Last week we saw a bumper load of elections right across the UK. Locals, PCC, devolved administrations, more or less everywhere was been slipping into a booth to put crosses in boxes. I love voting. I get genuinely excited in the build up and as I leave, content in having done my part, I almost always have an enormous grin on my face. I don’t think I’m alone in it either- I’ve certainly got friends who have expressed similar sentiments (though it has to be said many of my friends are slightly strange politicos too, but I have heard it from non-political friends as well).

Perhaps it’s natural to be so excited. Democracy is, in many different forms over the years, an ancient tradition. The act of voting, a superficially simple thing is the most control that most citizens will ever have over their immediate world and society. It is making your imprint on the world. But elections, though they may be the most glamorous and prominent feature of a democracy are in many ways a poor illustrator of its health and vigour- North Korea holds regular elections, but no-one would mistake it for a healthy democracy.

Judging the health of a democracy is something of a mug’s game. Every year, innumerable thinktanks and organisations produce ‘democracy indices’ and similar measures which attempt to quantify how well democracy is doing across the world. They almost always hit the headlines only when some major power drops places (notably the US was deemed to drop to being a ‘flawed democracy’ in the Economist Intelligence Unit measure three years ago), but they do provide a useful overview of the state of democracy, albeit by a variety of limited measures across the world.

Many of these include criteria that touch, to various degrees of depth on our own area. Consultation and engagement can be a very good measure of the vitality of democracy, more so than elections or some of the other measures used. A healthy functioning democracy will be one that is not afraid of consistently involving its citizens and making changes based on that involvement. A democracy that either refuses to involve the public or superficially involves them before ignoring their views is probably not in a good place.

The degree of top-down consultation and engagement in a state is however only part of the story. At the start of this piece, I celebrated the process of voting. Although it’s fair to say I am hardly representative of the general population when it comes to political processes, there is a broader point here in the significant difference between the proportion of the population that votes (which, incidentally, is still rather lower than we might hope), and the proportion of the population that regularly involve themselves in consultation and engagement.

If consultation is to become a truly useful indicator of the state of a democracy, it must be a two way process, and we as consultation professionals should be constantly trying to engage and involve more people in it. In the UK, voter turnout varies between 83.9% and 59.4% (averaging out at around 73%- figures taken from general elections since universal suffrage in 1928). For consultors, such numbers are the stuff of dreams (or perhaps nightmares, given how long it would take to go through all those responses properly…). To expect the numbers of responses to consultations to reach such heights is of course unrealistic- responding to a consultation takes a lot more time than merely popping down to your nearest church hall to vote- but attempting to push the numbers up wouldn’t hurt.

Apathy towards politics is an increasing problem in many places across the world- in some respects the Brexit referendum was a boon, because it engaged more people in politics than ever before (though we might debate the quality of their engagement). Besides this, apathy is still on the rise. In the vox pops, so beloved of the media and so useless to the analyst, it’s usually couched in terms of “ah, no politicians care about me”. In academic studies (including the rather excellent briefing paper produced by the House of Commons Library in February) a more nuanced view is taken, highlighting reasons for disengagement, and particular groups especially susceptible.

Countering political apathy is not easy. Westminster is to most people, after all, a different world. There is a reason that the ‘Westminster bubble’ has become one of the terms du jour. But if the politics of Westminster is another world, where better to start the fight than in people’s back yards? Most of the consultors we deal with on a regular basis act primarily on the local level, and consultation can be an effective way to let people know their voices are being heard- particularly if they see their suggestions being acted upon. This in turn can encourage them to be more engaged in wider political affairs, to take more of an interest in the world around them and to be more socially conscious.

So perhaps it’s time we start taking a more active approach to reaching further out, and drawing in the apathetic. Perhaps in addition to trying to get to those we already have as ‘seldom heard’, we need to start looking into those who are ‘disinterested stakeholders’, and trying to work out how we can make what we are doing more interesting to them, not only for the sake of improving our own consultations and engagement processes, but also to improve the health of our democracy as a whole. So as we start to deal with the fallout of the election cycle, and head back to the trenches- let’s remember how important our work is to promoting a healthy democracy, and recommit to making sure we assist as many voices as possible to be heard.