Tag Archives: Change

The Party System

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Are political parties a good thing?

Do they formalise groups that will naturally emerge, and thus make politicians more accountable? Or do they entrench group identities, when individuals forming groups would be more pragmatic?

sexy_elections_by_jackbliss-d5nbwseDo they mitigate the populist effects of everyone being able to vote for individuals, and thus avoid the style of democracy which exists in Argentina today, or that which existed in Ancient Rome? Or do they entrench the status quo, resist change, and keep the elites in power?

Do they homogenize society into opposing groups, when in reality everyone has so many different identities and issues of importance that the divisions are grossly exaggerated? Or do they bring competition into the political realm, and ensure that there is always (assuming we’re not talking about a one party or dominant party system) a strong opposition group to hold the government to account?

Do they blur issues and encourage a lack of transparency? Or do they ensure that no matter how little voters know about their electoral candidates they can at least know their ideological positions based on the party they stand for?

Do they provide stability by avoiding the obvious difficulties of maintaining a government composed of independents coming from different positions? Or do they disenfranchise the minorities?

The idea of a party system is surprisingly rather modern. It comes largely from the work of nineteenth century Europeans such as Ostrogorsky and Bryce. In discussing whether such a system was a good thing or not, Ostrogorsky said that:

“As soon as a party, even if created for the noblest object perpetuates itself, it tends to degeneration”

I find this incredibly insightful, for it is how many people think today, and also one of the biggest weaknesses of the party system. Bernard Shaw, in ‘the Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism’, suggested that parties are always seeking primarily to get themselves into power. They do 2 party systemthis, he reasoned, because they believe that their party will help the people more than the opposition party would. So noble reasons. But, Shaw argues that it is precisely for this reason that many people end up voting contrary to what they actually believe. He gives an example of a Conservative Member of Parliament being presented with a bill proposed by his own party, which he finds distasteful. The MP ends up voting for it in order to avoid the perception that his/her government is no longer in a majority, which he rather exaggeratedly reasons might lead the opposition into government. Meanwhile, he gives another example of an opposition Labour MP, who supports the bill but votes against it, for precisely the opposite reasoning. And thus the belief that being in power will help them affect positive change leads politicians to take decisions which lead to negative changes.

In practice it is usually these ‘realpolitik’ methods which move the hand of governance. The UK Party System didn’t emerge for ideological reasons so much as it did because of the necessities of war. King William III was fighting a war against the French King Louis XIV, and the House of Commons were refusing him supplies, and limiting the fighting potential of his forces. Robert Spencer therefore advised that if the King chose ministers always from the strongest party in the House of Commons, then that party would have to back him through the war. And because it worked, it stayed.

For Bernard Shaw it is the changes that emerged as a result of this system which so weakens the practicable party system. He says that the party system in place at the local level is in fact effective, for it is committee led, and doesn’t require that anybody has to resign after a failed vote or notion.

“The rigidity of the party system, as we have seen, depends on the convention that whenever the Government is defeated on a division in the House, it must ‘appeal to the country’: that is, the Cabinet Ministers must resign  their offices, and the King dissolve the Parliament and have a new one elected.”

Of course today a single defeat does not result in the dissolution of government. But the resignations often do occur. And the trend is further towards, as opposed to away from, these practices. For instance the cross-party consensus at present is to enact a right of recall, so that members of the public can recall the MP that they elected should he/she fail to please them during their elected term. This trend enhances democracy. And yet as Shaw argued, it also encourages fear-led decision-making, and populism as opposed to difficult decision taking about which the public does not have as much information.

Despite the fact that reference to the party system was first found in published print as recently as 1888, I will leave you with the fact that after only a couple of decades this system was already seen as out-dated. In fact in 1920 two famous professors of political science, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, published a Socialist Constitution for the UK. In this constitution they discarded the notion of maintaining the party system within two Houses of Parliament as completely impracticable. They described its existence then, 96 years ago, as a condition of “creeping paralysis”. They proposed in this constitution that we should have one political Parliament, like the present Cabinet style system, and a second, industrial Parliament with a municipal system.

If you had the choice, what system would you propose? Is the party system fit for purpose?

“Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s all who ever have.” Is she right?

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Margaret MeadMargaret Mead was a twentieth century anthropologist, whose work greatly influenced those campaigning for equal rights in the sixties and seventies. The above quote is perhaps her most famous, and in recent years this message has appeared all over popular media, and throughout much of twenty first century culture.

The 2006 music video for “If Everyone Cared” by Nickelback ends with her quote. It’s used in the TV series the West Wing. And it was essentially the central philosophy of Barrack Obama’s presidential campaign: “Yes we can. Change we can believe in. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

Yet when we’re thinking about these quotes, we’re not thinking about the sorts of changes that President Obama has managed to realise (don’t misunderstand me here; I’m a huge Obama fan). We’re thinking about pivotal changes in human history; the sort that historians are likely to refer back to. In this modern world, can such momentous changes still be realised by a “few caring people”?

As an example, Liberal Interventionism has been one of the hottest topics in the media throughout this century. In 1999 the UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, in his Chicago speech, outlined his doctrine of Liberal Interventionism. And a Liberal Interventionyear later the UK’s intervention in the Sierra Leone Civil War was seen as a great success. Furthermore, orders for intervention in Sierra Leone did not come from a huge collective government, but in fact from a renegade Brigadier David Richards, who saw the chance to intervene, and took it without permission. So you could even argue that a few, or even one person, really did change the world here. Subsequent interventions have also been justified on moral grounds e.g. Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, with much less consensus as to the success of these missions. But more to the point, there has been a common thread throughout each of these interventions. And that thread of logic echoes the thought of American pragmatists, of Japanese leaders during WW2, of Napoleon during the Napoleonic Wars, and even right back to the works of Thucydides, an ancient Greek historian who wrote the History of the Peloponnesian War, and is also cited as an intellectual forbearer of ‘realpolitik’. That thread of thought is quite simply, the importance, and dominance, of power.

Hobbes’ method of reasoning provides a good example of this realist motivation for intervention. He started his argument, in his famous work ‘Leviathan’, with a kind of Cartesian thinking. Similar to the way Descartes started with his base assumption that thought proves existence, Hobbes said that as little as we can be sure of, we can at least be sure that humans are attracted to pleasure, and repelled by pain. As we can be sure of this much, said Hobbes, it goes to reason that what we all seek, and will always continue to seek, is the power to act on these attractions and repulsions. It is why he reasoned that in a state of nature life would be “nasty, brutish and short”, since without any kind of civilisation we would all be out to increase our own power.

Why do I use these examples? Because the world’s focus on Ukraine is indicative of all the above. The message from western interveners is that the Russian intervention and referendum in the Crimea was illegitimate, and abused Ukrainian sovereignty i.e. we want to help people, and we believe that we can change the world and make it more peaceful. In reality however, such intervention is both an example of power politics, and also quite frankly playground politics. The Russian intervention bears a lot of similarities to recent Western interventions. It is debatably legal in terms of international law. And although the referendum in Crimea should have been organised in different times, and under the supervision of the UN, I have not heard Westerners suggest this. Instead, they simply reject any sort of referendum, and in a blatantly childish manner, simply assume that what’s needed is a good old fashioned, gun-slinging approach of anti-appeasement i.e. if we show we’re the stronger party, we’ll win; life is a competition and we want to be the biggest bully in the playground.

It’s unlikely much of this is blatant, or even realised. The simple fact that the EU managed to achieve unanimity in deciding that they would impose sanctions on Russia goes to show that Western decision makers do believe they are in the right, and are acting morally. But our resources, and our ability to act, is finite. And what about the places where we can really help? How many children need to be decapitated in the Central African Republic before we intervene there? The UN says there is a real risk of genocide. But how many rapes are needed? How many mutations and acts of torture? How many murders are needed before we even start to think in such a way?

We can't changeThere is no power to gain in the Central African Republic. There is in re-igniting old Cold War tensions. So what would it take for us to change this much? What would it take for countries to actually intervene for moral reasons, as opposed to reasons of power? If Margaret Mead is right, then a few caring people can achieve such a change in international relations, and perhaps, depending on whether you agree with Hobbes, even a change in human nature. Do you think she was right? Are these changes really possible?

Do we need some constants in life?

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So I’m Sat here on my iPhone, wondering if this will be how I blog from now on. We tend to think all technological advances are inevitable. And indeed change is a fact of life inherent to all things. But so is our search for constants – parents, religion, tradition etc. So my question to you is this: do we need some constants to form a part of our lives and thus our identities? Or can we be happy with change in its entirety?