Thoughts on David Cameron's political reform plans

 eDemocracy Blog  No Responses »
Apr 242010
 

The Conservatives have published more details on their planned changes to Britain's political system. Here are a few quick thoughts.

First, it is great to see them taking an interest in what sounds like a version of participatory budgeting (which I've written about here and here).

"We will give neighbourhoods direct control over a share of payments made by property developers to local councils in exchange for planning permission. This will give neighbourhoods real budgets, which they will be able to decide how to spend: for example, on refurbishing playgrounds, creating a park or building a drop-in centre for older people."

There isn't a great deal of detail on this and quite what is meant by 'neighbourhood' is unclear. Presumably it means the public, but it could equally be ward councillors. Assuming it is the public, it sounds like a big expansion of a scheme the government is already developing.

Another pledge is to introduce 'crowd-sourcing' into the drafting of government legislation. This seems fairly restricted in that it will be aimed at "expert members of the public" – which presumably is mostly lawyers and lobbyists with the time and expertise to study the wording of a Bill. There will also be no ability to change the policy intent, and the final say will remain with officials.

This is still an interesting idea, but there may be a question mark over whether it can gain the critical mass needed to generate sufficient comments and ratings. A lot will depend on the Bill which the Conservatives might choose to test this reform with.

The previously-promised Public Reading Stage of the legislative process will take place after the Second Reading Stage, with the public's comments then being considered by MPs or peers on a dedicated day during the Committee Stage.

I'm still a bit confused over the messages from this. The new policy document says:

"This process will help open up the legislative process and improve the scrutiny of proposed legislation, while still retaining the fundamental character of our representative democracy."

So politicians should remain in control. But in one of his election broadcasts, David Cameron said:

"This is our big idea: Smashing apart the old 'politician knows best' system which just doesn't work and building the Big Society where we work together to make life better."

Do politicians know best, or not? This area of policy seems to symbolise the tensions in the Conservative Party between radicalism and conservatism.

Every reform has to start somewhere, but there is a risk of falling into the trap identified in this post on PEP-NET.

"Clearly, eParticipation cannot and should not be understood as an alternative for existing representative democracy, but rather as a complementary instrument.

To solve this dilemma, today's eParticipation initiatives do not allow citizens to make binding decisions. Instead they ask people to contribute their ideas and preferences to preparatory stages of official decision-making processes. The binding decisions are still made by the institutions and their traditional decision-makers. In fact, eParticipation today is limited to eConsultations. It neither really empowers citizens, nor does it take into account their very own issues and concerns. As a result, the motivation for participation is very limited.

Instead of having been empowered, many participants may feel somehow betrayed or used to legitimate official decisions. From this perspective, eParticipation might be more interesting for decision-makers than for most citizens, who mainly look at politics as something quite boring and frustrating, which they do not feel very attracted to."

 Posted by at 8.21pm  Tagged with: , , , , ,

The (distorted) shape of British democracy

 Politics Blog  No Responses »
Mar 162010
 

There is a great post on the LSE Election Blog about the distorting effect that the voting system in UK general elections has on the outcome.

The LSE experts go as far as to suggest that in parts of the UK the distortion is so great that they almost ceases to qualify as a liberal democracy.

Trying to visualise the unfairness of the voting system is a tricky task, and their graphs go some way towards giving a sense of what is happening in the sausage machine between votes being cast and seats being won.

Visualising this process is also something I have had a go at, but to begin with it might be useful to imagine a typical 'Long Tail' graph as described by Chris Anderson in his book of the same name, and which seems to represent the free expression of cultural choices in a wide variety of areas.

Long Tail graph

Image 1: A Long Tail (Picture by Hay Kranen / PD)

So the popular choices are to the left of the graph (shaded green), but there is also a large number of less popular  choices (shaded yellow). The total of the less popular choices can add up to almost as many individual purchases/votes/etc as are represented in the green area.

But compare that with the shape of the choices made at the last general election.

UK general election 2005
Votes for parties and independent candidates UK general election 2005: Votes for parties and independent candidates

Graph 1: What constrained democracy looks like
Data supplied by Dods political information services

From the winning Labour Party on the left through to the candidate who picked up just one vote (presumably her own) at the end of the tail, the scale with which voters are pushed to the 'hit' parties is clear. It is hard to imagine a more vivid illustration of how distorting existing democratic structures are.

Is it remotely plausible that this graph represents the political viewpoints of the British citizens who voted in the election when the Long Tail graph represents the expression of culture in so many other areas of interest, commerce and culture?

It is also important to consider the structure behind this graph. Does it produce a distorted image by treating all 627 Labour Party candidates as one unit equivalent to one independent candidate? The answer is no, it is a graph of choices, so one party with one manifesto is one choice. While it is true that individual MPs may disagree with parts of the manifestos on which they are standing, that is not the theoretical basis on which they are elected, and in practice most MPs will support the party line on the vast majority of legislative votes in which they take part.

It is also useful to remember that it is the entire electoral system that is the key factor here, not just the voting system.

The electoral system imposes additional constraints which work in a number of ways.

Deposits can be required to get on the ballot paper in the first place. In UK general elections, a deposit of £500 is demanded from anyone wishing to stand, which is forfeited if the candidate received less than five per cent of the votes cast in the constituency in which they stood. Research from the House of Commons Library showed that 1,386 deposits were lost at the 2005 general election; that is by 39 per cent of all candidates.

Beyond such crude constraints there are other formal transparency requirements such as complex legal rules for submitting accounts and funding details, and checking that financial donors meet legal criteria for handing over their cash.

And there are informal constraints such as access to media, which denies the public the opportunities to learn about the policies of parties away from the usual mainstream. This is due to mixture of reasons including a lack of resources and space to cover the range of smaller parties (time and space is of course one thing the internet and its multitude of contributors have in unlimited quantities, and this is another reason that the role of traditional media companies in intermediating between politicians and the public will continue to decline) and a belief that they 'don't count' and won't influence the result.

So the left-hand side of the 2005 election graph says something about the degree of structural bias towards the 'hits', but the tail also says something.

It shows that despite the costs and the regulatory requirements and the sheer hopelessness of the task, there are people who want to stand and tens of thousands of people prepared to vote for them.

If the structure of our democracy was less contrained, the distribution of votes along the tail would look nothing like it currently does.

Amidst the discussion of vested interests in politics, it is often worth remembering that the political parties have the most vested interests of all.

PS. I have written a lot more on the failings of the party system and the impact of the internet.

 Posted by at 5.55pm  Tagged with: , ,

Failing to engage

 eDemocracy Blog  2 Responses »
Mar 032010
 

Hansard Society Audit of Political Engagement 7 - cover image The annual Hansard Society Audits of Political Engagement are a great source of information about how the public views the British political system.

The latest report has just been published, and is well worth reading. A few things jump out at me from it.

One is that the surveys have found over time "a direct link between levels of political engagement on the one hand and levels of knowledge and interest on the other".

The wording of the report hints that a decline in knowledge leads to less engagement, but I can't help wondering if instead an inability to find convenient and effective mechanisms for engagement leads in turn to disillusionment and a degree of apathy, and from there on to a lack of interest and knowledge.

Amongst the other findings, this graph illustrates the public's verdict on the political system:

Graph showing levels of political engagement

Hansard Society findings on political engagement

One of the puzzles of it is the divergence over the last year between the proportion of people who think that 'getting involved' is effective and those who think the system of governing works, given that previously they had appeared to be closely linked.

But that aside, it seems to me that the most devastating finding is that just 28 per cent of the public think the system of governing Britain works, down from an already low 36 per cent in 2004.

Meanwhile, 42 per cent currently say it could be improved 'quite a lot' (that was 40 per cent in 2004) while 27 per cent now think it needs 'a great deal of improvement' (a big rise from the 18 per cent in 2004).

"Women are slightly more likely to believe the system is in need of improvement than men(72% to 65%), as are older people (78% of 65-74 year olds, compared to 58% of 18-24 year olds), and white people compared to BMEs (70% to 51%). There is surprisingly little variation between the social classes in response to this question, in contrast to the rest of the Audit data."

So that suggests a wide range of voters are open to a major programme of constitutional change, although quite what form that might take (bill of rights, written constitution, proportional representation?) is not investigated.

There is a hint, though, that changing the voting system might have a limited beneficial effect. In existing safe seats some 55 per cent say that general elections 'give me a say in how the country is run', but the figure rises to 64 per cent in marginal constituencies. So a feeling that 'every vote counts' could lead to a greater sense of ownership of the political process.

But my view is that none of those changes would make much difference, given that they would still leave the political class in charge of the country and the Audit reveals precisely how disliked politicians are (not a surprise to anyone, admittedly).

Just one per cent trust politicians 'a great deal' and 25 per cent 'a fair amount'. But against that, 48 per cent don't trust politicians very much and 25 per cent say 'not at all'. Other findings are, predictably, equally grim for the political classes.

So the question I'm left with is, if there is so little faith in the political system and little real prospect of changing that... what comes next?

The answer for me lies with a return to the point at the start of this post, that there is "a direct link between levels of political engagement on the one hand and levels of knowledge and interest on the other".

If it is correct that a lack of opportunities for engagement leads to apathy, then there must be new routes for political engagement, but this is going to have to be done by going around, not through, the political classes.

And cutting out the political classes means that representative democracy is weakened, perhaps fatally so (sorry, Hansard Society!). I think the alternative is to embed public participation directly into government in order to provide the legitimacy for the state that democracy will fail to.

For a whole lot more on the details of such thoughts, Part II of the Revolution Manifesto might be the place to look.

PS. I've also looked at the data from previous Hansard Society Political Audits.

 Posted by at 9.19pm  Tagged with: , , , ,
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