The Decline in Diffuse Support for National Politics: The Long View on Political Discontent in Britain

Will Jennings¹, Nick Clarke¹, Jonathan Moss¹+1

• ¹Will Jennings is a professor of political science and public policy at the University of Southampton, Southampton, UK. Nick Clarke is an associate professor of human geography at the University of Southampton, Southampton, UK. Jonathan Moss is a senior research assistant at the University of Southampton, Southampton, UK. Gerry Stoker is chair of governance at the University of Southampton, Southampton, UK, and Centenary Research Professor of Governance at the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia. The authors thank Roger Mortimore and Laurence Stellings and participants at a workshop at New Place, Southampton, for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. The authors also thank YouGov for conducting the October 2014 online survey that is used in their analysis; and they thank the editors and three anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on the manuscript. This work was supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council for the research project "Popular Understandings of Politics in Britain, 1937-2014" [ES/L007185/1 to N.C., G.S., and W.J.].