unbound UNB Ideas that Matter - Where Have All the Voters Gone?

Paul Howe and Thom Workman
Where Have All the Voters Gone?: The Death of Politics and Citizen Engagement
March 28, 2012, 7 p.m., Student Union Building, Ballroom, UNB

In recent Canadian elections, voter turnout has fallen to record lows, allowing for the election of majority governments in Ottawa and several provinces with the support of less than 25 per cent of eligible voters. Participation rates for younger people are especially troubling, as voter turnout of those under the age of 25 has tumbled below 40 per cent.

How have political scientists responded to these alarming trends? Some point to a critical need for citizens to re-engage in elections and other democratic venues in order to revive political life. For other commentators, disengagement is merely the symptom of a deeper malaise, the slow "death of politics" over the 20th century. All observers underscore the desperate need to revive political life and citizen engagement in the 21st century.

This talk will take the form of an exchange between two political scientists who share a deep commitment to political life yet who approach the question of political participation in profoundly different ways.

Paul Howe is a professor of political science at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, where he has taught since 2001. Prior to joining UNB, he was a Research Director at the Montreal-based Institute for Research on Public Policy for three years.

Professor Howe is co-editor of two books that address strengths and shortcomings of different facets of the Canadian political system: Judicial Power and Canadian Democracy (2001) and Strengthening Canadian Democracy (2005). Canadian democracy continues to be the principal focus of his current research, which concentrates on identifying causes of declining political participation (in elections and other areas of political life) as well as potential solutions to the problem. His research projects in this area have been wide-ranging, including the evaluation of an "e-consultation" initiative in Saint John, studies of political knowledge and its effects on voter turnout (with a particular focus on younger generations) and a collaborative study on social capital in New Brunswick.

Professor Howe's recent book, Citizens Adrift: The Democratic Disengagement of Young Canadians (UBC Press 2010), was awarded the 2011 Donald Smiley Prize by the Canadian Political Science Association for the best English-language book in Canadian politics and government.

Thom Workman is Chair of the Department of Political Science. He received his doctorate from York University in 1992 and joined UNB in 1994. He teaches courses on politics and music, political literature and late modern political philosophy. His general research focuses on "critiques of modernity" with a specific focus on both political economy and social philosophy.

His latest book, entitled If You're In My Way I'm Walking: The Assault on the Working Class Since 1970, was published in 2009 and was shortlisted for the Rik Davidson Book Prize in Canadian Political Economy in 2010. He is currently completing a book-length study on the ideological reception of the ancient historian Thucydides. In his 2011 article entitled The Left After Politics published in Studies in Political Economy, he contends that we should "quit politics" in order to confront the general political malaise that has beset our world.

unbound UNB Ideas that Matter - Where Have All the Voters Gone?
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