Dave raises, I think, a fair question when he asks if a boring election campaign is necessarily a bad thing. To put matters another way, there is a reason that 'May you live in interesting times' is considered a curse. Given, however, that we do live in interesting times - I would submit that if a country finds itself failing to have an interesting election campaign, then the chances that this is due to a bi-partisan consensus having been struck on a discovered set of policy decisions that is actually most conducive to the long-term happiness of the country are very, very, slim. As far as Australia is concerned I would be interested in seeing anyone maintain, with a straight face, that this is the reason we are currently facing an election of coma-inducing dullness.
Politics is a game. It does not exist to safeguard our happiness. It does not exist to discover the best solution to the problems the people effected by it face. It just exists. Some countries play this game by rules which are more conducive to the well-being of its participants1 than others, democracy being a pretty good innovation along those lines, but all dull contests really mean is that dull tactics are sufficient for the goals of those most actively playing it. Stability is a very, very different thing from optimality.
In the Australian context, we see two major parties in a state of near alliance, and I would submit that this is because they have reached a point of equilibrium where they feel, with good justification, that any major divergence on either of their parts will be penalised, not because they've struck policy gold.
1And in all countries, the list of participants in the game extends to the entire population, whether they like to admit it or not. In Australia, for instance, we don't. We pretend that the manner in which politicians consistently behave (and the manner in which politics is reported) in the long term has absolutely nothing to do with us.
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Your third paragraph is very cynical. I don't think it's too outlandish to think that a fair percentage of the people who get into politics in a democracy do so because they wish to make their country a better place.
Also, congrats on blogging again, I hope you make a habit of it.
I don't think it's too outlandish to think that a fair percentage.....
I think probably most of them do... Doesn't change the fact that if someone is faced with the choice of supporting a crap policy they disagree with and winning, or not supporting a crap policy, subsequently losing and seeing the other side implement the crap policy, well, that's a pretty tough choice. I'm actually not at all inclined to exclusively (or even mostly) blame actual politicians for our current political malaise in ideas, debate and leadership.
I think we need to be seriously thinking about electoral reform and/or seeing what we can do about weening ourselves away from a situation that sees us with the collective fore-sight of a goldfish and unable to engage in any kind of reform or debate that can't be sold in a 30 second sound-byte, myself.
I think this election we should be thinking about voting for game-changers.
So I have taken my time commenting because I have been busy imagining the untimely death of slack Greens volunteers who fail to submit to my efforts at coordinating. So there's my allegiances disclosed. Anyhoo....
I think Andrew is right. I also think Dave is wrong. And there is an alternative argument to be made as to why.
Imagine a world where in the few marginal suburban electorates (at which the fearless leaders of the two majors parties aim their policies) there was higher rates of education and greater financial security. Imagine that they were progressive folks who wanted to allow refugees to settle in Australia, take action on climate change, and were not convinced by scare campaigns. Imagine that I agreed with all of their views. I'd be thrilled that the major parties were converging on policies to please these imaginary people.
But Dave wouldn't. Just because it happens to be the case that one agrees with the views of the people being politically courted, doesn't make one's views correct. Nor does it it mean that the policies are best.
Adriana, your alternative argument makes no sense. The median voter in a marginal electorate is at the political centre. The median voter in your hypothetical example is a lefty. Presumably in this imaginary world, the left is full of actual communists, and the "right" is centre-left or something. It wouldn't be a happy political situation for me, but the outcomes would be as democratic as they are today, and my basic argument would remain intact.
Just because it happens to be the case that one agrees with the views of the people being politically courted, doesn't make one's views correct.
There is a suggestion here that my politics matches closely with the current converged policies of the major parties. I don't know why you have this impression.
The 'median voter', in any case, will not necessarily be the median national voter, but the median in given marginal seats. Each party targets this voter, but not necessarily by actually proposing the policies this idealised voter most wants - although more or less by trying to, subject to other tactical (and occasionally moral and/or ideological) considerations. It is, of course, entirely conceivable that there are policies no-one has thought of which this voter would actually end up preferring if the state of play in Australia favored innovation or leadership, but on the whole we tend not to worry about such things, politically speaking.
To say that this approach is really particularly democratic is not uncontentious. I submit that it is most definitely not a good way to run a country, however.
Of course, your post was really more along the lines of questioning whether it was any worse than having two (and strictly two) major parties positioned at various points around this idealised voter in opinion space dependent more upon where their own convictions lay, arguing their case and leaving it to the electorate to decide between them. In as much as this situation favors innovation (in fields other than advertising and PR) and leadership more than the former, and forces more genuine dialogue between representatives and represented, and in as much as this is a really long sentence, I think we'd be better off under that situation, too.
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