Coalition of the willing
You know, modern life, it’s all about choice, diversity, abundant breath-taking variety and unpredictability, isn’t it?
And we’re told every day that competition is good. That choice for the parent, patient and consumer is vital.
Well, mostly. Nick Robinson:
Britain’s most effective pressure group appears at first glance to be… the Conservative Party.
Want cuts in inheritance tax?
They call for it. The government does it.Want a tax on non-doms?
They unveil plans then so does the government.Want a tougher crack down on incapacity benefit claimants?
Yes, you’ve guessed it, the Tories called for it and today ministers will pledge to do it.Now I did say “at first glance” because the truth is, and the Tories privately acknowledge it, that many of the ideas they’ve called for have originally come from the Labour Party or - to be more precise - from Blairites.
It’s tempting to to use a very unpleasant sexual metaphor here but I’ll resist. The Tories aren’t a pressure group, they’re effectively a partner in government. To suggest that this depressing affront to democracy might not be a good thing is clearly above Robinson’s pay grade. He probably calls it ‘consensus politics’ or some other euphemism.
Here it is, right here. ‘I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.’ ‘I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.’ ‘Hey, wait a minute, there’s one guy holding out both puppets!’
Posted on March 13th, 2008 at 11:18 am
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well, what we ought to be told everyday is that competition is very good in certain contexts …. I was going to transcribe the ‘ice-cream vendor’ model of monopolistic product differentiation from a mainstream undergrad economics textbook, but it’s too long and I’m lazy. Anyway, it predicts that political parties will end up standing right next to each other, so to speak, even though the ’social optimum’ is for them to stand far apart. So competition in this context does not produce the outcome you want to see. Here is the best online exposition of the idea I could find.
This doesn’t amount to saying we might as well do away with democracy, but it does limit what we ought to expect from it.
We should not be surprised at this state of affairs, now that the British political system is, in essence void of any ideological beliefs. And this lack of ideology in British politics is a result of Toby Blair’s ‘Middle Ground - Third Way’ politics. I also think that it is this lack of political conviction, caused by a lack of ideology, which has increased so called apathy in the British population; our entire political system is build around combative politics – fuelled by ideology. If you throw the ideology out of the window and just keep taking populist policies from whichever party came up with them, its no wonder people don’t see any defiance between the parties.
Let’s face it there is no middle ground in politics, at least no if you talk to the general population. The vast majority of us still have political beliefs aligned to a political Ideology, and until politicians realise this again nothing much is going to change.
Jason, the model I refer to above predicts that even if politicians do ‘realise’ that most of us still have beliefs aligned toa political ideology, they will still gravitate toward the middle.
Luis, I do understany your point, and agree with you some what. I was just trying to point out that the ‘middle ground’ is not historicly a natural place in politics. We have only seen it emerge over the last 10 years as all the political parties try to steal each other clothes, so to speek.
oh right, sorry Jason. Well, if politics used to be more ideologically distinct as you suggest, then I guess the model used to be wrong* in the sense that parties were not just trying to maximize their votes.
If one party is busy being ideological but the other is a rational vote winner, that makes it easy for the other party to win - just by edging toward the other an capturing more voters - if both parties were being ideological and sticking to their own guns then no party has the (a priori) advantage and that makes for better politics - although an economist would tell you that such an outcome would be unstable.
It’s a pretty tricky question whether we ought to recognize that ideological purity really is unstable, so politicians will always tend to the middle to steal votes and we’d better just get used to it, or whether it’s realistic to expect a bit of backbone and principle from politicians. I fear the former but would like to believe the latter.
Come to think of it, I think I have seen some economics ‘research’ showing that good things** can (only) get done when a politician with principles (and enough charisma/skill to hold on to power) deviates from doing what ‘rational’ vote winning behavior would suggest … but enough dull geekery for now.
* although it’s still a good model of vote maximization
** in the sense of moving from a bad equilibrium to a good one
Of course it’s more complicated than the model, of course, because not all moves towards the middle are equally convincing. And because, too, it’s not quite as arithmetic as some people would have you believe: you don’t necessarily retain your core voters while adding swing voters to them, although you may often accumulate more swing voters than you lose core voters. But even that, too, may have a long-term effect in terms of hollowing out your party organisation and membership. (I think a lot of psephologists neither understand this nor take it into account.)
I’d still guess that moving towards the centre was an effective electoral strategy more often than not, especially where (as in the UK) there’s no real possibility of losing votes to a smaller party, because the electoral system is hugely weighted against it. (Which is one of the virtues of having smaller parties, that they tend to keep the larger party honest and oblige it to tend to its core vote. Again psephologists, who mostly take an arithmetic view, do not always understand this.)
Good luck with those on incapacity benefit, 1 million is quite an ambitious figure. Then again, for those on the dole (different groups of people I realise) why should they get back to work, when nearly 800 000 people from E. Europe have come to fill jobs needed. I saw on BBC2 , “The Poles Are Coming”. They showed jobs with 7 pound/hour to pick vegetables, 24 000 pound a year to do construction, while British men are sitting outside the job centre drinking. Very interesting.
Luis you seem to think that just because a party is ideological it will automatically win fewer votes in an election. If you look around the world, and at history, most elections are fought along ideological lines, and 9 times out of ten the party that has an ideology, or conforms to the parties’ ideological history have more success. Now obviously the party and its ideology have to connect with the general population, otherwise the party will lose, but if there is that connection between political ideology and the population then chances are that party will win.
As for your statement that an election fought on ideological grounds would lead to an unstable government is not born out if you look at history. If you look at British political history until 1997 most, if not all elections have been ideological in nature, and we have one of the most stable democratic systems in the world.
Jason,
Yes, I do think that if one party is ideological, in the sense of putting too much distance between itself and its rival, and staying there, it will lose. For example say the Labour party did want its true ’socialist’ voters want, that gives the Tories the chance to capture social democrat, moderate labour voters. I don’t know what used to happen in the past (you say things were different), but in my lifetime I’d say while parties have given enough ideological rhetoric and policy concessions to their hardcore voters to stop them from splintering, they’ve stayed pretty firmly in the middle.
When I said the ideological politics situation was ‘unstable’, I didn’t mean the government or democratic system would be unstable, I meant the situation where, for example, both Labour and the Tories stick to their disparate ideologies is unstable, because sooner or later one of them will realize it can move towards the middle and win votes. I just mean the electoral tactic of keeping too great an ideological distance is unstable.
All this presupposes a continuum of voters, with a well populated middle ground - if voters are themselves polarized around extremes with few moderates, that changes things. Also I suppose you can get situations where the middle ground has shifted, but one party realizes it before the other and makes what looks like an ideological move.
I couldn’t say what best describes the current situation in the UK, nor the extent to which the politicians follow or form public opinion, so yes if you think that a much more ideological party could win power in the UK, you could be right - although if the continuum of voters assumption is the best description of the voting landscape in the UK, well I reckon you’d be wrong.
you make some good points, and don’t get me wrong like I said earlier I am in relative agreement with most of what you say.
When you say ” If the Labour party did want its true ’socialist’ voters want, that gives the Tories the chance to capture social democrat, moderate labour voters.” this is true - under the current political climate of seeking the middle ground, but historically I don’t believe it is. If you look at the history of general elections in the UK, until 1997, then were fought along the parties’ ideological lines.
I don’t think that to fight an election along ideological grounds you necessarily have to espouse ideological rhetoric and policy concessions to appease their hardcore voters. This also assumes that a party’s political ideology is top down - while this has generally been the case in British politics of the late 20 century. Most of the elections in the world won by an ideologically strong part have been from the bottom up.
Jason - one last point (quibble?) before I go … you talk about top down ideology, funnily enough I think everything I’ve written so far assumes the opposite. The argument works on the basis that voters believe whatever they believe, and politicians just manoeuvre their platforms in response (so, the bottom dictates what the top does). So if you’re right that politics could be ideological again, that would require (in the world I have been describing) the existence of sufficient voters with strong enough ideological views to win an election - bottom up. One of the many potential additions you might want to make to this ice-cream vendor model of politics is that a persuasive politician might be able to make a convincing case, and change what voters want (top down). Anyway, nice talking to you - have to go.
Luis E: Yes, I do think that if one party is ideological, in the sense of putting too much distance between itself and its rival, and staying there, it will lose.
But this isn’t a definition of ‘ideological’, except in the sense of being a euphemism/scare word for ‘extremist of whom I disapprove’. Conservatives (no, not you, Luis) pulled this rhetorical trick all the time up until the end of the Cold War - like Thatcher wasn’t ‘ideological’ (of course she was: unlike NuLabour, she didn’t just spend her whole time kicking lumps out of her own party to build an election-winning coalition)
One other point: where, precisely, is this hallowed ‘centre ground’ located? Does it have a map reference? One could argue that Thatcher pulled it to the right, and NuLabour have failed to shift it; in fact, they’ve camped out on that very ground and are seeking planning permission for a TudorBethan semi.
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