Issue 405 of New Internationalist

Reader-owned global journalism

October 2007

Big Babies: the dumbing down of politics

Psychoanalysts believe that people can be ‘infantilized’ – stopped from growing up. Powerful politicians now seem to think that’s a neat idea. Dog-whistles and diversions of all kinds are designed to turn us away from active political engagement towards passive consumption. In the process, democracy gets hollowed out. Politics becomes another branch of management, left to a political class and an entire industry of spin-doctors, pollsters, ad agencies, lobbyists and dirty-tricksters.

But infantilizing all the people all the time is not so easily done. In this issue of the NI we wonder why, and take a sideways look into the empty space where grown-up political debate should be.

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In this issue

  • Puzzled by democracy’s failed promise, *Richard Swift* explores the way our political culture infantilizes both the elected and the electorate.

  • Over two decades of conflict have bred a climate of impunity where human rights violations – killings and unexplained ‘disappearances’ of people – have become all too common.
  • *Nikki van der Gaag* reveals how, in many countries around the world, girls are still discriminated against, abused and treated as second-class citizens – just because they are girls.