Wellyopolis

June 29, 2004

the collective will in Canada

Yesterday's election in Canada produced a hung parliament, a situation often as challenging for journalists as for the politicians.

(Note, for example, the WashingtonPost article which suggests that the Governor General will have a substantive role to play in the process! Yes, and Paul Martin is the second coming of McKenzie King ... But I digress)

No, the real confusion is for the journalists in parliamentary democracies who struggle to make some sort of sense out of the collective result, often implying that individual voters wanted a hung parliament and divided government.

An article in the Globe and Mail said:

The electorate decided that Mr. Martin deserved to lead the country, but gave the Liberals the message that they must be less arrogant and power-hungry. The Liberals got 36.7 per cent of the popular support compared with 29.6 per cent for the Conservatives and 15.7 per cent for the NDP.

Really? It sounds like actually about a third of the country wanted the Liberals to continue in office (some of whom might have been holding their metaphorical noses as they voted), but that the remaining 2/3 of the country, certainly the 1/3 that voted for the Conservatives would actually be quite disappointed.

(Since neither the Bloc Q. nor the NDP were realistically expected to lead a government, it's hard to tell in the absence of preferential/instant run-off voting who voters for these parties preferred between the Liberals and Conservatives).

It's a fundamental misunderstanding of how parliamentary democracy works to suggest that electorates or countries as a whole have some sort of collective wish for a hung parliament.

When one party wins a majority [of seats or votes] it's easy to write that up as the country generally preferring that party. But when no-one wins a majority most people are likely to be disappointed, and it's the gritty [pun intended] reality of parliamentary debate and coalition formation that takes over from where the electorate left off.

As to the actual outcome of the election ... I've probably paid more attention to the Canadian election than most people in the United States, even in a state bordering Canada, but that's not saying much (!) and there's certainly a lot about Canadian politics I don't get ... with that disclaimer ...

the Conservatives: One of those situations where the press seems to be saying "great campaign, not such great results" and not wondering how both those things could be true at the same time.

Electorates may or may not prefer divided governments (the evidence is that they tend to do so by voting for different parties at different levels in a federal system), but they certainly tend to give governing parties only so long before they give the other party a chance. And if the Conservatives couldn't win this time after 11 years of Liberal government, and some obvious scandal, they really are waiting for the Liberals to absolutely implode.

As for the Liberals, refreshing a party in office is notoriously difficult and generally relies on a weak opposition (which the Liberals have). So, the Liberals could be like the Menzies government in Australia in the 50s and 60s, and just go on and on for two decades, with this as their only stumble.

They have the prospect of a stable coalition partner in the NDP, but there's one slight catch -- they fall 2 seats short of a majority (assuming that the Speaker comes from the majority party as she/he does in other British influenced parliaments).

In any other country, you'd probably then think that the Lib/NDP coalition would court support from the Bloc, but here's where the peculiarities of Canadian politics get tricky (and maybe beyond my judgment).

Dealing too closely with the Bloc probably reduces the chance of the Libs making any inroads in the West, so to get a majority the Libs/NDP will probably try to either (1) peel off some members from the Bloc (or the Conservatives? One MLA switched before the election), or (2) get issue by issue support from Bloc members, who tend to be somewhat more social democratic than the Conservatives.

Neither strategy is risk free, but then nothing ever is, and it's better to be in government than out of it.

One advantage that the Lib/NDP coalition could have is that the real polarities in Canadian politics seem to be between the Bloc and the Conservatives with their regional bases, and different views of how the Canadian federal system should work.

The Libs and the NDP aspire to be truly national parties, though as the parliament is made up of members elected by plurality in geographical constituencies the parties can't craft a truly national message.

Perhaps though in this hung parliament the Liberals should call the bluff of the Bloc, offering them participation in goverment in exchange for giving up some of their agenda, or calling the bluff of both the Bloc and the Conservatives by proposing some devolution of federal functions.

Posted by robe0419 at June 29, 2004 4:27 PM