6.8.5.3 Assessing Political Performance
People need ways of assessing political performance, to judge if they are being well governed and to see if politicians are responsive
Many factors contribute to people’s satisfaction with the way they are governed. Their personal circumstances, and whether they feel that their quality of life is improving, are the main issues. They might also casually discuss politics with others around them. Some, though, take a keen interest in politics and want to make informed judgements on government and politicians.
The overall economic performance of a country is usually measured by its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which records the total wealth produced. GDP is widely reported, although its usefulness has been questioned in papers such as GDP as a Measure of Economic Well-being. There are many other indicators – such as total employment, average wages, inflation, wealth and debt – which complement GDP by measuring other important aspects of economic satisfaction – but these fail to take into account the quality of available goods and services.
The factors affecting people’s personal sense of economic well-being were listed earlier (3.3.9.1). Governments cannot afford to ignore economic hardship, as when the UK faces biggest fall in living standards on record in November 2022. At that time, Reuters reported Strikes, protests in Europe over cost of living and pay. It was widely referred to as a cost-of-living crisis.
Some statistical data are available for measuring political performance on other aspects of governance. Numbers of crimes, successful prosecutions, immigration figures, and data on public services such as health are all widely reported. Britain’s Office for National Statistics publishes a wide range of statistical data, for example. It isn’t practicable for people to keep a watch on all this information all of the time, though, but journalists can highlight important issues. A Sky News article on Hundreds of crumbling schools, for example, drew attention to one problem which it attributed to government policy: “Comparing the last two decades, it is clear that there was a greater commitment to capital investment in schools under Labour”.
Statistics are useful, but they lack a context for assessing political performance without a comparison against previously announced forecasts and targets. And they need to be interpreted. Politicians put their own spin on the data when they interact directly with the population (6.4.2). The media can offer an alternative viewpoint (6.4.3). People must make up their own minds, though, after considering the different sources of information.
This page is intended to form part of Edition 4 of the Patterns of Power series of books. An archived copy of it is held at https://www.patternsofpower.org/edition04/6853b.htm.