The real threat diminishing our political life isn’t a democratic deficit, but the vicious cycle that takes hold as the currency of public goods declines, and the fear and consequent manipulation of the public grows.


The Democratic Deficit is a myth

The Hill Times; August 30, 2010

Peter MacLeod

Sometime around the millennium the idea that Canada was suffering from a democratic malaise spiked. Whether it was the concentration of power in the Prime Minister's Office, a decades long decline in voter turn-out, or an immovable Senate, the arguments hardly need rehearsing. The idea of a democratic deficit took hold and soon became orthodoxy.
 
But try this thought experiment: Suppose that tomorrow the government passed legislation giving reformers everything they want: An elected Senate, a vibrant, civil and competitive Parliament, proportional representation, dispersed power, meaningful press conferences.

Without passing judgment on the merits of these individual reforms, it's not at all clear that they would add up, even over time, to a renewed spirit of civic confidence or heightened trust in our political institutions. After all, there are many countries that have enacted any number of these reforms and their politics too remain stuck in an equally deep funk. So while it could be that several of these reforms are necessary, it's unlikely that any of them are sufficient for inducing anything that Canadians would recognize as genuine political renewal.

Describing growing public cynicism and the concentration of power as a democratic deficit makes for good rhetoric, but it perpetuates the myth that the problem is confined to our governing institutions: that the problem can be solved if only we get the electoral or parliamentary mechanics right.

It’s time to take another look.

Rethinking public

The word “public” can be used either as noun or an adjective. Since the mid-twentieth century, public opinion research has reinforced the idea of the public as a noun — an occasionally menacing if ephemeral thing which politicians must track like hunters following a Heffalump.

Of course, like A.A. Milnes’ mythical Heffalump, there is no actual, singular public. Its volatility is the shimmering effect of something that can be briefly conjured in a poll, but does not in its own right exist.

While politicians have been out tracking the Heffalump, the use of “public” as an adjective or modifier, describing a quality of common experience or the nature of certain shared goods has declined. Today’s politicians trust individuals, love families and valorize the idea of community, but they fear the ill-tempered Heffalump.

This fear paralyzes our politics, and worse it distracts government from one of its two principal tasks: namely the creation of meaningful public goods and satisfying public experiences.  Haunted by a phantom public that it can neither grasp nor understand, government as a profession has adopted an increasingly defensive stance. For the uncertain state, seeking to minimize its exposure and manage risk, it retrenches to the provision of its most basic good, security.

Against security, the preoccupation with public goods can easily seem trivial. Yet democratic states create public goods and experiences for the simple, practical reason that they provide the basis — both the talent and character — for their own renewal.

The real threat diminishing our political life isn’t a democratic deficit, but the vicious cycle that takes hold as the currency of public goods declines, and the fear and consequent manipulation of the public grows.

Switching gears

In the 1960s and 70s, social activists learned how to work with citizens to stop things. Through the 80s and 90s, aspiring politicians on the right tapped this trend to reorient politics. Now the recent UK election suggests a third phase: a government that has come to power promising to work with citizens to start things.

Whether Cameron’s idea for a “Big Society” is spin, a further excuse to gut government, or something more will soon become clear. But part of Cameron’s success — and his style of progressive conservatism — owes to his appreciation for the desire of people to be a part of something greater than themselves. For Cameron, the problem isn’t that government asks too much of citizens, but too little — and part of the reason is short of taxes or outright mobilization, government has no idea how or what to ask of its people.

Yet people do seek a sense of belonging, contribution and purpose and it’s not unreasonable that they should look to the state in a democratic society as a platform for expression and engagement. In this way, a defining question for 21st century politics isn’t how to fix democracy, but rather how first to be public, and share more fully the production of public experiences and goods within a rapidly diversifying mass society.

Answering this question, and overcoming the divisions that have defined our industrial age politics, is the first step to restoring public confidence and articulating a new, more productive relationship between citizens and the state.

 

— Excerpted from The New Rules of Engagement: Creating publics, renewing politics, a talk by MASS LBP principal, Peter MacLeod