“The House is a parody of democracy. All substantial decisions on  bills                 and budgets are  made elsewhere and party discipline drives all real                                                                     debate behind closed doors.”
                                                  
No, this quote is not referring to politics in Newfoundland and Labrador. But the rationale behind it does make it easier to understand how and why our Muskrat Falls fiasco evolved the way it did.

Graham Steele, the author of the above statement, was a member of the Nova Scotia legislature from 2001 to 2013. He wrote a book about his experience called “What I learned about politics”.

“The House is a parody of democracy.”

Steele opens the book with a description of the first time, as a newly elected Member of the Nova Scotia Legislative Assembly (MLA), he stood up in the House to give a speech. “No one in the room, absolutely no one, was listening.” Some were chatting with their neighbours, some were reading newspapers or a book, some were tapping on their computers or smart phones. “Our elected members mostly ignore each other in the House.” he concludes. 

And why wouldn’t they? If the ruling party has a majority government, which is the dominant reality in our first-past-the-post system, they have no need to listen to the opposition. As for opposition parties, they know they have no power to influence government. The final vote on any legislation is a foregone conclusion under majority governments.

The reality is that the House is mere theatre. When our elected representatives do pay attention to what someone opposite is saying “it is usually to heckle, interrupt, even insult.” This is not just a Nova Scotia experience.  We see the same level of disrespect and disinterest in political debate in our province.  In all probability it’s not that different across the country.

“All substantial decisions on bills and budgets are made elsewhere.”

According to Steele, the real decision making in government happens, not in the House, but behind closed doors in the Premier’s office or elsewhere in the civil service. By the time a bill or a budget is tabled in the House, there is little chance of an amendment. In fact, most politicians have only a superficial understanding of pending legislation. Much of it is written up by in-house lawyers and economists in language that is legalistic, arcane and barely understandable. The result, according to Steele is that most politicians don’t even bother to read the bills. They simply do what they are told to do by party leadership.

“Party discipline drives all real debate behind closed doors.”

Steele makes the point that politicians do what they are told because politics is, above all, a team sport. Party unity must be maintained and any politician who differs from party policy risks being punished. The punishment can be harsh, as Mount Pearl-Southlands MHA Paul Lane found out when he was booted out of the Liberal party after declaring he could not support the unpopular 2016 budget.

Newly elected politicians are very quickly socialized into the culture of acquiescence to decisions on high. They learn that if they are to get ahead they must do what they are told, preferably with panache.

Politics, Steele believes, has degenerated into “a permanent marketing campaign” designed to push through decisions, policies and strategies that are made in back rooms elsewhere. “Everything – the invention of differences, the attention-grabbing rhetoric, the focus on scandal and personality, the refusal to deal with the real issues, the devaluing of legislative work in favour of constituency work, the election of candidates, everything is aimed at winning your vote.”

The end result for politicians is demeaning.  “Being in politics makes you dumber and the longer you are in politics the dumber you get.” says Steele.

How do we correct all of the above?

Has democracy really become as dysfunctional as Graham Steele suggests? Certainly, the disrespect for politicians is at an all-time high in our province.  Voter turnout is at an all-time low.

The real danger is that we will focus on blaming people rather than the process itself. As Steele points out, “It’s too easy to say we need better politicians. The fact is that our politicians are us. There isn’t a better, more perfect, angelic version of us.”

What we really need to do is change the way our political system works.

Steele, himself, would like to see more independently elected politicians, who, freed from the shackles of party discipline, would be able more easily to vote with their conscience or according to what their constituents want. He recognizes, however, that that is not practical. Independent candidates rarely get elected.

We agree. It’s one of the reasons why Democracy Alert is in favour of proportional representation (PR). While proportional representation will not solve all the problems that Steel alludes to, it will end the dominance of our two major parties and endless majority governments where differing perspectives have no effective influence. To that end, we have finally chosen a PR system that we think would best suit the needs of our province. But that’s a subject for another blog posting.

So how do we end this blog? We’ve chosen to quote “The Rules of the Game”, Steele’s tongue in cheek advice to new politicians aspiring to be successful.

 “The rules of the game"

• Get yourself re-elected. Like the sex drive among primates, the drive to be re-elected drives everything a politician does.
• Spend as little time as possible at the legislature. There are no voters there, so any time spent there is wasted. Go where the voters are. Go home.
• Perception is reality. Since people vote based on what they believe to be true, it doesn’t matter what is actually true. This is at the root of all the dark political arts.

• Keep it simple. Policy debates are for losers. Focus on what is most likely to sink in with a distracted electorate: slogans, scandals, personalities, pictures, image. Find whatever works, then repeat it relentlessly.
• Put yourself in the spotlight. People are more likely to vote for someone they’ve met or feel they know or at least have heard of. If it’s not in the news, it didn’t happen.
• Politics is a team sport, part 1: Loyalty: You can’t accomplish anything as an individual. No matter what, stick with your team.
• Politics is a team sport part 2: Always be attacking. There are other teams that want to take away your job at the next election. You have to beat them, and if you can, destroy them.
• Don’t leave a paper trail. You don’t want to leave any evidence that runs against your own story. If you’re explaining, you’re losing.
• Fight hard to take credit. Fight harder to avoid blame.
• Deny that these are the rules of the game.”

(Graham Steele  was a senior cabinet member in the 2009-2013 Nova Scotia NDP government. He chose  not to run for re-election in 2013 and is now an assistant professor in the Rowe School of Business at Dalhousie University.

Submitted by Marilyn Reid

                                                        Our Question of the Month

Which of these countries has not seen the recent rise of right-wing populism?


                 (a)     The Netherlands      (b) Hungary      (c) Germany       (d) Norway        (e) Spain   

In recent elections in Holland, Germany, Hungary and Norway, far-right populist parties gained seats. The answer to the quiz is Spain. Grass roots populism does exist in Spain. However, unlike the trend towards right-wing populism that many other countries are experiencing, Spanish populists have veered to the left over the last decade. While Spain’s current governing party is still centrist-right, the Spanish left-wing populist party Podemos won 20% of the votes in the 2016 election.
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Why have so many people in so many developed countries turned to populist parties or leaders in the last decade? 

Harvard economist Dani Rodrik argues that populism is a backlash to  our 40 year experiment with intense globalization -  an experiment that is perceived by many as undermining  employment opportunities  and cultural  and social cohesion.

A growing number of people feel unfairly treated by globalization.  Moreover, they are increasingly disenchanted  with mainstream political parties who they accuse of being  oblivious to their concerns. 

That’s the genius of populist parties. They speak to the frustrations and fears of ordinary people and represent themselves as the only real source willing to push back against the powerful forces that have caused the problems. 

Populist  rhetoric is a return to the emotions of confrontational politics. The adversaries are “Us, the good people” against “Them, the selfish elites” who now control mainstream political parties. 

Who are these selfish elites?  That answer depends on whether you are a left-wing or right-wing populist.

Left-wing Populism

Left-wing populism is rooted in economic and class distinctions. For many, perhaps the most familiar example is the Occupy Movement with its identification of Wall Street, the international corporations, and the “one percent” as the villains.

Left-wing populist leaders like Bernie Sanders in the US and Podemos’s Pablo Iglesias are avowedly socialistic in that they want a more equitable redistribution of wealth and income. They seek to re-politicize democracy by emphasizing class struggle (big against little, rich against poor). They want to introduce a passion for politics among the people and a vigilant citizenry continuously on guard against elites who would take more than their fair share.

The link between left-wing populism and high inequality

Historically, left-wing populism has been strongest in countries with high inequality. In Latin America, perhaps the most unequal region of the world, left-wing populist parties or leaders have consistently polled between fifteen and thirty percent of votes over the last few decades. In Europe, the hotbeds of left-wing populism have been Spain and Greece, countries in which inequality and unemployment are substantially higher than in northern Europe, and where governments have (on the insistence of the European Commission) imposed oppressive austerity measures.

You might think that left-wing populist movements would be thriving given that inequality is growing pretty well everywhere.  They are not.  In fact, support for leftish parties (both centrist and extremist) is at its lowest level in seventy years – and falling.   Why is that? 

Why is right-wing populism now the preferred choice for so many people?

Right-wing populism

Right-wing populists are less grounded in class conflicts than their left wing cousins. Instead,  their  frustrations are often rooted in forces  external to the nation state.    

In Trump’s United States, that manifests itself, not just as opposition to trade agreements, but to countries like Mexico that exploit these agreements to “unfairly” benefit their own people. In Europe, the identified enemy is  the EU bureaucracy itself, which is accused of serving the needs of international capitalism and financial elites at the expense of nation states. 
 
Right-wing populists, unlike their left-wing cousins, object also to  the increased  flow of labour across borders under globalization. Contrary to what you might expect, given ever increasing employment uncertainty, right-wing populists' primary objection to immigration, at least in Europe, appears to be cultural rather than economic. Populists fear that the rising diversity caused by increased immigration threatens national culture and the unity of national community. Citizens, they argue, are losing their sense of who they are.

All of this tends to make right-wing populists more nationalistic than their left wing cousins. They are also more likely to be attracted to strong authoritarian leaders who will strengthen the nation and return to the conservative values of the past.

In its most exaggerated form, right-wing populism encourages xenophobia. It is unjust, however, to tar all right-wing populists as racists.
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The link between migration patterns and right-wing populism

         











To put this BBC chart in perspective, in 2015 Hungary had, per capita, 30 times as many asylum applicants as Great Britain and 56 times as many as Spain.  The great majority of applicants have been from Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.

In spite of having strong socialist traditions, all six of the countries highlighted  in the above chart have experienced surges in far-right  parties in recent elections.  They are not alone.

The sudden surge in right-wing populism  across the developed world has reached historic proportions. 
Back in the late 1980s voter support for populist parties or candidates averaged under five percent. By 2015 it had risen to over twenty percent of the vote. That increase has been driven overwhelmingly by the growth of far-right nationalist parties.

The Outlier   -   Regional Separatist Populism

Regional separatist populism is a different kind of populism – one that sets secessionist regions (e.g., Catalonia, Scotland) against their respective national centres. It’s not a new phenomenon but in Europe it has bubbled up to boiling points in the last decade. 

Secessionist populists are primarily ethnic in character and cannot be pigeon-holed into right or left wing positions.  They want the independence and control of their own destiny that nationhood would give them.

And then there is Brexit, another cross-party phenomenon.   According to exit polls after the referendum, the biggest reason respondents gave for voting for Brexit was a desire for greater national autonomy than the EU allowed.

A lot of people just don’t like handing over control to supranational institutions and agreements.

Where do young people stand on populism?

According to a 2016 analysis of the World Values Survey by Foa and Mounk, support for political radicalism in North America and Western Europe is higher among the young than other generations. Perhaps that is the reason why voter turnout among millennials is so much lower than other age groups in our country. Young people simply can’t find a Canadian party that interests them enough to vote. Canadians have not yet gone populist in the 21st century.

So which way are young populists swinging?

It would be misleading to imply that there is not support among young people for authoritarian leaders and right-wing populism. However, it’s also true that:

• In Great Britain 63% of voters under 35 voted for the labour party led by avowed populist Jeremy Corbyn.
•  In the United States populist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders received the bulk of his support from young people.
•  In Spain, the Indignados protests which led to the formation of the left-wing populist party Podemos were led by young people.

If there is a resurgence of left-wing populism, it looks as though it will be young people who will lead the movement.

To conclude:

Here are some questions that those trying to understand the rise of 21st century populism are grappling with:   

• Should healthy democracies create more space for parties that emphasize “Them” and “Us” antagonisms?
• Are populist parties the only productive form that allows the "politically incorrect"  demands of the people to be considered in the political arena?  And if so why?
• Could populism force a transition to a new and better socio-political transformation?
• Do we need a resurgence of left-wing populism?

Our centrist parties (both on the left and the right) would, no doubt, respond with a resounding NO to all these questions. So too would the corporate controlled media that invariably portray all populists as simplistic thinkers, while at the same time frequently giving simplistic analyses of their appeal.

It’s arguable that populism is the defining political phenomenon of the 21st century. It’s not going to go away – or at least not as long as people feel their concerns and problems are being ignored by those who hold the power.

We need to start talking about populism. It’s a huge and complicated topic with many dimensions. So, expect more blog postings by Democracy Alert on this topic.
 
Submitted by Marilyn Reid.