Someone has to do it: towards a practical defence of politicians

Abstract

In response to rising popular disenchantment with elected officials, numerous scholars have sought to defend politics and restate why it matters. For the most part, however, these theoretical arguments overlook the views and reflections of politicians themselves. As a step towards filling this gap, the author surveys politician-centred studies from around the world and the reflections of academics who have become politicians. By paying careful attention to what ‘insiders’ say about life in politics, the author constructs a practical rather than theoretical defence of the vocation and the people who undertake it. The author argues that politicians' views remind one that human endeavour is central to the purpose and function of politics and associated political institutions. To link the practical views and experiences of politicians with the emerging literature on demonisation, the author revisits the work of Arendt and Weber. The author concludes that while one may not always like who politicians are or the ways they operate, revaluing endeavour allows one to give credit where credit is due; politicians may regularly disappoint people but representative democracy does not work without them.

Keywords:

• anti-politics
• demonisation
• public disengagement
• moral panic
• democracy
• leadership

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank David Marsh, John Boswell, John Kane, Dennis Grube, Brendan McCaffrie and participants at the University of Canberra's Governance Research Forum for comments on earlier versions of this paper. Any errors are of course my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Aside from these studies, the most extensive literature on politicians as people is political biography, a genre explicitly concerned with the uniqueness of the human experience. I do not deal extensively with the potential contribution of this genre here (but see examples where I Corbett, 2012, 2014b and others, like Mahler 2006; Scalmer & Hollier 2009; Shamir, Dayan-Horesh, & Adler, 2005, have employed these texts for this purpose).

2. Obviously, there is great variety in the types of political institutions found across these countries. Each also has different subsidiary governance arrangements that include various forms of state and local jurisdictions. The reflections contained here are drawn from across these typical intellectual divides. Where necessary I draw out distinctions between Westminster systems or professionalised versus unprofessionalised politics, for example. For the most part, however, these differences have little bearing on the overall case I seek to make.