There is another issue, which has been set out by Sunder Katwala, general secretary of the Fabian Society. Writing on the Next Left blog, he reflected on how the Labour Party held on to the Glasgow North East constituency in a 2009 by-election despite having lost the neighbouring Glasgow East constituency to the Scottish National Party in an upset in 2008. He argued that voters do have a wide choice, including independents, but prefer the clarity of political parties.

"Campaigners for anti-party 'clean up politics' campaigns often present the voters as sheep who will vote for any candidate with the right rosette.

"But the Glasgow East election had showed how even rock-solid safe seats can fall in by-elections.

"Perhaps the truth is that voters chose Labour, the SNP, the Tories, Solidarity, the Lib Dems and the Greens - and even the racist BNP - know what the party stands for and why, and share the politics and values of their chosen party and candidate...

"Because if 'the people' want independent candidates, all they have to do is vote for them." [i]

This argument is firstly about by-elections, where the possibility of a surprise result is greater than in a general election and in which voters know they are not choosing a manifesto for government.

And it overlooks the point that in fact, as the figures show, voters already are supporting independents in huge numbers despite the obstacles put in their way and an electoral system which means that such a vote has almost zero effect.

But do voters prefer the values of big parties to those of independent candidates about whom they are less clear? This raises an issue about whether an election is about specific policies or a set of governing values.

Values can be policy-free and therefore as vague as desired. The values one person attaches to a party might not be the same as those which another person attaches, and therefore they will have differing policy expectations when it comes to how a party implements its values. This is clearly not a satisfactory approach to seeking a mandate.

Policies, on the other hand, can both embody particular values and be judged on their intended outcome. It would therefore, in principle, be better to have as much clarity as possible about policies at an election, and as much policy choice as possible so that voters can cast a ballot that most reflects their preferences.

Of course, another issue with democracy is that electoral mandates are sought infrequently and therefore fail to cover issues which may arise after the election (or be deliberately kept off the agenda at that point). Part II will return to this issue.

Footnotes:

[i] Katwala, S. (2009), blog post available at http://www.nextleft.org/2009/11/whatever-happened-to-peoples-smeaton.html [December 23, 2009].