Study title

As part of a wider project looking at public attitudes towards political parties, 3 deliberative workshops were conducted to examine attitudes towards political parties. In total 68 people attended the workshops. Workshop 1 - Composed of party activists/ members Workshop 2 - Composed of non-party activists/members (i.e. general public) Workshop 3 - Composed of a 50/50 split of party activists/members and non-activists/members. Participants were selected to represent a range of ages, genders, ethnicities, occupational status. Within the workshops participants were led through a series of tasks designed to create the 'Ideal Party'. The discussion focused on preferences for policy-making, participation/engagement, and governing. These discussions were transcribed to capture participants comments and their responses to tasks (i.e. lists of words produced in response to tasks). The activities aimed to interrogate citizens' desires for parties and to determine which aspects of party behaviour were most important for citizens views. The link between citizens and the state is the crux of democratic politics, yet it is crumbling. Numerous studies have diagnosed a crisis in representative politics with decreased participation and growing levels of distrust bringing the legitimacy of democratic institutions into doubt. For many a solution has been offered by digital technology, leading parties to embrace new digital campaigning software. To explore the capacity of digital innovations to renew democracy this study argues that we need to understand the nature of the 'disconnect' between parties and the people. As such, this study departs from traditional analyses of 'digital democracy' by focusing on public attitudes. Adapting the methodological approach used by Allen and Birch (2015) the project will discern how the public and parties conceive democratic linkage in practice and as an ideal, highlighting contradictions and convergence to diagnose the problem. Correlating...