The Churchill Society for the Advancement of
Parliamentary Democracy non-partisan, charitable organization that does not take a position
on the Ontario referendum question. Our aim is to provide
information and links to commentary to help voters make an informed
decision.
It’s not just who we vote
for; it’s who they are accountable to
Christopher Moore
This summer I encountered several people who said they did not know much
about this electoral reform referendum. But each went on to say, more
or less: “The parties are going to get to appoint their hacks and
flunkies to the legislature… and this will be more democratic?” Was I
hearing the voice of the people?
I am not absolutely opposed to
proportional representation or MMP systems. MMP representation systems
are not proportional for us, the citizens. They are proportional for
the political parties; they require citizens to delegate their votes
to an organized political party, which may then name its representatives
to the legislature. There is a problem of democratic accountability in
that. But it does not disqualify MMP systems from consideration.
Political parties are an important vehicle of political expression, and
party support does determine voting preference for many voters. I can
see merit in proportional representation voting systems and in MMP
systems. There can be a place for them in democratic societies.
But I regret the suggestion that democratic accountability is a merely
mathematical problem, simply a question of aligning seats more precisely
with various parties’ share of the popular vote. We should judge any
electoral system in relation to the actual situation prevailing in the
jurisdiction in question.
If we had a situation in Ontario,
in Canada, of independent-minded backbenchers, strong party caucuses,
and accountability of leaders to caucuses, then it might well be
possible, for the sake of better linking seat totals to party vote
totals, to add some MPPs who were appointed by the parties -- without
greatly threatening the kind of lively, accountable representative
democracy for which I think we should strive.
Such conditions of leadership
accountability to caucus do exist in many parliamentary democracies.
This month, September 2007, the Japanese prime minister was removed from
the leadership of the LDP by his own caucus, and the Australian prime
minister was struggling to fend off being removed by his caucus. In
recent years, we saw many British Labour MPs vote against Prime Minister
Blair’s Iraq policy and against his education bills – and none of them
was silenced or driven from caucus. In Turkey, the government caucus in
2003 overturned the cabinet’s inclination to support the US invasion of
Iraq. Some of these parliamentary democracies are
“first-past-the-post,” some have PR systems. But all have political
cultures where few people think backbenchers are nobodies, or believe
majority prime ministers are immune to control between elections, or
despair because what goes on in their legislature is trivial,
irrelevant, and useless.
In Canada, of course, we virtually all think those things. In Canadian
politics today, the great threat to democratic accountability, “the
democratic deficit” that discredits our parliamentary system, comes
mostly from the power of the parties, the rigidities of party
discipline, and the huge imbalance in authority between party leaders
and party caucuses. From Pierre Trudeau’s “MPs are nobodies” to today’s
ruthless expulsions of backbenchers in any party who show the faintest
glimmering of independent intelligence, we are all familiar with the
meaninglessness and uselessness of the ordinary MP or MPP whom we elect
in our constituencies to represent us.
We know in Canada that our MP or MPP is there exclusively to represent
the party or government to us, not the other way round. We know that
every time an issue comes up in our legislatures, debate and caucus
discussion will be a meaningless and embarrassing sham, and every
elected member will be no more than a tally-stick the leaders will throw
in for the counting when the vote is called.
This Canadian plight is often seen here as a failing of parliamentary
democracy (and of first-past-the-post electoral systems). In fact, this
is a particularly Canadian issue, an artifact of an unfortunate turn in
Canadian political culture and one that would not be tolerated in other
parliamentary democracies around the world.
So the way to evaluate the MMP
proposal is to ask: will it help improve this Canadian situation, or
will it make things worse? It seems to me evident MMP must make this
situation worse. We have in Canada today a political culture that
trains elected representatives to act as hacks and flunkies and denies
their right to speak their minds or put controls upon the party leaders
imposed on them by an extra-parliamentary process, the “leadership
convention.” To add a large bloc of members who will be appointed by
the parties, accountable to the parties, and legitimate only to the
extent they speak for the party that has sent them to the legislature –
that can only further reinforce the culture of unaccountable leaders and
impotent caucuses that is already much too strong in Ontario and in
Canada.
At present our political culture of rigid party discipline is a matter
of unfortunate political custom and unquestioned political culture.
Custom and culture can be changed. But a legislative change that adds
by law a significant bloc of appointed members accountable solely to
their parties must cement that culture even more firmly in place and
make it difficult, if not impossible, to encourage change in how our
leaders and our backbenchers relate to each other and to us the
citizens.
Is this a purely theoretical concern? No. New Zealand long had a
political culture marked by a high degree of leadership accountability
to the people’s elected representatives. Backbenchers elected their
leaders. They named the cabinet, They dictated policy. They removed and
replaced unpopular or unsuccessful party leaders almost routinely.
Since MMP in New Zealand, the mathematical congruence between party
votes and party seats has become almost perfect, and there is a benefit
in that. But there was a price. After New Zealand’s switch to MMP, the
new legislature, half of its members appointed by the parties, passed a
law prescribing that any backbencher who voted against party policy
could be removed by the party leader, not only from caucus but from his
or her parliamentary seat. No New Zealand party leader has been rebuked
or removed by his or her caucus since MMP was introduced. MMP has
“Canadianized” New Zealand political culture. Whatever its other
merits, it has shifted the power balance in the Canadian direction, away
from MPs, toward party bosses.
I do not think we should do anything to reinforce the culture of
deference and dependence by MPPs to the political parties and party
leaders in Ontario. I think we need desperately to encourage the
opposite process, and the sooner the better. MMP bases its appeal on
parties, not on legislators. And so I think we have to reject this MMP
proposal, despite the undoubted good intentions of most of its
advocates.
Christopher Moore is a writer in
Toronto and the author of 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal. He
has no connection with any political party or the Churchill Society. He
blogs on historical (and sometimes political) matters from <www.christophermoore.ca>.
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2007 Churchill Society
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