Whose Democracy? A study of views from Norwich and the surrounding 'back-water' areas.

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The Brexit vote brought to attention the existence of "twoEnglands" (Jennings and Stoker 2016), where cultural valuesseparate 'populist-nationalists' from 'cosmopolitan-liberals'(Flinders, 2018, Inglehart and Norris, 2016, Jennings et al.2017). The former feel alienated by the political classeswhose liberal, cosmopolitan values stand in contrast withtheir own traditional, authoritarian values (Goodwin andHeath 2016, Inglehart and Norris 2016). A lack of faith inability of the political system to represent their concerns hasresulted in a backlash towards parliamentary sovereignty,and demands to restore the 'ordinary man' as the principaldecision maker (Bovens and Willie 2010) - a sentimentechoed in the 'take back control' rhetoric of the 2016 Leavecampaign.The Government recognises the need for democraticprocesses to become citizen focused, to "give people back asense of control" through opportunities to "participate in thedecisions that affect their lives" (HM Government 2018:53).However, we know very little about what "citizen-focused"processes ought to look like in citizens' eyes. Understandingwhat kind of democratic arrangements citizens want iscrucial to be able to counter feelings of frustration and repairdemocratic institutions (Bengtsson 2012). Yet, the literatureon democratic preferences is criticized (Bengtsson 2012 &Jennings et al. 2017) for exploring 'specific support' ratherthan 'diffuse support' -defined, respectively, as feelingstowards existing or prevailing political arrangements and as7 / 10notions of an ideal decision-making system (Easton 1975). Inother words, existing studies (e.g. Allen & Birch 2015, Coffe& Michels 2014) tend to test the support for preconfectioned decision-making arrangements rather thanunveiling preferences not determined a priori.The proposed study will provide a rich understanding ofdiffuse support, answering the question "Which democraticdecision processes do citizens prefer?" Given the extent towhich the bifurcation into 'two-Englands' is reconfiguring oursociety and research into political behaviour (Jennings andStoker 2016), and the need for further exploration into thenuances of such bifurcation, the importance ofunderstanding the investigation of diffuse support will becomplemented with an enquiry into how preferences fordecision-making processes are associated with 'populistnationalists' vs 'cosmopolitan-liberal' values. The county ofNorfolk is chosen as a research site as it lends itself to thisaim particularly well, being home to numerous rural'backwater' areas including Great Yarmouth (5th highestLeave vote in the UK) and the more cosmopolitan city ofNorwich. In addition to this, Norfolk displays contrasting andto some extent unexplained patterns of democraticengagement. While in the 2017 'Post-Brexit' General Electionturnout increased in 96.7% constituencies in England andWales, in Great Yarmouth it decreased -and was in fact thelowest in the South of England; throughout England theturnout was higher in the Brexit vote than it was for generalelections, but the opposite was observed in North Norfolk.The heterogeneity of such patterns likely reflects a plethoraof contrasting and hybrid perspectives on 'who shoulddecide' -which this research aims to unveil and analyse.