Does our Government have a three-body problem?
The early days of the coalition Government have prompted questions about MMP, but its behaviour and policy preferences cannot be explained away simply as a fundamental flaw in the electoral system we operate under, writes Richard Shaw.
As the new coalition Government beds in, some are seeing uncomfortable parallels between its conduct and the winnertakes-all approach of Labour and National administrations under the old FPP electoral rules – and concluding that this points to a flaw in the current MMP system that needs fixing.
This view reflects, among other things, the coalition’s unparalleled use of parliamentary urgency during its first 100 days in office and the growing concentration of executive power (including via the fast-track consenting legislation).
It also flows from questions about the possible cancellation of the school lunch programme, a somewhat cavalier approach to transparency requirements for ministers, and the suggestion that the state might take it upon itself to decide when school students are sick enough to stay home.
There are concerns, too, about running the public sector along corporate lines, and whether this could lead to citizens being redefined as customers, and a drive for cost efficiency squeezing out considerations of justice and equity.
But whether or not the Government is to your taste, it is worth reflecting on what we can – and cannot – expect of our electoral rules. The primary function of an electoral system is to translate votes into parliamentary seats. In our parliamentary democracy we do not directly elect the political executive (the prime minister and Cabinet). We elect a parliament.
Citizens’ direct involvement in the formation of a government ends at that point – it then falls to political parties to stitch together an administration that can command a parliamentary majority on big-ticket issues such as the Budget and confidence votes.
Different electoral systems perform this core function in various ways. The mechanics of the old FPP system were such that we always wound up with single party majority governments that (nearly) always commanded a minority of the popular vote. The last government formed under FPP, Jim Bolger’s returning National administration, won a parliamentary majority with just 35% of the vote. In fact, before Labour pulled it off in 2020, the last time a single political party won a majority of the vote was way back in 1951.
With their parliamentary majorities safely tucked away, those single-party governments were free to dominate parliament, and could–and often did– adopt a “winner-takes-all” approach. In time, enough voters tired of this style of governing to force a change in electoral arrangements via two referendums held in 1993.
Crucially, many supporters of change assumed that the new MMP system would lead to policy moderation and produce a more consensual style of politics. But that assumption does not necessarily stack up. An electoral system influences the process of government formation. It also provides certain incentives for cooperation. (Which is why, between 2020 and 2023, Labour mostly did not behave like the singleparty governments of the 1980s/1990s: its leaders knew that at some point they would lose their majority and need to fall back on relationships with other parties.)
However, the electoral system does not fundamentally determine the way governments behave or the policies they implement. Put differently, the rules under which governments are formed should not be confused with the subsequent conduct of ministers. What governments do and how they do it is shaped by other political considerations, including the nature and calibre of the leadership of the prime minister and the state of relationships within and between governing parties. In short, whatever your views on this Government, its behaviour and policy preferences cannot be explained away simply as a fundamental flaw in the electoral system.
That said, there are lessons to be learnt from our political history. One is that voters punish instability. In the two-party coalitions we are used to, junior coalition partners generally reach the limits of what is politically possible or publicly palatable fairly quickly.
That constraint is missing in this Government. We are not yet fully familiar with the internal dynamics of a threeparty administration, but that it comprises three players makes political management that much more challenging. Jeopardy is baked into the current arrangements because, between them, the two smaller coalition partners possess more leverage than either would have under standard two-party coalition conditions.
The risk for the prime minister is that this becomes the political equivalent of the three-body problem, in which interactions between the governing parties become increasingly unpredictable. Voters would not react well to that.
A second and related matter is that small parties which enter into a governing arrangement with a larger party invariably suffer at the next election. Winston Peters knows better than most that voters generally do not like political tails wagging dogs.
ACT and NZ First may be exercising more policy leverage than their respective shares of the vote in 2023 suggest they should have, but as NZ First’s experience in both 1999 and 2008 suggests, that is no guarantee that things will end well for either party.
Finally, the sanction available to voters is much more effective under MMP than it was under FPP. Once upon a time an incumbent government could shed significant votes and still remain in government. That is no longer possible. These days, irrespective of who is in office, if you oppose the government of the day, MMP may well be part of the solution, not the problem.