ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Mair's argument concerning the failure of the party and the decline and devaluation of the popular component of democracy, by examining the increase in extra-representative forms of political involvement. Political equality is particularly important for democracy. In discussing the requirements and assumptions of democracy, Dahl sets out a concept of political equality that includes four necessary conditions, of which one in particular is increasingly violated because of the increased use of extra-representative participation. Mair used the example of Tony Blair, who emphasized that he had never seen himself as a politician, that he hoped that politics would at some stage become redundant and that basically he believed in depoliticizing key decision making, to illustrate that the 'politics of depoliticization' may well have been a very conscious move. Mair's conclusion about the passing of party democracy, where parties are governors with increasingly less influence and citizens retreat to their private lives, might have been even somewhat too positive.
