Political participation are actions of private citizens seeking to influence to support government and politics. Participation involves voting, involvement in campaigning (canvassing), party membership and pressure group membership.

Participation is sad to be in decline due to the low turnout since the 1950’s. There are trends of low turnout in the General elections for UK. In 1951 the turnout for the UK general elections was 82%, however this fell to 66% in the 2015 general elections. Voter apathy is one reason for his; members of the electorate feel as though their opinions aren’t represented in Parliament, especially voters in support of smaller parties which are spread thinly across constituencies. Furthermore, parties now have become idealised so people are apathetic towards voting as they feel it wouldn’t really make a difference what party came into power. Party memberships also decreased since the 1950’s. For example n 1951, there were 2900 conservative supporters; however this decreased to 170 members in 2011, highlighting that there is a participation crisis in the UK.

Additionally, the modern era and new generation new have now is distinctly different to previous years. In earlier years, politics was a min topic of discussion within households, leading children to become more informed about certain parties and be incline to vote for one- usually the same party as there parents support. However nowadays it isn’t as common for families to even spend dinner or a meal together so children aren’t as informed about politics growing up. For example in the 2005 general elections only 38% of young people (aged 18-25) voted. This does show that young people aren’t as enthusiastic about politics as they used to be, which could be reason for the participation crisis. However, this low turnout of young people doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a