Parties too ideological bad for democracy

ALL PEOPLE, WHATEVER THEIR HERITAGE, AFFILIATION, ORIENTATION OR BELIEFS, SHOULD BE CONFIDENT OF THEMSELVES. — CONRAD BLACK

The rise of political polarization in the United States ought to be a salutary lesson for Canadians. We must be more vigilant of such conditions taking root in our own country.

There's evidence in fact that they already are in the form of a growing urbanrural divide. This potential fault line will require greater attention and care from Canada's political class.

Although polling shows that urban and rural Canadians actually share many common views on matters of economics, culture and society, there are key differences on a handful of issues including the state of the economy, climate change, immigration and diversity, values and tradition and trust in government.

These differences are notable for a couple of reasons. The first is that they reflect competing views and perspectives on major societal tensions between optimism and anxiety, dynamism and stagnation and openness and closedness. These are a set of issues that aren't necessarily conducive to a positive-sum politics.

The second reason is related: these urban-rural differences are manifesting themselves in polarized voting patterns. The Liberal party is increasingly a city party and the Conservative party is mostly a country party and there isn't much overlap between the two. One just needs to look at the electoral map to see the growing divergence between what has been described as the “politics of demography” versus the “politics of geography.”

Take the 2019 federal election, for instance. The median population density for the 157 Liberal ridings was more than 38 times higher than that of the 121 Conservative ridings. If one ranks the 338 federal ridings by population density, the Conservative party was shutout of the 50 densest ridings and the Liberal party similarly underperformed in those with fewer than 100 residents per square kilometre.

These political outcomes may indeed be inherent to the set of issues that increasingly divides urban and rural Canadians. One is either for or against carbon taxes or for or against higher levels of immigration or for or against more traditional sensibilities.

There isn't much scope for political parties to be responsive to one group of voters on these fundamental questions and still able to build support among those living in other parts of the country.

The net effect is to produce a set of political incentives that tilts against broad electoral coalitions that cut across urban-rural lines and instead entrenches a partisanship of place that can be difficult to break out of.

The question, of course, is: what can we do about it?

A big part of the answer lies with political parties relaxing the strict ideological and communications parameters that they've come to place on local representatives.

Requiring each candidate to fully conform to a comprehensive set of national policy positions irrespective of whether they're minor partisan priorities or have political salience at the regional or local level exacerbates these place-based trends. It precludes our politicians from bringing expression to the unique experiences, perspectives and values of local constituents.

The upshot: there's increasingly less ideological diversity within Canada's political parties than in various other advanced democracies. The intra-party Brexit tensions among Conservatives and Labourites, for instance, is basically unfathomable in the Canadian context.

Our political parties need to open themselves up. They should loosen rigid discipline and generally avoid strict “litmus tests” for prospective candidates.

This doesn't mean they ought to stand for nothing. Of course, political parties should expect candidates to affirm their core principles and policies. But otherwise there should be scope to deviate on individual issues in the name of better local representation.

This would ostensibly involve the Liberal party opening up their nominations to more conservative-leaning

OUR POLITICAL PARTIES NEED TO OPEN THEMSELVES UP.

candidates in rural ridings and the Conservative party permitting more progressive-leaning candidates to stand for election in urban ridings. This may seem like a radical idea to hard-core ideologues, but it should be viewed as a win-win for the rest of us: it would not just improve the parties' prospects of winning local races, but it would also ultimately make our political system more responsive and representative.

Moving in this direction will require changes to how we do politics. Political parties must devolve more power to local riding associations. Party leaders will need to permit Members of Parliament to break from party orthodoxy in a broader mix of policy and political disputes. The news media will need to resist the temptation to treat every instance of political or policy entrepreneurship as a major controversy that shows evidence of weak leadership or caucus upheaval. Everyone has a role to play in fortifying our politics from rising polarization.

Recent evidence from the United States demonstrates how important such efforts are. We must commit ourselves to preventing these growing urban-rural fault lines from fracturing our politics and society. This imperative transcends ideology or partisanship.

It's ultimately a project of ongoing unity and social cohesion.