Fractures in democracy
Some of the pillars to the effective functioning of our democracy are under threat, says Simon Chapple.
New Zealand has, by world standards, a robust democracy. Yet there are some serious storm clouds on our democratic horizons. We must proactively meet these challenges by strengthening a wide variety of pillars which support democracy’s effective functioning.
In many respects, New Zealand democracy functions well. Our democracy ranks highly in terms of overall quality (4th in the world in the Economist democracy index), and we are transparent (1st in the Transparency International corruption perceptions index). Our media is ranked relatively highly for freedom (8th in World Press Freedom Index). According to the State Services Commission’s Kiwis Count Survey, trust in government services is generally on the rise.
But what are the storm clouds? There has been declining voter participation and enrolment in national and local elections post-World War II, especially evident among younger age cohorts. Poorer people, Ma¯ ori and newer migrant groups are much less likely to enrol to vote and, conditional on enrolling, also less likely to vote.
Mass public engagement in political parties has plummeted, and consequently big money and vested interest lobbying have become more important in New Zealand politics.
There has been a concentration and decline of traditional media and fracturing of media sources, meaning we are less likely to share common information in making our democratic decisions.
There has been a rise in interference in democracies by authoritarian regimes worldwide, from which we are not immune.
While the move to MMP has been associated with more representative parliament in terms of gender and ethnicity, it has also resulted in lower levels of public scrutiny of list MPs, and a developing notion that at least some of these MPs informally represent an ethnic group rather than the widest community.
A further developing fracture line in New Zealand democracy is a result of high and rising rates of emigration, and growing immigration from diverse sources, including from countries where political values are different from ours. These high levels of population churn tend to undermine norms of democratic participation.
Economically, our democracy is challenged by half a century of ongoing low productivity growth and an unsuccessful search for solutions. We have flitted from one cargo-cult solution to another.
One solution du jour involves attaching ourselves to the coat-tails of the fast-growing Asian economies. Many of these countries, including the People’s Republic of China, are highly economically unequal countries, with strong authoritarian elements and high corruption. The People’s Republic of China has also shown a willingness to weaponise economic engagements. An economically driven prioritisation of engagements in this region risks undermining our low-corruption democracy.
Our democracy is also challenged by economic growth which has not been shared by all, especially those at the bottom. Again, this inequality has created significant societal fractures lines.
So, what to do about these developing challenges? Here are some ideas. Democratic participation could be strengthened by introducing a strong civics programme into schools, teaching young people about the nature of democracy, the constitution, and citizens’ rights and obligations.
At the same time, the voting age could be lowered to age 16, connecting civics with the attainment of full democratic rights. The school system could then be used as the frame to ensure that the highest possible proportion of new voting cohorts were enrolled to vote.
There would be significant political challenges to overcome here. An issue is the dominance of centre-Left ideologies amongst teachers, leading to suspicions by the centre-Right of indoctrination which would need to be managed. Equally, low participation in democratic politics often acts to the advantage of the centre-Right, again creating barriers to increasing democratic participation.
Democratic rights could be consciously limited to citizens. Voting rights for citizens would be consistent with the fact that our elected representatives must be citizens.
Strong pathways should be set up from residency to citizenship, with parallel programmes of civic education as part of the process of acquiring citizenship. New migrants should be strongly encouraged to become citizens, rather than remaining as sojourners.
An Electoral Act which banned outright any foreign contributions to local political parties would be desirable. The United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland and the United States all do this. Australia is in the process of banning all foreign donations. Additionally, the identity of all local party donors giving more than $200 a year should be publicly disclosed. Other English-speaking countries have a similar low public disclosure threshold.
More transparency in moneyed lobbying activity is desirable. As the only Anglophone OECD country not to regulate lobbying for transparency, we remain behind the pack. It is not good enough to argue there is no problem: there may be one coming down the road very rapidly. Pre-empting such problems, rather than engaging in filling gaps following scandals, has been recommended in OECD work on lobbying.
In terms of the news media, the erosion of the traditional funding model means there is a growing role for an independent state-funded media across multiple platforms and languages, which is non-political and which holds the confidence of all sectors of the population.
There are other options. We should also be discussing the widest range of these. What we should not do is nothing.
Simon Chapple is director of the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies at the School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington.