Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Friday, October 26, 2012

The truth about why we vote

For a guy who never got involved in serious policy discussions before becoming an MP, or since, and who has yet to say anything serious since announcing his candidacy for the leadership of the Liberals, Justin Trudeau does remarkably well in polls about policy.

“Who do you trust most to negotiate trade agreements?” a CBC Power And Politics/ Nanos Survey asked in mid-October. No surprise that Stephen Harper came first, at 28 per cent, because the Conservative base is about 30 per cent and negotiating trade agreements has been a top priority of his government. But Trudeau came second, at 18 per cent, ahead of Tom Mulcair at 12 per cent.

Another question: “Who do you trust most to spend your tax dollars wisely?” Stephen Harper, 18 per cent. Tom Mulcair, 17 per cent. Justin Trudeau, 17 per cent.

And another: “Who do you trust most to protect the environment?” Green Party leader Elizabeth May won this by a country mile, with 31 per cent support. But second place? Justin Trudeau, with 15 per cent.

Which raises an obvious question: How important is policy to voters’ judgments?

Idealists will insist policy is critical in politics: Voters support the candidates who support the policies they want implemented. Candidates respond by adopting policies voters want. In this way, voters lead politicians, not the other way around.

Cynics scoff. Policy is irrelevant, they say. Voters are manipulated by marketing. Strip away the veneer of civility and voters today are no less irrational than they were in the days when candidates bought votes with bottles of rum. Or maybe less so. Back then, voters at least got a bottle of rum.

So who’s right?

Political scientists have debated that question for decades, inconclusively. There are so many factors that go into an election that it’s extremely difficult to disentangle them and determine the influence of policy in people’s thinking.

Gabriel Lenz, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, has wrestled with this dilemma in a new book, Follow the Leader? How Voters Respond to Politicians’ Policies and Performance. It’s dense and complex and — beware! — filled with charts. But the basic idea behind Lenz’s research is actually quite simple. And revealing.

Much research shows that awareness of the policies that parties and candidates support is typically quite low. For example, a 2008 survey found that one-half of American voters could not identify whether Republicans or Democrats were more in favour of restricting access to abortion, even though abortion has been a central issue in American politics for decades. But election campaigns can change that: When a policy plays a major role, awareness of what the parties and candidates support grows.

There are also good, large-scale surveys that ask voters which parties and candidates they support and how they feel about a long list of policies. And these questions are asked before, during and after election campaigns.

Lenz reasoned that if an event happens in the middle of the campaign that causes the prominence of an issue to soar, it would provide a test of how important policy is to voters: If policy determines how people vote, the sudden prominence of a policy issue should cause people to think about it, to learn how the parties and candidates feel about it, and to give their support to the party and candidate who shares their opinion.

So Lenz combed through elections in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands and elsewhere to find campaigns where an event caused a policy to become the talk of the country. He found quite a few. One was in the Netherlands in 1986, when the Chornobyl disaster — and the radioactive cloud that fell over western Europe — suddenly made nuclear power the top issue. Another was Canada’s federal campaign of 1988, when the leaders’ debate turned the election into a virtual referendum on free trade.

Results? “In no cases do I find that people change their votes to bring them in line with their pre-existing policy views,” Lenz says.

Lenz did find evidence of causation in the other direction, however. Lots of it.

“If people support a certain politician, and they find out what stance that politician holds during the campaign, which a lot of people do, they then adopt the politician’s views.”

In other words, Lenz concludes, “people don’t lead politicians on policy. They follow.”

So far, so good for the cynics.

But there are two important caveats. One, voters who feel strongly about issues, and who know which parties and candidates take which positions, are unlikely to budge no matter what happens in an election — so they won’t show up in Lenz’s data. But because less than half of people typically know the parties’ positions on issues, that segment is likely small. Lenz estimates it’s around 20 per cent. (If you’ve read this far, I’d guess you’re one of these oddballs.)

And Lenz uncovered other evidence that speaks a little better of democracy. “People do judge politicians on whether they think they’re honest, whether they think the economy has done well under those politicians” and other performance-related measures. Voters may not be leading politicians on policy but, Lenz concludes, democracy does amount to “periodic referendums on the incumbents and how well they performed in office.”

Which is at least better than handing public office to the candidate who distributes the most rum.

Original Article
Source: calgary herald
Author: Dan Gardner

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