By Peter Mair
Verso, 160 Pages
Available for purchase from Amazon here
Reviewed by William Solniger
Written by the Irish political scientist Peter Mair, who died before the book was finished, Ruling The Void is a penetrating account of the steady decline of democracy in Europe. In my view, the book is far better for having been left incomplete: it stands far stronger as a negative assessment of the times than it would had the author racked his Leftist politics for some illusory and half-hearted set of “solutions” to the structural problems he describes. The book seems to have attracted far less attention than it deserves, except from certain Eurosceptics who have focused myopically on its criticisms of the European Union, ignoring the wider significance of the “hollowing of democracy” which is the book’s main theme.
Ruling the Void opens with the most damning indicator of decline: the falling level of participation in national elections. Against those political scientists who are tempted to deny the evidence of this phenomenon, Mair establishes his position beyond doubt by a thorough review of the facts: electoral turnout has certainly been falling across Europe in the last decades, not in the sense that turnout is progressively lower for every election, but in the more general sense that troughs in participation occur more and more frequently.
Ruling the Void opens with the most damning indicator of decline: the falling level of participation in national elections. Against those political scientists who are tempted to deny the evidence of this phenomenon, Mair establishes his position beyond doubt by a thorough review of the facts: electoral turnout has certainly been falling across Europe in the last decades, not in the sense that turnout is progressively lower for every election, but in the more general sense that troughs in participation occur more and more frequently.
