stefan Sasse
So just to give you one example out of German politics right now, our labor minister, Belba Bas, she comes from very low origins and she worked her way up a typical social democratic career. as She’s in the SPD, needless to mention. And um she was really viciously attacked for not having a high degree.
00:18:23.38
Stefan Sasse
ah Like, how how can she be a minister? She she didn’t even study. And you know and then at the same time, these people are talking about out-of-touch people and that there are only ah people with university degrees in parliament. And then when there’s someone without a university degree, to say, how can they be there? They weren’t even going to university. So it is contradictory anyway.
00:18:45.21
Stefan Sasse
It is just a convenient lie, I feel. And it has been around forever.
00:18:51.93
Chris
i I couldn’t agree more. And I think you’ve what you’ve done is linked quite well. The the first and third red red herrings, the will of the people in the out of touch elite, um because there’s a very similar a similar example is in the UK is um ah Two of the kind of populist leaders who are felt to be most authentic and most in touch, ah or at least who present themselves as such, have been um Boris Johnson and and Nigel Farage, who are both of them ah privately educated
00:19:25.91
Chris
are very affluent backgrounds in both cases um much more out of touch than the average labor or conservative mp or or lib dem or green mp to be honest but present themselves continually as the men of the men of the people and as being in touch now why do they present them in touch as why are they successful in that is because that they um the because they their supporters agree with them about key points because they proclaim to speak the will of the people rather than because they’re actually normal people and in any in in any sense. So I think that there’s a um that’s ah the example you gave is a very good good good example of that that it’s not necessarily that you can you can have…
00:20:15.06
Chris
politicians who are very very from very ordinary backgrounds very very humble beginnings have worked incredibly hard um are very representative are in touch with their constituents and knocking knocking doors every weekend and running community surgeries and things but they aren’t given the credit for that to the extent that people who who kind of um present themselves as a kind of authentic will of the people are for some reason. So if if the if the real cause of low trust was an out of touch elite, then people would be much more willing to gravitate to politicians like the the person that you just mentioned, um for example, who who are actually in touch, but that isn’t what’s really going on.
00:21:01.11
Stefan Sasse
I also have a pet peeve of mine in that category, which is, I don’t know if you use the word in English as well, I’m just translating it word for word, which is election promises. You know what what parties say in an election campaign that they will do.
00:21:14.43
Stefan Sasse
And in German, Wahlversprechen, it has a very derisory tone, like it is pejoratively meant.
00:21:22.30
Chris
Yeah.
00:21:22.41
Stefan Sasse
You can’t take it seriously, right? Parties will promise anything. And the thing is, this just doesn’t add up empirically. Like political parties in democracies, they do a lot of the stuff that they say that they’ll do in campaigns.
00:21:36.02
Stefan Sasse
and For example, I think the first time this was empirically um ah really done was during the first Obama administration, and where they tracked all the prompt or the second one i think where they tracked all the promises that the Obama campaign made and then just checkmarked them essentially.
00:21:54.48
Stefan Sasse
ah you know and and looked at how many did they actually and do and then categorized it. And I think it was like 60% fulfilled, 20% or 30% attempted and either incomplete or failed and 20% just not done.
00:22:09.26
Chris
Mm-hmm.
00:22:09.51
Stefan Sasse
And that is a very good thing. It doesn’t add up ah to, oh, they are all broken or something. But this is the perception that people have. And this is also a thing about the whole honesty and trust issue.
00:22:20.00
Stefan Sasse
It depends on no empirical basis whatsoever. You alluded to this before. Like people um are having low trust on politicians, whether they live in good times or bad times.
00:22:30.31
Stefan Sasse
It just doesn’t matter at all. And and the same is true about ah the um the electoral promises. Like whether or not they are fulfilled, it has nothing to do with trust. Like those those populist guys that you just mentioned, like Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage, and that that whole gang.
00:22:46.36
Stefan Sasse
Take Donald Trump. They lie all the time um And they enjoy higher trust than a lot of the more democratic politicians who do actually not lie.
00:22:57.56
Stefan Sasse
um But so there is just at maximum a correlation, but there is no causation in my mind and to and to those promises. And that leads to your other red herring with the deliverism because delivering good results just doesn’t do anything ah electorally. I mean, it it makes the country better. It solves problems, all of that good stuff. But for ah politicians to be trusted or to get elected, it doesn’t do a lot.
00:23:24.06
Stefan Sasse
And I think… they I find it fascinating that after like 200 years of democracy, we still do not understand basic dynamisms and structures about how democracy works. Like you are getting into this later with the marketplace of ideas theory and things like that. Like our whole models, our way of thinking about politics and policies seems so disconnected from reality. And I’m asking myself, is this one of the reasons actually that that we have so such a low trust?
00:23:58.22
Stefan Sasse
I’m not sure.
00:23:59.99
Chris
yeah well i think that’s a it’s the the delivery point is a real difficult one because it’s obviously very hard to say oh delivery doesn’t matter and i don’t i think delivery does matter um but if you look at so if you look at the average citizens uh kind of experience of the world um It’s very hard for in a it’s it’s a society with tens of millions of people for someone to actually relate their experience trying to get a doctor’s appointment to government policy. So you can’t really rely on delivery alone or or if someone’s pay goes up and they they’re earning more money.
00:24:41.40
Chris
you know nine times out of ten that person will assume well i’m doing a better job rather than the kind of the economy’s going and and that’s that’s kind of a very human thing to do me or you would probably do that do that as as well it’s it’s very hard to separate yourself completely um so it’s the the idea that purely that you can deliver which is what a lot of I’d say large numbers of people were both working within politics and just the general public say, oh, well, if they only delivered, they’d be trusted. um
00:25:11.70
Chris
But that it somehow that that doesn’t percolate through into trust, as the Obama example that you gave earlier. showed or even another example would be the Biden administration which had ah a very strong record and I think which inspired a lot of people to write about delivery because he was seen as having done a very good job Biden of delivery but obviously didn’t win the election despite that so I think that yeah you’re completely you’re completely right that in terms of how you actually function in a democracy um
00:25:46.62
Chris
you need to be thought about a lot more. And I think sometimes there’s a tendency in politics for people to lead with the outcomes ah that they will deliver rather than to really focus on what they will try to do and what they what they want to do, if you see what I mean, you know, lead leading with the motives almost, and this is what I care about, is potentially a better way to…
00:26:10.62
Chris
um to to build trust than saying I will increase GDP by x percentage by this date or I will halve waiting lists or something even though those things are very important things to do and yeah
00:26:28.38
Stefan Sasse
Yeah, and as you mentioned in one of the later parts of your article, ah the trust is much higher in societies that are less free. um And I simply do not buy that a country like Putin’s Russia or Xi Jinping’s China is better at delivering results, that it is more in touch with the common people, and that it is less corrupt. So the reasons need to be different ones. And I think the root causes you lay out, and I want to start with the second one ah here with the increased exposure to information, because that seems ah to be the most important
00:27:06.65
Stefan Sasse
um empirically founded observation here because it just seems so clear.
00:27:11.25
Chris
Yeah.
00:27:12.54
Stefan Sasse
like As you already mentioned, and the trust starts to decline serotypically in the 2000s. And this is also the time where we get the internet um and where we really get a saturation of the 24-7 news cycle, where cable news like CNN and Fox News news and stuff, I mean, this starts in the 90s, but it really has its breakthrough. in the 2000s. And I really don’t want to put it all on the internet ah because cable TV is a big source as well. um But and this exposure to more information forces you to learn stuff that you just would never have learned um if you had lived in an earlier age.
00:27:55.68
Stefan Sasse
and And just a simple test that you can make for yourself, I feel, is if you get news of ah of a failed project, like the usual bridge to nowhere, ah you know, oh, they they wasted some tax money here on on a project on a frivolous project, or a politician was found to be a bad egg or something. And then when you look at it like it’s a bridge,
00:28:19.74
Stefan Sasse
to nowhere that is in deep in the province, essentially. Like if I’m if I’m talking Germany, um then I’m talking like Thuringia or something like I’m 500 kilometers away. This bridge is like ah connecting two towns with 3000 inhabitants. I would have never learned about this. like 40 years ago, then it would have been in some local news and that that would have been it. But now it gets parroted as an example of government functioning in general.
00:28:50.36
Stefan Sasse
Like one bridge breaks down and it is all bridges break down. You know, one politician is corrupt and it’s all politicians is corrupt because we learn about all the bad cases because we live in a free society.
00:29:02.26
Stefan Sasse
um But our minds aren’t made for discerning this and to actually separate it. And I think this is a huge, huge issue that is completely underanalyzed.
00:29:16.02
Chris
ah no i couldn’t Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I think that um obviously the argument to this isn’t you go back, we make our society more like Putin’s Russia or something like that. That’s not what anyone wants to do. But the question of um how we have a healthily functioning democracy with the the level of scrutiny that we’re talking about is a very, very difficult one. um that One of the most clearest patterns is that the more um there is a kind of free press in a country and a free freedom of speech and things, the lower trust generally is. And that’s kind of counterintuitive.
00:29:57.69
Chris
um you but You might think that’s kind of counterintuitive because surely people would trust open politicians more than they’d trust um closed ones, but the actually actually it works, in practice it seems to work the opposite way, that the more information we have, the more that trust falls, and the more we’re getting, as you say, your bridge example is an an excellent example. to give what To give an example from the yeah UK, ah a recent, ah or fairly recent example was um a a British politician, a Labour Party politician, went canvassing, and they uh took a picture on their phone of a flag a saint george’s flag flying from the house this is about 10 years ago and uh and kind of made a joke about it of like it being a and and then they tweeted it online and it then attracted a massive um kind of culture war type debates with with ukip and the nigel farage side of the aisle saying that this showed that labor was out of touch with um
00:30:57.66
Chris
uh out of touch with patriotism and patriotic values and labor was much liberal metropolitan elite and i think i think i’m correct in saying that the the the politician in question she had to stand uh stands down because this taking this photograph for the flag and kind of mocking it was uh was such a terrible thing to have done now i’m not saying this as in i’m not making a point particularly one way or the other about whether she was right to to mop the flag or whatever whatever it was but the point being that um in a even 10 years before I think this is in about 2012 that even 10 years before she wouldn’t have had a smartphone a camera phone wouldn’t twitter didn’t exist type thing and it might have been a comment she made to the her fellow canvasser that it wouldn’t have been something that was circulating the internet creating a storm of debate um and reinforcing many kind of patriotic voters
00:31:52.25
Chris
set of concerns or anxieties about about her political party um so that’s a just a tiny little example a bit like your bridge example of um the scrutiny creating um
00:32:08.20
Chris
disproportionate levels of kind of confirmation bias because biases i suppose
00:32:16.25
Stefan Sasse
Yeah, there is, i don’t even know how to put it. I’m constantly aggravated by these issues and and how they are not not factored in in discussions.
00:32:30.99
Stefan Sasse
And the same is true about the next thing I want i want to go to, which is the the social deference aspect of it.
00:32:37.76
Chris
Yeah.
00:32:37.99
Stefan Sasse
Because again, when you I’m a historian by trade. So if i um if I look back at how politics once was, I do not say the land of milk and honey, but I see the class structures that we already talked about, but these you know in the out of touch question.
00:32:53.45
Stefan Sasse
and But what I also see is that people used to just trust politicians implicitly because they were the leaders. And they did that not only with politicians, like all authority figures were much more trusted.
00:33:07.16
Stefan Sasse
I am ah my my day job as a teacher. So um when um when i look back at how teachers were treated and seen like a few decades ago, like what they said in the classroom was the word of God.
00:33:09.96
Chris
We.
00:33:21.24
Stefan Sasse
and Like if a teacher was was standing in front and he was handing out marks, these marks were set in stone. Like if if a teacher ah got out a disciplinary punishment, the disciplinary punishment was was maybe even aggravated at home because like they they got but and so some disciplining in school and then they came home and the and the parents were like, oh my God, you got discipline.
00:33:45.06
Stefan Sasse
And here, yeah yeah you know, take some more. And these days, everything’s questioned, and which is a good thing, ah by the way.
00:33:48.14
Chris
Right.
00:33:52.27
Stefan Sasse
I don’t want it any other way. But today, if I hand out a disciplining punishment to someone, which I do rarely, to be honest, but still, then I have the parents there and they’re asking like, why why did you do this?
00:34:05.07
Stefan Sasse
i How did my child deserve this? I want this rectified. Same with bad marks. They’re just not accepted. like they were before. People are questioning you. They are asking like, why why did you do this? Is this fair? Can I compare this to other people? And this happens across the whole spectrum with a few exceptions. Like you already mentioned pilots, for example. at The medical profession is another one that is still largely exempt from this kind of scrutiny. But journalism has suffered incredibly um Politics is one, the educational sector, um basically everything that has to do with insurances and finance also has a gigantic lack of trust. um
00:34:48.89
Stefan Sasse
So this lack of deference on the one hand is a good thing because we are actively questioning stuff. We we demand better from our people. But in the process of demanding more, of demanding explanations, transparency, etc., our trust erodes despite people becoming more accountable than they ever were before, more transparent, ah and more um yeah more accountable so simply. And people want more. And I think this is the Moynihan’s law that you already mentioned in effect.
00:35:24.54
Chris
Yeah, I think that’s…
00:35:28.50
Chris
the It’s a very difficult question, isn’t it? Because um to my mind, it’s completely self-evident that ah the type of deferential society where the teacher was as authoritative and… and um unwilling to be scrutinized or over explain themselves was an infinitely worse type of so so society and the same goes for the political class. um Everything in in almost every area of life. ah
00:36:02.38
Chris
It’s better that we have a kind as a society which encourages challenge where people feel confident to challenge. But it does. The the difficulty is about how leaders in general and politicians in particular find ways of communicating the the choices they’re making the limitations they’re subject to um the difficult elements of their job uh without it being a kind of um a
00:36:33.82
Chris
ah kind ah a kind of a constant sort of like uh the you know high ah ultimately if we have and ah ah situation which is as aggressive to decision makers um as it it seems to be have become i think you discourage people from going into something like politics um and and the people who really win are people who as i put in the article are kind of thick skins to a fault people who are there are willing to, who don’t who don’t mind that level of aggression, basically.
00:37:14.22
Stefan Sasse
Isn’t it also… Oh, God, I had a thought and now I’m losing it. I’m sorry. For the politicians‘ trust. Yeah, maybe I’ll come back to it. um But the the whole society um has changed quite a bit on these questions. And i should really write down my thoughts. um And we we are now also in a society that has that has changed not only in what we expect of our leaders, but also in who we are ourselves.
00:37:47.60
Stefan Sasse
Like you are calling it a more heterogeneous society, heterogenous society which which means like we have much more different strands than we ever had before.
00:37:53.06
Chris
Thank you.
00:37:59.80
Stefan Sasse
And so it becomes more difficult to actually find the the common ground and to and to have ah all these um all these unifying structures.
00:38:12.13
Stefan Sasse
I think it also plays into a social deference because the tribalism has actually been reduced, at least in some in some way. i mean, we have polarization, but what we we do not have anymore are those people who are basically voting labor from their inception to death to death or or the Tories, the…
00:38:34.38
Stefan Sasse
the the milieus that we are coming from. They shape who we vote for less and less. and And so parties need to be broader and that means they become less less ah less defined. um And ah at the same time, our society also becomes much broader and it becomes and more difficult to actually find the fault lines in it. and So if I have a left-wing working class and I have a bourgeois ah right-wing class, sometimes one side wins, sometimes the other. But but these are choices, right? These are distinct groups. But nowadays, where we do not have these groups, um it becomes much more difficult. And in that way, it seems like everything is a little bit more random.
00:39:25.08
Stefan Sasse
I suppose. People cannot really make out the the differences anymore. um At least that’s what they think. I’m not sure if it if it is right, but it is one of the major discourses, at least here in Germany, that you do not have a choice anymore. Like everything is the same.
00:39:43.80
Stefan Sasse
and This goes into the corruption thing and the out of touch thing, you know, everyone just says the same, is the same, reports to the same thing. And again, not sure if it’s really correct, ah but at at least it feels like um there has been a mishmash of the parties in the middle um happening here. So here in Germany, the CDU, the s SPD, the Greens, and to a lesser extent, the FDP.
00:40:11.22
Stefan Sasse
they they are really very able to to go into coalition governments with each other because they are more or less going into the same general direction. And then we have the parties and the fringes that are becoming bigger and bigger. So that the term fringe is becoming problematic here. But they are offering in some cases literally an alternative for Germany in case of the AFD. or they want to reform something, um or even how is the new right-wing thing called not reform, but we
00:40:48.73
Stefan Sasse
a return?
00:40:49.02
Chris
restore.
00:40:50.20
Stefan Sasse
i Restore. Yes, so there it is.
00:40:51.29
Chris
Yeah. Yeah.
00:40:53.32
Stefan Sasse
It is very… What you usually put in the subtext is very much text with these guys. And and all these all these things, they they fizz ah ah fizzle a little bit.
00:41:07.73
Stefan Sasse
And what unites these things for me, just to get to to give this and a question mark into your direction, is that you cannot really influence it. Like, if we if I am in politics, um what can I do? Like, the internet is here to stay. We are a heterogeneous society. um We do have the increased exposure. The less social deference is a fact. um Globalization ah is is right now being reverted a little bit but not in in those ways like the the agency still isn’t there as it at least seemed to be so there is nothing you can actually do about these things and i am interested in your thoughts on how um how to handle this as a democratic society
00:42:03.61
Chris
Yeah, I mean, that’s that that’s a very good point. And it’s a very difficult question, um because when i looked at the when and when I talk about the four root causes, all four of them are things which, in my view, are on balance positives. So I think a more heterogeneous, diverse society, diverse in every sense of the word, is generally quite a good thing.
00:42:28.92
Chris
ah quite a good thing ah Oh, a very good thing. Globalisation on balance, a more interconnected world, is a positive thing, I think. A non-deferential society um on balance is ah is a good thing. um an open, free press, a kind of the internet, the kind of the enlargement of people’s knowledge and the enlargement of people’s worlds are good things. So these these things are firstly things you wouldn’t want to reverse, but secondly are things which um you simply can’t reverse, as you say. um And ah even where you were you to think that that that that that you could reverse them, it we would be a very, very dangerous idea, really. um so
00:43:19.10
Chris
the the i guess the question is how you operate in that context in a way which is not some is not to say right let’s throw your throw a rule in and be a pop be populists and um and copy what really seems to work in the in this kind of viral age um but which is also uh which which also avoids the the countervailing trap of saying right well we’ll just say as little as possible and and kind of hide in the shadows and and to and and be as risk averse as possible because the the the real um divide in some ways between the kind of mainstream parties who are struggling and the more fringe parties as you is as you put it who are who are doing better and better is that um is the
00:44:07.90
Chris
risk risk, the level of risk involved. The mainstream parties tend to be more risk averse, more message disciplined. They’ve adapted to the changes we’re talking about by kind of playing it safe, whereas the the smaller parties that have less to lose have taken much more strident, adopted much more strident rhetoric, whether they’re on the left or the right, and ah much more kind of extreme positions. um So, yeah, but but but the the two skills that I think that I argue kind of really all the way through the piece are underplayed in terms of how you operate in this context are um explanation and argument. um There’s this a famous saying by Ronald Reagan, if if you’re explaining, you’re losing. The idea being that. ah
00:45:00.70
Chris
Politics should be intuitive, it should make sense, you shouldn’t have to go through your workings or tell people why something’s the case, you should just the messages should be quick, simple, punchy. And I think a lot of people on both throughout politics have kind of absorbed that as a way to to to be But actually, I think if you look around in the modern age, you’re seeing a lot of people who are looking to make sense of the world, whether it’s podcasts like this one or long long read articles, um a lot of people who are ah who are what who are wanting to to understand things better. and politicians aren’t often taking them through the honest kind of warts and all difficulties of a decision-making process or the dilemmas they’re facing they’re kind of using the the Ronald Reagan explaining you’re losing punchline approach uh to describe what they’re doing so but I believe that there is a much bigger role for politicians as as explainers you know if the contact the cost of living crisis for example which is a a very big issue at the moment, here certainly in the UK. um
00:46:11.29
Chris
relatively few politicians have explained in a non-party political way why this situation has come about, why it’s difficult to solve, what tools that there are available to government, what tools don’t work, why does you know capping all prices in supermarkets not actually work in practice. that is the The reasoning behind that isn’t ever really explained. um So the the the role of explanation, in my view, needs to be much better and politicians need to see it as their role to explain to the public, give ah give the public the benefit of the doubt that you can explain ah things to them and that that they will will engage with it. And the second is the role of argument. um
00:46:55.45
Chris
like the The argument I kind of make in the the blog series is that positioning has replaced argument. So if a politician finds that they’re kind of out of step with the public on a particular issue, they kind of shift position a little bit to reflect that. and that the but but But actually there is a significant role for, and it comes as a direct consequence of the explanation, but is making arguments about a route through rather than simply um
00:47:27.26
Chris
ah rather than simply kind of going for messages which tick tick boxes but but laying out a really serious argument about where you you want to take the country and I think again if that doesn’t happen enough there isn’t enough argument made so those those two words explanation and argument I think run through the blog series like a sort of stick of rock and other things that really need to to be brought in much more if politicians are to be able to function in a a high scrutiny, low government agency environment, if we if we want to call it that.
00:48:06.46
Stefan Sasse
I feel that we have a vicious cycle here ah because the one of the reasons why ah politicians have are facing much more pressure to taking these positions, as you mentioned, like you realize you are out of step and then you adjust your position. One of the reasons why they feel this pressure is because of the 24-7 news environment that we’re in. and Because once again, the politicians of old, they could just keep these positions without anyone ever knowing. and deca it because they are now much more transparent.
00:48:37.99
Stefan Sasse
um The public is much more inquisitive, much more critical, and so they are questioning this stuff more. It it comes out more. um And then ah the the next problem in this vicious cycle is people hate it when politicians um position themselves like that, but they also hate it if they don’t.
00:48:59.25
Stefan Sasse
And and and that is that is an aspect, you allude to it in the article, but I would emphasize it a little bit more because every time politicians do what you would you suggest here, they get punished for it by the voters.
00:49:12.80
Chris
you
00:49:13.37
Stefan Sasse
and So in a way, voters are getting what they want. Like and the going to the middle of the political parties, that’s what voters want.
00:49:23.67
Stefan Sasse
ah You can see it in um in all the polls, you can see it in the election results. A significant part of the voting public wants exactly that and when they get it, they are dissatisfied. And the same is true about a truth. like every time They always say they want to be they want honesty, no no election promises and stuff. And whenever a politician doesn’t do election promises or is is very open upfront at what ah cruelties they want to commit once in office, they get punished for it. My favorite example for this is the 2005 campaign in Germany, where the CDU, pretty triumphant in the polls, ah went into the election campaign as saying, like, we will raise taxes.
00:50:06.30
Stefan Sasse
um consumption taxes and when we get into office. And they got clobbered for it and almost lost the election. And Angela Merkel never again in her whole 16 years chancellorship did this. What did she do? She moved sediciously with the polls, with the public. She always took the ah the middle of the road positions and she was elected and reelected. And so in some way, people are getting what they want, even if they hate it afterwards. that is’s like It’s like me when I’m going to the fridge and I’m like, oh, why I’d really like to have a piece of chocolate right now. And I’m taking out a piece of chocolate and I’m eating it and oh, the chocolate is so good. and then i’m And then I’m walking past the mirror and I’m thinking, oh, why the fuck did I take that piece of chocolate? egg it It always seems a little bit like like this.
00:50:54.97
Stefan Sasse
And I want to make another point that I think is actually missing in your argument. I totally agree on the globalization issue in restricting agency. And I think and another thing that restricts restricts agency of politics today is um a and fundamental deference of politics and a giving up of sovereignty on the one hand to supno supranational institutions. This was one of the animating forces behind Brexit after all, like ah giving that stuff to the EU, which is much less transparent. and on the other hand, ah giving it to the courts. um And the latter part to me, and both of it is is of course connected because the EU works ah through courts in in a lot of ways, but we all see it on the national level.
00:51:45.27
Stefan Sasse
I don’t know if it’s as bad in the UK as it is in Germany, but our politics have given up so much of their agency to courts And so many of the political arguments in Germany always revolve around this. And we cannot do this. It’s against the law, essentially, because we wrote it that way. and Like politics put itself into feathers out of paragraphs, essentially. So, for example, we have the debt break in the Constitution, which is hindering quite a lot of things. Then we have extensive court…
00:52:21.98
Stefan Sasse
a court case ah case law that prohibits cutting into the welfare state and now we also have case law that requires the state to do something against global warming and all these things clash and they really ah do reduce ah the agency that politics has And it is my fear, last point before I kick it back over to you, it is my big fear that the Gordian knot of this lack of agency, which seems to me one of the most important reasons behind the loss of trust, that this Gordian knot will simply be cut by the populist parties because they don’t care about the rule of law. They can just go and simply destroy and disregard the whole system. We can see this in the US where Donald Trump, he has agency.
00:53:11.67
Stefan Sasse
Like quite a lot. not Not all of that stuff works. But he’s breaking the law so often and so regularly that it more or less doesn’t matter anymore. the courts are always months behind him. And they rein in some of this stuff. But this government is acting.
00:53:28.86
Stefan Sasse
And they are they are projecting this this air of action and of agency in a way that no other government does. Like if you listen to the Democrats, they’re always like, yeah, rule of law, and we can’t do this, and they can’t do that. And also one of the major attacks on Trump or on Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage is, oh, you cannot do this stuff. It’s against the law.
00:53:51.22
Stefan Sasse
But this is not what people actually want to hear. ah You know, give me the argument why it’s bad, not why it’s formally impossible. And there, I think we come back to your argument about about arguments. You can say we shouldn’t do this, but don’t say it because out of formal reasons, because no one cares.
00:54:10.97
Chris
and I couldn’t agree more. And I think that’s a very a very astute distinction between, yeah, your point about tell us tell us why it’s wrong, not why it’s um formally impossible is, ah I think, an absolutely crucial one. And there was lots of debates about that in the UK around Brexit and around lots of kind of condemnation of judges and and things like like that. But um yeah, it needs to be… The argument the argument can become very mealy-mouthed if it just becomes… it’s technically It’s technically impossible. And you could say that my point about globalisation limiting room for manoeuvre
00:54:55.22
Chris
um it kind of playing into that because ultimately as Trump is showing you can just ride roughshod over over everything I suppose but ultimately there probably will be very big and probably quite negative implications for America of you know things like the tariff war and things like this this ah ultimately you can do what you want so it’s not really that you can’t do what you want um but you there will be consequences of doing what you want that were unforeseen and very difficult and involve you ultimately having to distance yourself from the world if you actually really pursue them.
00:55:36.02
Chris
And I suppose that’s… but But people rely on laws to make that argument rather than the kind of core arguments, which, as you say, but I think carry more carry more weight. Yeah.
00:55:48.54
Stefan Sasse
Yeah. And that brings us to the pilot metaphor that I talked about before, because I think this is, again, at the linchpin of it, because people seem also to have this at this very wrong perception of what the job of a politician is actually about. Like when they talk about competence, competence in what? You bring this example of, I think it was the Labour government under Clement Adelaide, and they just realized that so much of what they wanted to do and what happened to them was out of their control entirely.
00:56:19.60
Stefan Sasse
And we can we can take this into the recent past. So for example, we now also have a cost of living crisis in Germany as well in the as in the UK. Energy prices have gone way up. And why did they go up? it is We had a global pandemic that played havoc on international supply chains.
00:56:39.50
Stefan Sasse
and We had a war in Ukraine that thoroughly shook our whole energy market. And now we also have a war in Iran. None of these is under any control of politicians.
00:56:52.41
Stefan Sasse
All they can do is to mitigate disaster, essentially. But this is not a winning message. Like, we made it a little bit less shitty, it it doesn’t win you votes. um So there is there is no competency in the world ah to ah to actually help here.
00:57:00.91
Chris
Yeah.
00:57:07.10
Stefan Sasse
And when the agency isn’t there, if you cannot do things, yeah and This is not possible. And a pilot or ah or a medical professional like who has to cut people up in the in the emergency room or something, they have incredibly incredibly demanding jobs, but there is a clear um failure mark, like the patient lives or dies, or the plane lands or it doesn’t. um So you can always see whether or not it worked. There is there is a clear goal ah in mind, but in politics, there isn’t.
00:57:40.25
Stefan Sasse
and There is no clear destination. the um The route can change at any point due to unforeseen consequences. So they are just always dealing with with things as they come to the best of their abilities, which may or may not be very good. But you can’t do a lot, ah really. And I think one of the best explainers to once again come back to the explanation argument that was Barack Obama, and he put it very well with his tanker and all analogy. and when he said like government is like a tanker and you can change course like two degrees but over the years this add adds up but this is i mean it’s a it’s a good explanation and all but it is not really satisfying
00:58:22.68
Chris
Yeah, yeah. Well, if if you think about a a tanker compared to an aeroplane, that’s probably a good good comparison between the public think that that politicians are pilots driving an aeroplane and the reality is closer to Barack Obama’s analogy of a tanker slowly turning around and being…
00:58:43.38
Chris
being moved in a slow direction, but that involves the same party being in power for a sustained period. And the more there’s frustration with the lack of progress, the more the party’s likely to change, which kind of feeds the the vicious the vicious cycle. the The reason I used the airline pilot analogy um just to for context was because that you know that’s invariably one of the most trusted professions um and is very… ah kind of that what they do what a pilot does is is highly predictable they can they can usually land the plane unless they make a it a terrible error uh but um and and the public often i think think of leadership in ah a political field as being quite similar to that that you know you take the country you fly it where people have said they want to go you land safely and and everyone’s happy and why can’t it be as simple as that? But i do think a lot of responsibility lies with politicians actually for and indulging that. I think generally speaking politicians present themselves as, um
00:59:47.77
Chris
ah how ah present but running the country as being like flying a plane and they often from opposition potentially naively assume it is like flying a plane even if they’re kind of quite established politicians they think that right once you get in there we we do this. um And it’s difficult because as you said earlier, there’s a vicious cycle. You don’t want to be telling people, oh, we can’t do this or if this is impossible. um But ah you also, say I think the the politicians who really succeed will be those who explain the limitations and dilemmas of what they’re doing rather than pretending there’s a kind of a perfect outcome with no downsides in every instance.
01:00:31.19
Stefan Sasse
So to try to find a semi-conclusion to all of this, what you are basically doing is to appeal into the better angels of their nature, right? ah you You are saying if you do the right thing, it will serve you in the long run.
01:00:43.99
Stefan Sasse
ah Essentially, it will serve all of us. ah You had this party over country versus country over party thing going on where you said like we need, the politicians need to stop talking about these things in these partisan terms.
01:00:59.83
Stefan Sasse
But the problem is that um all need to do it at the same time, because if one stops it, he’s a sucker, right? and Because you if you are the only one who does the negative stuff, you profit.
01:01:13.40
Stefan Sasse
If everyone does it, it pulls everyone down.
01:01:14.12
Chris
Yeah.
01:01:16.32
Stefan Sasse
But then no one profits, no one loses. And of course, it’s classical prisoner dilemma is my point. and the The prisoner dilemma is famous for ah being kind of problematic as a prisoner in in that dilemma. and So do you have any concrete steps that could be taken other than the appeal to the better angels to actually bring this change about? Or are we locked into this vicious cycle and and we just have to hope for the best?
01:01:47.44
Chris
I don’t think… I don’t have any you you a perfect eureka moment answer to this, I guess, sadly. um my my The main aim of the the Trust series was to, I suppose, set out the what I saw as the real state of the challenge so that we didn’t spend quite so much time stuck in the weeds of the the red herrings as I see them. um But I do think…
01:02:12.29
Chris
that and i think it is difficult for politicians because obviously as you say to to take a ah kind of um to be as long-termist and honest with the public and non-partisan as they’re expected to be um the downsides of that are potentially quite significant if you if you present an honest choice um and uh
01:02:38.87
Chris
You know, and the the alternative party says that that choice isn’t a real one and people can have it both ways. um There’s a perennial fear that the public will we’ll go with the the the latter option. But um I suppose I do think that the public should could could be given more of the benefit of the doubt in this stuff and that actually if you’re consistent and you level and explain your methodology and explain your rationale, um i think that…
01:03:05.85
Chris
People don’t really want endless populism and drama um from from politics, but but to to get past that relies on you um kind of trusting trusting them that at points they will go with the kind of more long-term options.
01:03:23.19
Stefan Sasse
I have an appeal of myself to add to this because neither of us are politicians and I guess no one who listens to this podcast is either. But the same goes for us as well. Because if we just give more trust to politicians in general, I feel, to the political process, and if we understand what we are dealing with, um like like we just tried to lay it out.
01:03:40.51
Chris
Mm-hmm.
01:03:46.33
Stefan Sasse
ah you know or If we understand the red herrings for what they are, if we see the root causes and the vicious cycle for what it is, and then we can get a better understanding of why politics seems to fail us. And that helps us to give trust where trust is due and warranted and to withhold it more, let’s say, not judiciously, but intelligently maybe. and to to help ah in these cases. And if we communicate to ah to our relatives, and to our friends, to our surroundings and colleagues and stuff, and how this how this goes, like if we always say like, we can do this as well as my point, you know, and we can also point out that the cost of living crisis is obviously neither the Tories nor Labour’s fault and that reform won’t fix it, um no matter how many people they want to deport. and It is just not the issue here.
01:04:38.52
Stefan Sasse
And i think it it might help to have better expectations at this point. And this is, in my eyes, not only the job of the politicians. and This is also our job as the electorate, because we are now in this 24-7 environment where we can get all the information. like Everyone can go to parables.substack.com and read the stuff. um and get the information. Everyone can listen to these podcasts. We are not forced to get bad information.
01:05:09.34
Stefan Sasse
um And I know, of course, why people do and why many people are not interested in politics at all, yada, yada, yada. All of that is clear. But in a democratic society, ah as part of a democratic and liberal and pluralistic society, we have responsibilities as well. And sometimes I think it would do well to be reminded of them and to actually fulfill them.
01:05:34.55
Chris
No, definitely definitely. And the piece, the the series of articles is not looking to particularly say, it’s not looking to blame the public or politicians, if you know what I mean. I see it as a bit of a, it’s not that I think that the public are really unreasonable and um because most people aren’t most people are just going on the information that they’ve got and if they see repeated stories of scandals about politicians,
01:06:01.62
Chris
misconduct by politicians, they start to join in the dots and say, well, this is terrible. um But i I suppose, yeah, I think the the the key thing is to lead towards the the correct criticism rather than the conspiratorial criticism, which is where people often tend to go. So I think, yeah, there’s an important role in in kind of um focusing on the real reason politicians are you know often failing, which is that they’re kind of human beings with feet of clay rather than kind of making the world a terrible place deliberately.
01:06:37.75
Stefan Sasse
Thank you very much. This has been incredibly insightful. I already mentioned parables.substack.com for everyone who wants to read the long read stuff. Where else does one find you?
01:06:49.18
Chris
um i I’m also on the blue sky on warring fictions is my handle, warring fictions, which is slightly unusual handle. But um yeah, I’m also on there.
01:07:02.46
Chris
um But yeah, parables is the main main one, the main substag. But um yeah, thank you so much for having me today. It’s been a really, really enjoyable conversation and really interesting to get the different kind of German context and and some of the comparisons as well.
01:07:15.99
Stefan Sasse
Thank you very much. It has been, as I already said, incredibly insightful. And we just hope that the better angels of all our natures will prevail, because what else is there? Rebellions are built on hope and all of that. So until maybe next time and have a nice day.
01:07:31.43
Chris
Brilliant. Thanks, Stefan.
