Wednesday 30 September 2009

The Power 2010 moment

Like many people on what I think of as the pluralist and republican wing of the left, I am extremely disappointed by the ideas for political reform set out by Gordon Brown in his speech to the Labour Party conference.

Most of all, I am disappointed by the commitment to hold a referendum on AV after the next election. For me the issue is not simply, or even primarily, that the referendum would be held after the election, but that it would be held on whether or not to change to the Alternative Vote.

Although AV has a large number of supporters at the top of the Labour party, the case for AV as the direction for electoral reform has always been weak.

As I argued in an earlier post, replying to Peter Kellner's case for AV, PR is intrinsically fairer in terms of rewarding voters with seats. AV is not a proportional system; indeed, at some recent elections it would have delivered even more disproportional representation than the current system. If, as Peter suggests, you switch the focus from intrinisic fairness to long-term consequences, then there is research - which Peter seems unaware of - which shows that PR systems deliver better outcomes of the kind the left cares about in the long-run: greater economic equality. And, to anticipate, it is not true that PR necessarily severs the link between constituents and MPs.

Given that the argument for AV over PR is so weak, it is hard not to suppress the thought that the Labour Party leadership prefers AV out of partisan self-interest: it expects there to be more Labour MPs under AV. This is, I should say, barely a criticism of Labour's leadership, for virtually every party looks at electoral reform in terms of its partisan self-interest. That's what parties do.

The implication of this, I think, is that we have to look outside of the conventional party system for the kind of pressure and momentum that will bring change. This is the insight behind the call for a citizens' convention which we heard so much about earlier this year. Brown's disappointing speech only underscores just how important a citizens' convention and related popular campaign for reform is. Earlier this year, Real Change took up the call. It has now passed the baton on to a successor organization, Power 2010.

Far-reaching and fair reform of the political process is not going to be delivered by this Labour government. This is not just a matter of Gordon Brown's alleged circumspection. It is because it is difficult for the leadership of the party (as of any party) to approach the issue in a way that isn't distorted by calculations of partisan advantage.

So for those of us in the Labour party who do want fair-reaching and fair reform, the time has surely come to join and support organizations that are struggling for this outside, and against, the conventional parties. It's time to put our energy behind Power 2010.

4 comments:

Dingdongalistic said...

"As I argued in an earlier post, replying to Peter Kellner's case for AV, PR is intrinsically fairer in terms of rewarding voters with seats."

Firstly, PR is not a single system, whereas AV is, so that statement isn't necessarily true -- for one thing, it depends on what form of PR you are talking about.

"AV is not a proportional system; indeed, at some recent elections it would have delivered even more disproportional representation than the current system."

This argument is based purely upon surveys done in 1997, which relied upon the prism of the current system which we see politics through. In order to have a sensible debate about AV, real examples need to be used, such as the case of Australia.

"Given that the argument for AV over PR is so weak, it is hard not to suppress the thought that the Labour Party leadership prefers AV out of partisan self-interest: it expects there to be more Labour MPs under AV."

If it expects this, it is almost certainly wrong. AV has the potential to exacerbate swings against an unpopular incumbent government or for a broadly popular alternative. Though the Conservatives may not be the latter, Labour are almost certainly the former. Just as the surveys you quote would have delivered fewer seats to the Conservatives in 1997, AV would quite possibly result in less seats for Labour in 2010 (although the political culture would probably be different under AV, thus rendering the survey somewhat limited in its usefulness).

Stuart White said...

Dinddongalastic: I am not sure any of your rejoinders are true.

Take your third point first. Labour is not proposing AV for the 2010 election is it? Its proposing it for future elections. The expectation is that, the next election aside, the future will be sufficiently like the past that AV will give Labour more seats than PR. That's the partisan calculation.

Turning to your second point, while obviously PR does cover a range of systems, these all have in common the property of generating a highish degree of proportionality in the relationship between votes and seats - typically more proportionality than under AV or FPTP. In terms of this specific criterion of fairness (vote-seat proportionality), which is the one I explicitly refer to in the article, PR systems are going to be, as a general matter, better than majoritarian systems.

Turning to your second point, how much proportionality do we see in the Australian system (in the elections where AV applies)?

I'm afraid this comment confirms my sense of the intellectual desperation behind the case for AV.

Stuart White said...

Ooops - the second main paragraph in my reply to Dingdonalastic refers to the first point in her/his comment, not the second.

Dingdongalistic said...

For clarification, it's he (http://dingdongalistic.wordpress.com, http://thedailysoapbox.org.uk).

"Take your third point first. Labour is not proposing AV for the 2010 election is it? Its proposing it for future elections. The expectation is that, the next election aside, the future will be sufficiently like the past that AV will give Labour more seats than PR. That's the partisan calculation."

That would be utter guesswork on the part of the Labour party. They'd need to know that the pendulum would have swung back towards them as a moderately popular alternative in 2014/15, rather than having a slightly larger but still polarised base, which they would be harmed by in a change to AV. Essentially, that's a call no-one can make, so I can hardly believe that it is a partisan calculation. Perhaps they're hoping that the change in their voting base dynamics over the next five years will help them, but there's no way they can predict that with any certainty whatsoever.

Secondly, party proportionality is only one criterion, and there are at least three that need to be considered when judging a voting system -- the level of local representation, the basis of the system and how open it is to individual accountability and independents, and national outcomes. Also, see http://thedailysoapbox.org.uk/2009/09/25/mr-dr-and-pr/ for an example of why it is not entirely reasonable to characterise all systems with moderate outcomes as PR, and all systems with majoritarian outcomes as majoritarian.

"Turning to your second point, how much proportionality do we see in the Australian system (in the elections where AV applies)?"

From memory, roughly the same as under FPTP. The difference is that swings are more logical, in that AV rules out vote-splitting.

"I'm afraid this comment confirms my sense of the intellectual desperation behind the case for AV."

"Intellectual desperation"? I personally don't think so. I think AV would be a moderately progressive change to the system, whilst consensus for a more radical alternative is lacking (which it is). The problem is simply that to change the type of national outcomes from majoritarian to more moderate, almost certainly an alteration to the constituency link is required. This is quite controversial, and thus requires consensus on how best to do so, and if the Jenkins Report's process is anything to go by, this is very difficult to achieve. AMS/AV+ would almost certainly be easier than STV, which would require huge constituencies for rural areas (and even under FPTP, there are inequalities in constituency membership because of the difficulties caused by excessive size), but then a whole new can of worms would be opened up concerning how to set the ratio between corrective "top-up" MPs, and constituency MPs, plus a whole load of other factors such as whether to allow dual standing, whether the two votes should be two choices or interconnected, whether the list should be open or closed, etc., etc.. STV would have the advantage of retaining a stronger independence of locally elected MPs (due to preferential voting and the fact that party member can in theory compete against each other), but be a more dramatic move away from single-member representation, incur geographical difficulties mentioned earlier, and have a far less transparent counting process which is far less straightforward to understand.

So, given these difficulties, AV as the first step would not be a bad idea, as it would fix the huge problems FPTP has on the local level, if leaving national outcomes relatively unchanged, though perhaps slightly improved. Certainly, I'd prefer it to no reform. Wouldn't you?