One of the most common complaints about our political system in Australia over the past 30 years has been that the two parties are too close together.
Personally, I think this is dubious- there remain some significant differences between the two parties. Consider the financial crisis - The Labor government responded by growing spending, giving out tax bonuses, a bank deposit guarantee, building schools and by doing an insulation program. Notwithstanding the problems with the insulation scheme, these policies demonstrate a belief in the power of government to solve problems - a marked shift from the Howard era.
If the liberals had been in charge during the financial crisis, their policies would have been much different. I believe that they would have cut taxes, cut spending, and passed another round of workchoices to help "save jobs".
If anything, the difference between the parties is probably a bit bigger than it was 20 year ago, when both parties swallowed the neoliberal agenda as a whole. But despite this, it's probably a valid criticism to say that the divide between the parties on policy matters no longer resembles a grand canyon as it did 40 years ago. When people feel that they have less of a choice, or that there aren't big things at stake, they are less motivated to participate in democracy.
Look at the US election in 1996 - a voter turnout of 49%. Or the UK elections of 2001 (59%) and 2005 (61%), down from 71% in 1997 when Blair swept to power.
It's easy to measure the health of politics in other countries, because the level of engagement can be measured easily by the turnout at elections.
But that shouldn't be our only measure. Indeed in Australia, we can't measure it this way because voting is compulsory. We have to look elsewhere, to other things. Other countries are plagued by deeper structural problems, and Australia shares them.
Decline in participation can be measured a number of ways:
- the decline in trade union membership, community organisations and clubs
- an increase in the amount of voters who don't identify with one party, or say they are "uncommitted"
- a decline in participation in community events or religious institutions
And above all things in my opinion, a decline can be seen in the levels of membership of all our political parties. With the exception of the greens, membership of all major and most minor political parties over the past 20 years has been falling.
The common thread to all of this disenfranchisement is one thing: every single one of these political parties has all too regularly defied the popular will of their membership and support base - and has lost members and valuable funding in the process.
The Nationals have spent the better part of the last 25 years losing their rural base, firstly to the liberals, then to one nation, then to Independents and the liberals again. A party of agrarian socialism, they regularly refused to stand up to the liberals in government when free market tendencies or service cuts damaged rural constituencies.
One Nation gained its relevance when racist working class voters wanted to voice their disapproval of Labor's social progressiveness. One Nation lost its relevance when John Howard stole many of their policies, like temporary protection visas.
John Howard drove small L liberals out of the liberal party starting in the 1980's and the job became nearly complete after he scuttled the republic and exploited the Tampa crisis. Now the party has been taken over by extremists. A young Liberal MP, Alex Hawke, has stated that "nobody joins the liberal party if they believe in compulsory student unionism, legalising drug injecting rooms or lowering the age of consent for lowering the homosexual age of consent". Nor is it a place for people who believe in a market-based response to fight man-made Climate Change, as Malcolm Turnbull rudely found out. Many small l liberals could support some of those policies.
20 years ago, progressive individualists would have joined the Australian democrats - but now they no longer exist. The reason for that is the Australia democrats breached their trust with the public and their members, after they voted for the GST. Meg Lees defied the wishes of party members, and they duly responded - by leaving.
Which leaves us with the labor party. This is a party that has suffered plenty of setbacks for the ordinary party member. ALP members starting in the mid-1980's had to first deal with the party's adoption of neoliberalism and the corresponding decline of trade unions. They then had to deal with mistreatment at the hands of factions, branch stacking, and a decline in respect for the rights of the ordinary party member.
In most cases, labor governments these days produce policies that are often far to the right of the wishes of rank and file members. The parliamentary wing regularly adopts loose interpretations of the platform. Rank and file power over policy and preselections has also withered away. If this wasn't enough, the party had to then deal with the many wedge issues of John Howard - many people exited political involvement completely over the tampa issue - others ran off to the wide open arms of the greens.
The greens? They're growing, mainly through grassroots activism and standing on principle. And family first? Well that party gets propped up by Evangelical churches. Both of these parties grow because they share one thing - they are rare in that they have not yet seriously defied the policy wishes of their members.
Yes, the state of our political parties is a sad place indeed. Is it any wonder that people don't want to get involved in politics?
Usually, if something is drastically wrong, people will join political parties. But that hasn't been happening - despite the financial crisis, despite big issues like Iraq and Global Warming, people stay switched off. The push factors are there for people to want to join political parties, but he pull factors aren't. Where are we going wrong?
I am convinced that the problem lies with our political parties themselves. They are undemocratic and their internal structures are mostly an embarrassment. Most of them would be in debt. Some barely have enough members to run a campaign - in one sad example, the liberals actually pay people to man booths on election day.
When people don't join political parties, it robs them of two things - money, and people. Usually every strong organisation needs both of these. But eventually, some clever political party staffers worked out that:
a) less people meant it was easier to run an undemocratic organisation exactly how you wanted
b) if you needed money for campaign contributions, the private sector would gladly open its wallet, but only a price.
So what was the point of having pesky rank and filers? Why put up with them when you could operate instead what Carmen Lawrence once called a "Political Corporation"?
The problem with this is that big donors expect big favors. Look at the influence of property developers in NSW - they give big bucks to both parties, but particularly Labor. Why? Because Bob Carr had a philosophy that Sydney was already full, so any land that did get released was very valuable. So the big developers lobbied the government for more land release, or they bought land that they then lobbied to have rezoned.
These developers made a killing - they then built and sold big houses on big blocks and made even more cash. Bob Carr ironically helped create the mcmansion and with them came the stubborn voters whose fear of interest rates kept John Howard in office.
Corporations have sought to buy interest for a long time, especially in NSW. The answer to this has been the call for public funding of elections. Certainly preferable to government by donation. But hang on a second - taxpayers then pay tax so a party can run an election. Why should parties get access to the public purse when they could be raising that money through higher membership? Look at Obama's campaign - he was the more left wing candidate, and yet he was able to refuse public funding because the average individual donors gave money and support.
Political parties are an institution of democracy, and thus a public good. Parliamentary democracy as we know it can't function without them. So therefore it's totally legitimate to ask what we have to do to fix them. Parties simply MUST make themselves a more attractive product otherwise they won't survive. People these days won't join a party just so they can rock up to a branch and talk about things. Any old amateur with internet access can discuss politics online. What people do care about is power - the power to influence events, policies and the selection of candidates. When our political parties don't give that to them, they zone out, or they join some sort of fringe lobby group with no structural power, leaving people further frustrated. .
The ordinary citizen must have rights when they join any political party. Rules must be democratic and should encourage debate and criticism. And the right to exercise your vote on policy and candidacy matters should be paramount.
Since this a blog of social democracy, and I'm a labor supporter, Labor must also rediscover it's mass-based past. The Liberal Party will always have the backing of wealthy individuals and business. What the Labor party needs is a strong membership that is organised en masse and participates wholeheartedly.
The Labor party was not founded as a political corporation. In fact, it was formed because it believed the opposite about itself and about society. It believed that collectively, we are stronger. It believed in engagement, participation, and above all things, it believed in mass-collective organisation. Because the working class protected itself when it stuck together. And the working class had power when it stuck together. The strength of the early Labor parties and trade unions was not in their money, but in their mass membership.
This is how politics should be - not a one way conversation from the TV speakers into your ears. It's a discussion. It's about participation and involvement. It's about ordinary people shaping the movement, the policies, and ordinary people choosing their candidates, and ordinary people running the campaign. We have lost sight of our collective consciousness - through parties and trade unions. Plenty of working class people have never joined unions, and have in turn never understood that their living standards are best advanced through collective action. As a result, many turn to the opposite vision offered by the liberals, which says to poor workers that an individual can get ahead simply if they work hard, and that liberals would help you do so by preventing immigrants from stealing your job and by keeping the economy strong. We must break that chain and focus attention where it should be - greedy banks, polluters, monopolies and corporations.
And for goodness sake, lets end the madness of the nation's major social democratic party not even being internally democratic.
Showing posts with label democracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label democracy. Show all posts
Monday, April 26, 2010
Monday, October 5, 2009
Japan's political system
One of the themes I will probably return to a lot in this blog is democracy, and the nature of it. A few years ago, I took a course in political systems in in other countries. I decided to do a paper on Japanese politics, partly because you never hear anything about it, and partly because when I looked at it I was fascinated. I was reminded of this class I took recently when I saw the news that the Japanese electorate threw out the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (a Conservative Party) after 55 almost unbroken years in charge of the government.
What struck me was just how much we take for granted - simple things like the seperation of powers, government by cabinet, a bureaucracy that acts as the servant of the government of the day, and most of all - a strong 2-party system. Japan is a strange case of a constitutional democracy where for some reason none of this ever fully and completely developed. The consequences that this had for democracy in Japan were immense and significant.
This is a very long post I wrote over the past few weeks- a little insight into Japan's politics, for the uninformed. If you'd like more info on the latest, I definitely recommend Tobias Harris's blog at www.observingjapan.com - practically the only source of English language commentary on Japan's politics.
Ideology in Japan
In most countries, the choice between left and right centers around the philosophy of government. What should it do, and how big should it be?
In countries with a 2-party system like Australia, New Zealand, and most of western europe, since the 1980's the choice has always been between a party that broadly supports smaller government and a pro-business agenda, and a party that broadly supports a more active role for government in the economy and in society. Before that, both parties were big and Keynesian, but even here in Australia we had significant ideological differences between liberal conservatism and individualism as advanced by the Robert Menzies-led Liberal Party, and the more collectivist and social-democratic Labor party, backed by the union movement.
If your interpretation of a 2-party political system is a choice between a big government socialist/social democratic party on the left and a smaller conservative party on the right, then a quick glance at Japan's political system will likely leave you quite baffled. The party that sits on the right ran the economy via a massive bureaucracy it had fostered and maintained for 55 years, while the party notionally left of the political spectrum is the one most vocal about removing the power of bureaucrats. Fundamentally, this party system reflects the state of Japan's democracy - how despite the observance of a democratic constitution and strong institutions, the development of a two-party system was almost fifty years in the making.
Japan is actually a very good case study of what happens when a democracy is governed by one political party for a very long time with no strong opposition. The bureaucracy becomes entrenched and stacked by party officials and sympathisers, and starts to become corrupted by nefarious influences. When there's no threat to a power base, politicians, bureaucrats and business (or other special interests) start to work hand in hand with each other. No matter how corrupt the system becomes, as long as the system works to deliver jobs and prosperity for a large amount of people, there's no imperative to change it, either from within government, or outside it (via the electorate), especially if there is not a viable alternative.
The LDP - A History
This was the situation in Japan from 1955 until 1993. the Liberal Democratic Party, the party quite literally of big government serving big business, ran the country uninterrupted. The only major alternative, the Socialist Party, were not seen as relevant in a time of spectacular growth. So despite scandal after scandal, the LDP remained entrenched.
In this sense, the Liberal Democratic Party is a product of a bygone age - its ideology and the way it governs harks back more to the Conservative parties of the Keynesian consensus of the 1950's and 1960's, before the neoliberal agenda started to bite in the mid 1970's. It's a strangely archaic system that is very out of step with the way conservatives like to govern in the modern world.
Unlike the Republican Party of Reagan or Thatcher's tories, the LDP never went through a radical small-government reformist zeal in the 1980's. In fact, the source of Japanese economic growth was quite the opposite - an economy built through strong central planning. This was such a strong system that Japan was once referred to as the most successful socialist country in the world, despite being governed by conservatives. This is misleading - in fact, Japan's system was about transferring favour to business, who then delivered high tech jobs and infrastructure to japanese citizens in a bubble economy - more corporatist than socialist. As a result, Japan had fantastic economic infrastucture, like roads and bullet trains, but a terrible social safety net.
When the bubble economy burst, Japan was left with a stagnant economy and a number of social problems. It was at roughly the same time, in the early 1990's, that japan's political state started to develop into a two party system. The so called 1955-system worked spectacularly well for about 35 years, growing the economy but stifling democracy. When it all came to a halt, people began questioning the wisdom of the system. Many members left the LDP and formed new parties, including new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and his DPJ Secretary-General Ichiro Ozawa, reflecting a desire for less cronyism and a smaller government. This led to the loss of the LDP's majority in 1993, and the formation of an 8-party coalition government for a year. The LDP would return to power only a year later, but never learned their lesson.
In the 21st century, Junichiro Koizumi saw that his party was dying a very slow death and he wrested control of the policy agenda. Considered a maverick and a reformist, the Japanese loved him. They saw him as a distinct break from the old stuffy fogies of past. What they didn't realise was that he was busy ramming through a neoliberal agenda.
After he was gone, the LDP moved back to all its old ways. Koizumi's neoliberal reforms like Postal Privatisation and deregulation of labour laws proved to be corrosive after he had gone, contributing to the LDP's final collapse in 2009. But that's only half the story - the other half concerns the development of a strong opposition party. Finally.
THE DPJ - a history
In 1994 the opposition parties, realising that they had almost blown their first chance at removing the LDP from it's structural monopoly on power, finally realised that they could not be so bitterly divided when the next chance came. Over the next 5-10 years, most of these parties decided to merge into one single party, which gradually became the Democratic Party of Japan as we know it today.
By necessity, the DPJ came to power representing both the destruction of the big corporatist government, as well as a more socially progressive policy agenda, but with the maintenance of many of the protections for things like rural industries, while at the same time being pro free trade and pro domestic consumption. It seems like one gigantic contradiction, and to some extent it is. It's not often that you'll hear a left wing party arguing for some form of smaller government.
So who is the DPJ? What's their ideology and what will they actually do? It has members who used to be socialists, LDP members, trade unionists, centrists, and liberals. Is is social democratic, centrist, third way, liberal, or something else?
I think the answer to the question of what the DPJ's ideology is can be found in it's very name. It is fundamentally, and above all other things, a democratic party. It believes in strengthening and advancing the democratic process in Japan's political system.
This may seem a bit strange, but it reflects the Japanese system perfectly. The DPJ has realised that it's role isn't just to bring in new policy, it also has to reform japan's democratic system - a project left uncompleted due to government by one party for 55 years, and all of the undemocratic structural and secret power centres that resulted from that system. The policymaking process needs to be streamlined and made more open. Basic things that most western countries take for granted, like the depoliticisation of the public service, safeguards against corruption, and government by cabinet need to be introduced into Japan's system almost for the first time. The DPJ is not just rebuilding Japan's economy, they also have to rebuild Japan's democracy - and one thing may not be able to follow without the other. Hence, the DEMOCRATIC party of Japan.
Ideologically, the DPJ could best be placed broadly close to the third way tradition of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, with a rejection of outright socialism, but incorporating influences of progressive small-l liberalism, social democracy (welfare payments for families), a bit of kenyes (removing tolls on roads) and even a bit of neoliberalism (they actually supported postal privatisation in 2005, but tactically voted against it). The DPJ has to reform Japan to their position not by trying to reform small government neoliberalism from right to left, but by reforming big government corporatism into a more moderately sized social democratic government. Japan is very fortunate that this is the case, since a social democratic government can now set the terms, rather than a radical free market government.
I personally think that the DPJ is looking to the Blair government as a model for both policymaking and democracy. The DPJ has done extensive studies of the way cabinet processes work in that country under New Labour and have already sought to replicate many of those structures in the formulation of their new government. I can also see the ideological influences of New Labour sociologist Anthony Giddens in a number of Hatoyama's public comments, especially his concept of "fraternity", which in practice isn't too far removed from the concepts of community advanced by Blair & Giddens.
If the DPJ is successful in its task of reforming Japan's democratic system, this will have repercussions for the LDP as well. They will have to reform their ideology - I personally feel that in the long run, it will embrace the Koizumi agenda and a more free market and small government attitude, especially as they critique the actions of the DPJ in government.
This will be complicated by the global financial crisis, and no doubt the internal policy wranglings and factional battles will take many years to settle down. They can't seriously argue for a return to the big corporatist government of the past, especially when there still exists a gigantic ideological hole in Japanese political spectrum - there currently is no major party in the Diet that promotes small government. In the long run, if Japan wants to be a democracy that mirrors the ideological battles of most other western countries, as well as one that has all the democratic safeguards we are used to, this is the path they will need to go down.
The more I think about Japan's system the more I realised what a precious and slow-developing beast democracy can be. All those neoconservatives who thought you could just click your fingers and have an election and poof! suddenly there's a democracy need to take a look over their shoulder. It took Japan 55 years before they had a full democracy in an industrialised western country.
What struck me was just how much we take for granted - simple things like the seperation of powers, government by cabinet, a bureaucracy that acts as the servant of the government of the day, and most of all - a strong 2-party system. Japan is a strange case of a constitutional democracy where for some reason none of this ever fully and completely developed. The consequences that this had for democracy in Japan were immense and significant.
This is a very long post I wrote over the past few weeks- a little insight into Japan's politics, for the uninformed. If you'd like more info on the latest, I definitely recommend Tobias Harris's blog at www.observingjapan.com - practically the only source of English language commentary on Japan's politics.
Ideology in Japan
In most countries, the choice between left and right centers around the philosophy of government. What should it do, and how big should it be?
In countries with a 2-party system like Australia, New Zealand, and most of western europe, since the 1980's the choice has always been between a party that broadly supports smaller government and a pro-business agenda, and a party that broadly supports a more active role for government in the economy and in society. Before that, both parties were big and Keynesian, but even here in Australia we had significant ideological differences between liberal conservatism and individualism as advanced by the Robert Menzies-led Liberal Party, and the more collectivist and social-democratic Labor party, backed by the union movement.
If your interpretation of a 2-party political system is a choice between a big government socialist/social democratic party on the left and a smaller conservative party on the right, then a quick glance at Japan's political system will likely leave you quite baffled. The party that sits on the right ran the economy via a massive bureaucracy it had fostered and maintained for 55 years, while the party notionally left of the political spectrum is the one most vocal about removing the power of bureaucrats. Fundamentally, this party system reflects the state of Japan's democracy - how despite the observance of a democratic constitution and strong institutions, the development of a two-party system was almost fifty years in the making.
Japan is actually a very good case study of what happens when a democracy is governed by one political party for a very long time with no strong opposition. The bureaucracy becomes entrenched and stacked by party officials and sympathisers, and starts to become corrupted by nefarious influences. When there's no threat to a power base, politicians, bureaucrats and business (or other special interests) start to work hand in hand with each other. No matter how corrupt the system becomes, as long as the system works to deliver jobs and prosperity for a large amount of people, there's no imperative to change it, either from within government, or outside it (via the electorate), especially if there is not a viable alternative.
The LDP - A History
This was the situation in Japan from 1955 until 1993. the Liberal Democratic Party, the party quite literally of big government serving big business, ran the country uninterrupted. The only major alternative, the Socialist Party, were not seen as relevant in a time of spectacular growth. So despite scandal after scandal, the LDP remained entrenched.
In this sense, the Liberal Democratic Party is a product of a bygone age - its ideology and the way it governs harks back more to the Conservative parties of the Keynesian consensus of the 1950's and 1960's, before the neoliberal agenda started to bite in the mid 1970's. It's a strangely archaic system that is very out of step with the way conservatives like to govern in the modern world.
Unlike the Republican Party of Reagan or Thatcher's tories, the LDP never went through a radical small-government reformist zeal in the 1980's. In fact, the source of Japanese economic growth was quite the opposite - an economy built through strong central planning. This was such a strong system that Japan was once referred to as the most successful socialist country in the world, despite being governed by conservatives. This is misleading - in fact, Japan's system was about transferring favour to business, who then delivered high tech jobs and infrastructure to japanese citizens in a bubble economy - more corporatist than socialist. As a result, Japan had fantastic economic infrastucture, like roads and bullet trains, but a terrible social safety net.
When the bubble economy burst, Japan was left with a stagnant economy and a number of social problems. It was at roughly the same time, in the early 1990's, that japan's political state started to develop into a two party system. The so called 1955-system worked spectacularly well for about 35 years, growing the economy but stifling democracy. When it all came to a halt, people began questioning the wisdom of the system. Many members left the LDP and formed new parties, including new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and his DPJ Secretary-General Ichiro Ozawa, reflecting a desire for less cronyism and a smaller government. This led to the loss of the LDP's majority in 1993, and the formation of an 8-party coalition government for a year. The LDP would return to power only a year later, but never learned their lesson.
In the 21st century, Junichiro Koizumi saw that his party was dying a very slow death and he wrested control of the policy agenda. Considered a maverick and a reformist, the Japanese loved him. They saw him as a distinct break from the old stuffy fogies of past. What they didn't realise was that he was busy ramming through a neoliberal agenda.
After he was gone, the LDP moved back to all its old ways. Koizumi's neoliberal reforms like Postal Privatisation and deregulation of labour laws proved to be corrosive after he had gone, contributing to the LDP's final collapse in 2009. But that's only half the story - the other half concerns the development of a strong opposition party. Finally.
THE DPJ - a history
In 1994 the opposition parties, realising that they had almost blown their first chance at removing the LDP from it's structural monopoly on power, finally realised that they could not be so bitterly divided when the next chance came. Over the next 5-10 years, most of these parties decided to merge into one single party, which gradually became the Democratic Party of Japan as we know it today.
By necessity, the DPJ came to power representing both the destruction of the big corporatist government, as well as a more socially progressive policy agenda, but with the maintenance of many of the protections for things like rural industries, while at the same time being pro free trade and pro domestic consumption. It seems like one gigantic contradiction, and to some extent it is. It's not often that you'll hear a left wing party arguing for some form of smaller government.
So who is the DPJ? What's their ideology and what will they actually do? It has members who used to be socialists, LDP members, trade unionists, centrists, and liberals. Is is social democratic, centrist, third way, liberal, or something else?
I think the answer to the question of what the DPJ's ideology is can be found in it's very name. It is fundamentally, and above all other things, a democratic party. It believes in strengthening and advancing the democratic process in Japan's political system.
This may seem a bit strange, but it reflects the Japanese system perfectly. The DPJ has realised that it's role isn't just to bring in new policy, it also has to reform japan's democratic system - a project left uncompleted due to government by one party for 55 years, and all of the undemocratic structural and secret power centres that resulted from that system. The policymaking process needs to be streamlined and made more open. Basic things that most western countries take for granted, like the depoliticisation of the public service, safeguards against corruption, and government by cabinet need to be introduced into Japan's system almost for the first time. The DPJ is not just rebuilding Japan's economy, they also have to rebuild Japan's democracy - and one thing may not be able to follow without the other. Hence, the DEMOCRATIC party of Japan.
Ideologically, the DPJ could best be placed broadly close to the third way tradition of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, with a rejection of outright socialism, but incorporating influences of progressive small-l liberalism, social democracy (welfare payments for families), a bit of kenyes (removing tolls on roads) and even a bit of neoliberalism (they actually supported postal privatisation in 2005, but tactically voted against it). The DPJ has to reform Japan to their position not by trying to reform small government neoliberalism from right to left, but by reforming big government corporatism into a more moderately sized social democratic government. Japan is very fortunate that this is the case, since a social democratic government can now set the terms, rather than a radical free market government.
I personally think that the DPJ is looking to the Blair government as a model for both policymaking and democracy. The DPJ has done extensive studies of the way cabinet processes work in that country under New Labour and have already sought to replicate many of those structures in the formulation of their new government. I can also see the ideological influences of New Labour sociologist Anthony Giddens in a number of Hatoyama's public comments, especially his concept of "fraternity", which in practice isn't too far removed from the concepts of community advanced by Blair & Giddens.
If the DPJ is successful in its task of reforming Japan's democratic system, this will have repercussions for the LDP as well. They will have to reform their ideology - I personally feel that in the long run, it will embrace the Koizumi agenda and a more free market and small government attitude, especially as they critique the actions of the DPJ in government.
This will be complicated by the global financial crisis, and no doubt the internal policy wranglings and factional battles will take many years to settle down. They can't seriously argue for a return to the big corporatist government of the past, especially when there still exists a gigantic ideological hole in Japanese political spectrum - there currently is no major party in the Diet that promotes small government. In the long run, if Japan wants to be a democracy that mirrors the ideological battles of most other western countries, as well as one that has all the democratic safeguards we are used to, this is the path they will need to go down.
The more I think about Japan's system the more I realised what a precious and slow-developing beast democracy can be. All those neoconservatives who thought you could just click your fingers and have an election and poof! suddenly there's a democracy need to take a look over their shoulder. It took Japan 55 years before they had a full democracy in an industrialised western country.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)