ABSTRACT
Chapters 3, 4 and 5 considered the relationship between young people’s perceptions of their own political efficacy, their perceptions of the political system and subsequent patterns of political participation. This chapter interprets these findings by exploring young people’s evaluations of the political system and their place within it using a qualitative approach. The participants in this study were recruited by means of an initial, non-probability sample survey of young people’s attitudes to politics in Southwest England. (A detailed profile of participants is given in Appendix 6.1.) Although patterns of partisanship are geographically rooted, both nationally and at a local level, there is little to suggest that Bristol is atypical as an urban context within which to study young people’s responses to politics. In fact, the city of Bristol has served as something of a weathervane for the changing partisan climate of British politics since the 1980s. Following the 1983 British General Election, Bristol South was the only Labour-held seat in the South West, reflecting the Conservatives’ dominance of the national electoral landscape of the 1980s. The revival in Labour’s fortunes was evident in the South West with Labour’s victory in Bristol East in the 1992 General Election. Bristol thus provided an interesting battleground in the 1997 General Election with both Labour and the Conservatives, as well as the Liberal Democrats, hoping to secure the marginal seats of Bristol West and Bristol North West. The subsequent Labour landslide in 1997 was reflected in Labour’s success in all five Bristol constituencies, as well as in subsequent local elections. More importantly for this study, turnout in the Bristol area also tends to mirror national trends quite closely. Thus, for both the 1992 (78.3%) and 1997 (71.9%) British General Elections, turnout in the Bristol area varied by well under 1% from the national average (Kimberlee, 1999).
