title: Hope and despair: making sense of politics in the twenty-first century.
abstract: As his life degenerates into accelerating cycles of chaos in the film 'Clockwork', the headmaster, played by John Cleese, expresses his existential response to the latest crisis in his life: 'It's not the despair, I can cope with the despair. It's the hope I can't stand.' Politics as hope has fallen out of favour. Whether from cynicism, pessimism or realism--or a combination of all three--the standing of politics, let alone politicians, is at a very low ebb. This reality provides the opportunity to assess both causes and consequences by asking: how do we make sense of politics? The following discussion considers this vital question under four headings: context, participation, issues and goals.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science.
authors.forename: Angus
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Stewart
mesh_terms: D018864:Cultural Diversity; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D011057:Politics