Sunday, August 10, 2014

Robert Asselin's rather thin Canada 2020 paper on democratic reform

Robert Asselin is a reputable enough University of Ottawa political scientist, but his paper "An Agenda for Democratic Reform in Canada, " which  proposes mandatory voting and a majoritarian  Alternative Voting system (single member constituency plus preferential ballot) as the principal cures for what ails Canadian democracy, is not adequately defended.  Not discussed is the fact that diffuse interests would continue to be radically underrepresented and the exacerbation of regionalism would continue under AV.  Indeed, proportional representation is not even mentioned in the paper itself, and is given only two sentences in his video presentation,  in which PR is mentioned only to be dismissed as contributing to "instability"--without addressing Alan Cairn's discussion of the instability of the existing system, or the remarkable stability of Mixed-Member systems in Germany and New Zealand.

The track record of the AV system in Canada is that parties have adopted it either to prevent another party from coming to power (the Liberal-Conservative coalition adopted it in BC in 1952 to prevent the CCF from gaining power; Social Credit used it in rural Alberta where it was conducive to Socreds winning seats) or as a proposed cure for votes that are split (Thomas Flanagan advocated it when the conservative vote was split between PCs and Reform in the 1990s). But when the system starts to erode support for the party in power (because it affords the voter an easy alternative to the government to vote for) the system is abandoned.  Prediction: if a future Liberal government adopts this system it will be under increasing pressure to drop it after its first term in office.  Asselin does not address the historical track record of AV systems in Canada, and in particular its marked lack of durability.

More free votes in the House of Commons, consultation about Senate appointments, and a Prime Minister's Question Period at least once per week are all decent ideas that Asselin recommends and have been standard agenda items for years (PM's QP is the practice in the United Kingdom).  But the one thing that could make AV in the House of Commons acceptable to underrepresented minorities--pure PR in an elected Senate--is not discussed. Why not? If instability of the Government is an issue, why not have PR in a separate House, which is not the seat of government and therefore not a House of confidence?

Mandatory voting has much to commend it, but comparative political science suggests that PR would boost voter turnout by about 7% voluntarily because more voters feel that their votes count under PR.  Does mandatory voting cure the problem of political apathy, or does it just mask it?

Asselin's unexplained adoption of the Liberal nomenclature  instead of using the well-established categories of empirical political science ("Preferential Vote" is ambiguous, since both AV and STV  have preferential ballots), and the bold red type of the paper, have the look and feel of an in-house Liberal  partisan publication.  Most of these proposals are aimed against more radical reforms that would prevent a majority Liberal Government /Trudeau Restoration. This no doubt is what the Liberal leadership wanted to hear. But is it what we needed to hear?

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