ABSTRACT
Anti-politics is most widely evidenced in studies of political attitudes and participation in Western democracies: citizens there seem increasingly dissatisfied with and distrustful of governments, politicians, and political parties; and are disengaging from participation in formal politics. Corroborating the notion of anti-politics, which focuses on negative responses to institutionalised politics, there is a deep sense of disenchantment observable in the participants’ responses to the warm-up question in each focus group. Many of the sentiments reflect on politics in terms of personal or collective political apathy. The critique is also slightly less bitter in Switzerland compared to the United Kingdom and Germany, which could be attributable to the consensus character of politics and the use of referenda in decision-making. Despite the wide range of meanings that the word politics can have, Romanian focus group participants were quite homogenous in their spontaneous impressions of the political realm.
