If there was anything as certain as Tony Blair's victory it was the dismal voter turnout. Disengagement from politics is one of the ineluctable trends of modern life. Political parties have been hollowed out by apathy. Of course, we should not deny Mr Blair his triumph. The youngest British prime minister since 1812 is now established as Labour's most successful leader. Yet it cannot but trouble this prime minister that more opted out of the democratic process than voted for his government. Representative demo- cracy is corroding.

There have been harbingers of this scorn for the ballot box. Across the industrialised nations disenchantment with elected governments has been manifest in the rising swell of angry protests against global capitalism and the degradation of the environment. The perception among many young people is that governments either do not care or are powerless before the might of predatory multinationals.

In Britain there has been a separate, fascinating shift in the nature of protest. For most of the postwar period, direct action was the province of the left. The unions, the proponents of nuclear disarmament and the unemployed were the ones who took to the streets. That was before the Conservatives became the natural party of opposition.

The coalminers' cloth caps and students' tie-dyed T-shirts have been replaced by corduroy trousers and arm-patched sports jackets. Now the placards are waved by farmers, road hauliers, rural motorists and hunt supporters. Last autumn they brought the country to a standstill during the fuel tax protests. Foot-and-mouth disease has left the resentment simmering. Socialist workers and Trotskyists have made way for Poujadists.

The newly dispossessed will harry Mr Blair just as the unions, CND supporters and poll tax protesters dogged Margaret Thatcher. The victory of Richard Taylor, the independent candidate who campaigned on the single issue of the condition of a local hospital, adds another dimension to the politics of protest.

The government, of course, has its explanations ready for the nation's indifference to this week's election. Less than 60 per cent of those eligible chose to vote, against 72 per cent in 1997 - itself the lowest for more than 50 years. You have to go back to 1918, when millions of soldiers were still stranded in the mud of Flanders' fields, to find a lower figure. Early indications were that among 18-25-year-olds only between a quarter and a third made it to the polling booths.

Yet Mr Blair's cabinet colleagues oozed complacency. Don't worry, suggested Jack Straw: the absentions reflected the politics of contentment. Happy people don't need to cast their vote. It's a characteristic of all western democracies, chipped in Gordon Brown. As if that answered the concern. Only David Blunkett seemed to recognise the danger of this growing detachment from politics.

Mr Brown was right, though, in his observation if not in the implicit conclusion. Voter participation has fallen in France, Italy and Germany (though in each of these it remains significantly higher than in the UK). About 63 per cent of Americans took part in the election that took Jack Kennedy to the White House in 1960. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush could turn out only a fraction over 50 per cent. Ireland's referendum on the European Union's Nice treaty this week saw a mere 30 per cent deciding to cast a ballot.

Maybe we should simply say it serves the politicians right. Voters have woken up to the cynical opportunism of their leaders. Staying at home is a worthy form of protest. A variation on this theme says that politics has been suffocated by post-cold-war centrism. The age of ideology, of tribal attachment to the parties of right, left or centre has passed. Why then bother?

From the politicians comes the countercharge that the media are at fault. Cynicism has become the oxygen of modern journalism. Where once there was a mission to explain there is now a commercial imperative. Politics does not sell newspapers.

All these things are indeed part of the story of disillusion and apathy. But only part of it. The retreat from participation in politics belongs to a broader narrative about the decline of the institutions of civic society and the erosion of what the academics call social capital.

Disengagement from the rituals of democracy mirrors a withdrawal from other forms of association - from churches, voluntary organisations, charities and community service. Voting is a collective enterprise. We live in the era of the individual.

In the US, this process has been mapped by Robert Putnam, a Harvard professor of public policy. Americans, he has observed, used to play in teams. Now they "bowl alone". They also watch television alone, gamble alone, surf the web alone. The tangible civic institutions and the intangible communal trust that make societies work have been severely damaged. Citizens have been replaced by consumers, engagement by atomisation. This fracturing of social connectedness in turn undermines faith in representative democracy.

Politicians from right and left draw different lessons. For the former, the enemy is an over-mighty state usurping the role of Edmund Burke's "little platoons". For the latter, social atrophy reflects the greedy individualism of unfettered markets.

In Britain at least, though, Conservatives and Labour have colluded in the destruction of the local democracy that should provide the essential link with national politics. The instinctive centralism of modern government rather than the size of the state has stifled local autonomy. Mr Blair's devolution agenda - a parliament in Edinburgh and an assembly in Cardiff - is one step back in the right direction. But it is a small one.

There is an important role for government in rebuilding social capital. It has to steer against the inequalities thrown up by the market. But the role is an enabling one, help at arm's length. If politicians want the trust of their electors, they must reciprocate by empowering them. Mr Blair has set as his overarching political ambition the synthesis of a liberal market economy with a fairer society. Sometimes that means letting go. Otherwise we are heading for De Tocque- ville's "atomised democracy".