Omnibus bills, prorogation, talking points and bare-faced lies — they’re driving the pundits crazy. But who’s to blame? Until last week it seemed to be the government in Ottawa. Then Premier Dalton McGuinty resigned and prorogued the Ontario parliament and things suddenly got messy. Now the search is on for a better explaination of what’s gone wrong with our democracy. There is one, and I’m going to try to sketch it in three parts: 1) Where are we now? 2) How did we get here? 3) What can we do about it?
1) Where are we now?
When Allan Gregg published his fiery speech last month, it seemed to have lit a fuse. He accused the Harper government of undermining democracy by attacking reason. The role of evidence and facts, he charged, is being suppressed, and dogma, whim and political expediency are taking over.
Now Andrew Coyne is after a bigger picture. We elect representatives to oversee public spending, review legislation, and hold governments to account, he says. And this used to work. But nowadays government leaders watch these debates like a hawk, ready to shut them down at the first sign of trouble. As a result, federal and provincial legislatures have become little more than ceremonial bodies. So the problem is not just in Ottawa.
Chantal Hebert’s column last week goes even further. When she arrived in Ottawa 35 years ago, she recalls, lying in Parliament was unthinkable. Today, it is routine. Indeed, these days no rule is too sacred to be spared. But, she warns, it’s not just the Harper government that’s to blame. Politics is in a downward spiral that she no longer believes will be reversed just by voting out the Conservatives.
If Coyne and Hebert are right, the search for answers must move to another level, one that goes beyond just political personalities and also looks for the systemic causes of what’s ailing our democracy. This brings me to my second question.
2) How did we get here?
There is a bigger picture of the forces now at work in our democracy and Susan Delacourt’s forthcoming book, Shopping for Votes, sketches it admirably. The book chronicles the rise of political advertising, polling and marketing over the last half century, giving us a bird’s eye view of the impact on democratic politics. (I’m drawing on the unpublished manuscript, which I had the privilege of reading.)
Advertising, Delacourt tells us, is about broadcasting a message to get a product before a larger audience. By contrast, marketing is about testing people to find out what they want, then designing a product to meet that demand.
When political strategists first got interested in consumerism, it was because of advertising. They saw this as a relatively benign way to showcase their policies. Over the last few decades, however, advertising has turned into marketing. And this is now playing havoc with our politics. Why?
Traditional politics is based on a distinction between needs and wants. Needs are a way of talking about what the community as a whole must to do to prosper. They define the common good. Not surprisingly, people often disagree on which things are needs or which needs are more important. Deciding this requires dialogue, debate, compromise and decision. Elections are the really big contests where political parties try to unite the community around a particular vision of its needs.
By contrast, dealing with wants is relatively simple. People rarely object to having their wants met. Even when they have different wants, if government can satisfy enough of them, politicians can avoid the messy debates over which one is more important.
This is where marketing comes in. As techniques improved, strategists realized that marketing gave them a new and better way to win elections. We can call it consumer politics. Basically, this is about giving people the policies they want, not necessarily the ones they need. Suppose, for example, that market research finds that lots of people feel unsafe in their homes, even though crime is not really a problem. Promising to make them safe by cracking down on crime may be a much easier way to win these peoples’ votes than trying to convince them their fear is unfounded.
As Delacourt shows, the expertise now exists to market such policies with precision, subtlety and sophistication — and in Canada we are just getting started. The impact on democracy, however, is already all too clear. Consumer politics is transactional politics: people expect politicians to give them something they want and politicians expect their support in return. This not only lowers the bar on policy and leadership, it pushes talk about the public good to the margins of public debate, and erodes the kind of public trust and civic duty that are essential to democracy. In short, whatever consumer politics is, it doesn’t sound like democratic politics.
3) What can we do about it?
At the recent launch of his book, Chronic Condition, Jeffery Simpson gave a speech in which he scolded the policy community for expecting politicians to fix the health care system. Politicians, he said pointedly, follow they don’t lead. Real change has to come from the public.
This fits well with Delacourt’s findings. Political marketing, after all, is a sophisticated form of following: Strategists identify peoples’ wants, design a product around them, and then market it back to them. But if we think this is sustainable over the long-term, we should think again. A model of governance weighted too heavily to satisfying wants is almost certain to produce increasingly bad decisions, at the same time that it erodes the skills and culture that lead to good ones. And this, I submit, is what is driving Chantal Hebert’s “downward spiral.”
So, can the sprial be reversed? I believe it can, but not through pious promises to listen more, make MPs more relevant or be more polite in Question Period. Rather, we must take steps to realign the spiraling forces.
The key, as Simpson’s comment suggests, lies in the public. To its credit, marketing recognizes that citizens should be the real driver behind government policy, but it does so, perversely, by treating them as passive consumers whose wants governments are supposed to satisfy. The alternative is to make them active and informed participants in a dialogue about the community’s needs on, say, how to fix the health system or reduce unemployment.
Such processes are already in use around the world and have been successful in strengthening civic responsibility and public trust, as well as building the skills and capacity for meaningful democratic debate. Putting them to work here in Canada would require real political leadership, backed by a credible model for change, but it could be done. Indeed, it must be done.
In conclusion, let me say that, if journalists are now mad as hell and — just maybe — they’re not going to take it anymore, this is hardly a bad thing. The future should belong to politicians who are ready, willing and able to provide the kind of leadership to rebuild and renew our democracy, rather than weaken or even replace it. This is a message that needs to be heard. Getting it out is a challenge–even a public service–that is well suited to and worthy of the best and brightest in the profession.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Don Lenihan
1) Where are we now?
When Allan Gregg published his fiery speech last month, it seemed to have lit a fuse. He accused the Harper government of undermining democracy by attacking reason. The role of evidence and facts, he charged, is being suppressed, and dogma, whim and political expediency are taking over.
Now Andrew Coyne is after a bigger picture. We elect representatives to oversee public spending, review legislation, and hold governments to account, he says. And this used to work. But nowadays government leaders watch these debates like a hawk, ready to shut them down at the first sign of trouble. As a result, federal and provincial legislatures have become little more than ceremonial bodies. So the problem is not just in Ottawa.
Chantal Hebert’s column last week goes even further. When she arrived in Ottawa 35 years ago, she recalls, lying in Parliament was unthinkable. Today, it is routine. Indeed, these days no rule is too sacred to be spared. But, she warns, it’s not just the Harper government that’s to blame. Politics is in a downward spiral that she no longer believes will be reversed just by voting out the Conservatives.
If Coyne and Hebert are right, the search for answers must move to another level, one that goes beyond just political personalities and also looks for the systemic causes of what’s ailing our democracy. This brings me to my second question.
2) How did we get here?
There is a bigger picture of the forces now at work in our democracy and Susan Delacourt’s forthcoming book, Shopping for Votes, sketches it admirably. The book chronicles the rise of political advertising, polling and marketing over the last half century, giving us a bird’s eye view of the impact on democratic politics. (I’m drawing on the unpublished manuscript, which I had the privilege of reading.)
Advertising, Delacourt tells us, is about broadcasting a message to get a product before a larger audience. By contrast, marketing is about testing people to find out what they want, then designing a product to meet that demand.
When political strategists first got interested in consumerism, it was because of advertising. They saw this as a relatively benign way to showcase their policies. Over the last few decades, however, advertising has turned into marketing. And this is now playing havoc with our politics. Why?
Traditional politics is based on a distinction between needs and wants. Needs are a way of talking about what the community as a whole must to do to prosper. They define the common good. Not surprisingly, people often disagree on which things are needs or which needs are more important. Deciding this requires dialogue, debate, compromise and decision. Elections are the really big contests where political parties try to unite the community around a particular vision of its needs.
By contrast, dealing with wants is relatively simple. People rarely object to having their wants met. Even when they have different wants, if government can satisfy enough of them, politicians can avoid the messy debates over which one is more important.
This is where marketing comes in. As techniques improved, strategists realized that marketing gave them a new and better way to win elections. We can call it consumer politics. Basically, this is about giving people the policies they want, not necessarily the ones they need. Suppose, for example, that market research finds that lots of people feel unsafe in their homes, even though crime is not really a problem. Promising to make them safe by cracking down on crime may be a much easier way to win these peoples’ votes than trying to convince them their fear is unfounded.
As Delacourt shows, the expertise now exists to market such policies with precision, subtlety and sophistication — and in Canada we are just getting started. The impact on democracy, however, is already all too clear. Consumer politics is transactional politics: people expect politicians to give them something they want and politicians expect their support in return. This not only lowers the bar on policy and leadership, it pushes talk about the public good to the margins of public debate, and erodes the kind of public trust and civic duty that are essential to democracy. In short, whatever consumer politics is, it doesn’t sound like democratic politics.
3) What can we do about it?
At the recent launch of his book, Chronic Condition, Jeffery Simpson gave a speech in which he scolded the policy community for expecting politicians to fix the health care system. Politicians, he said pointedly, follow they don’t lead. Real change has to come from the public.
This fits well with Delacourt’s findings. Political marketing, after all, is a sophisticated form of following: Strategists identify peoples’ wants, design a product around them, and then market it back to them. But if we think this is sustainable over the long-term, we should think again. A model of governance weighted too heavily to satisfying wants is almost certain to produce increasingly bad decisions, at the same time that it erodes the skills and culture that lead to good ones. And this, I submit, is what is driving Chantal Hebert’s “downward spiral.”
So, can the sprial be reversed? I believe it can, but not through pious promises to listen more, make MPs more relevant or be more polite in Question Period. Rather, we must take steps to realign the spiraling forces.
The key, as Simpson’s comment suggests, lies in the public. To its credit, marketing recognizes that citizens should be the real driver behind government policy, but it does so, perversely, by treating them as passive consumers whose wants governments are supposed to satisfy. The alternative is to make them active and informed participants in a dialogue about the community’s needs on, say, how to fix the health system or reduce unemployment.
Such processes are already in use around the world and have been successful in strengthening civic responsibility and public trust, as well as building the skills and capacity for meaningful democratic debate. Putting them to work here in Canada would require real political leadership, backed by a credible model for change, but it could be done. Indeed, it must be done.
In conclusion, let me say that, if journalists are now mad as hell and — just maybe — they’re not going to take it anymore, this is hardly a bad thing. The future should belong to politicians who are ready, willing and able to provide the kind of leadership to rebuild and renew our democracy, rather than weaken or even replace it. This is a message that needs to be heard. Getting it out is a challenge–even a public service–that is well suited to and worthy of the best and brightest in the profession.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Don Lenihan
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