Professional Politicians as the Subjects of Moral Panic

Bibliographic Data

ID6234877
AuthorsKatlin E Jones (0000-0001-5231-3293, La Trobe University, corresponding author), Kate Jones (0000-0002-3090-3353)
Year2008
Volume43
Issue2
Pages243-258
Publication date2008-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAustralian Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1036-1146 • E-ISSN: 1363-030X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10361140802035762
OpenAlexW1982523502
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited38

The media, the public and politicians themselves often express a fear that Australian political life is increasingly dominated by 'professional politicians', who are seen as careerist, lacking in commitment and disconnected from the reality of ordinary lives. The article analyses the meanings given to the term 'professional politicians' and their relationship to other definitions and characteristics of professionalism. It also uses the concept of moral panic to analyse the concerns expressed about 'professional politicians'. This concept, first formulated in 1972 in Cohen's study of alleged youth violence in a small town in the United Kingdom, is most often associated with studies of social deviance. This article demonstrates how, in a later period, it can be extended to apply to politicians, a group traditionally more often identified as a perpetrator of moral panics than the subject of them

Criminology · Deviance (statistics · Moral panic · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Sociology · Subject (documents · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Law · Nostalgia and Consumer Behavior · Psychology · Social Psychology

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