Strange notions of democracy

It was once said that communism might be a great system, if anyone actually tried it; the same can be said for democracy. Given the plethora of practical examples few democracies adopt anything close to the ideal. Recent news, particularly from North America, has highlighted one major shortcoming – senates.

A few years back I was commissioned to prepare a briefing paper arguing for the abolition of one of Australia’s Two things struck me from that exercise; (1) you can present an equally compelling argue for both abolition and retention of upper houses (senates), (2) upper houses (senates) were never predicated on democracy, rather they were designed to keep the rabble in check.

- The Australian Senate

- Canada’s Senate

- US Senate

From that tradition, the British administrators paying lip service to democratic principles in Australia, the upper house was to ensure protection for the colonial masters. The Australian Senate was an extension of that concept, intended to ensure each colony had an equal voice in the federation to protect their interests.

Constitutionally, like the US, senators should be answerable to their relevant state legislatures. As the ‘states house’ there could be some justification for the undemocratic makeup of the Senate. For example the half million Tasmanians have the same 12 member allocation as the more populous states.

That argument does not translate to a senate which has morphed into a full on party house. Aussie Senators now represent their sponsoring parties rather than their state, and are chosen by their party and presented to the voters as a fait accompli. As one former Prime Minister put it, none to subtly; “unrepresentative swill.”

Canada

It was the Canadians started my mind on this track. A number of recent commentators from that delightful country have been foaming over the Liberal Party appointment of their new party leader, Michael Ignatieff, as undemocratic. No foaming over PM Harper recently appointing 18 senators; a real breach of democratic principles by any standards.

Still, Canada’s Senate has never pretended to be a democratic forum. Apart from being appointed the representation is massively uneven across the country. The relatively tiny eastern provinces each outnumber the larger western provinces in the Senate, essentially because they were there first.

PM Harper made these appointments to save his political ass, despite being a noisy advocate of Senate reform while in opposition. Of course, breaches of democracy can always be justified:

“… it's a chicken-or-the-egg kind of problem. You can't change the rules for Parliament's upper chamber until you control it. And you can't control it unless you appoint senators.”

Quite frankly, Mr Harper would have scored more points by putting the argument for Senate reform to the people, leading to a referendum. The fact that politicians have control over rewriting the constitution, feathering their own nests, without recourse to the people is obscene.

USA

Currently regarded the house of millionaires, the US Senate is quickly heading to billions… Obviously a seat in the Senate costs dearly, and usually in money terms. I guess that is consistent with the haves protecting their stash against the rest of us. If money is the only path to the Senate then we have an immediate issue with democracy.

But again, appointments become a secondary problem. Well, in the US each state has its own rules for what has become another party house. The lucky ones, or those able to escape scrutiny, can ensure the big money entry into the Senate. It’s doubtful, without scrutiny, an appointment would be made for any regard for those represented.

The US delivers many challenges to ideas of true democracy, and partly because of the massive state by state disparities in regulations. Surely an even and fair system holds the same rules across any one jurisdiction. In this sense I mean state voters might have their own consistent state rules, but federal voters should have the same, across the federation.

Compare current US electoral laws with major sports. If teams in the NFL or any other of those acronyms had to remember different rules when they played in other states the teams and the fans would soon start to lose interest in the complexity. Federal voters should be confident that every other American voter has exactly the same value. They don’t!

Dream on

In many ways, as flawed as it is, I still see Australia as the leading model of democracy. Still, I don’t accept that it begins to approach an acceptable level of true democracy. Canada has the best electoral laws I’ve experienced (the Senate is not elected) but is still a mess of special interests. The US I’m told has some perfect examples of true democracy – at the bottom of the pyramid, the concept fades as real power takes its grip.

While money, power and self interest hold sway we can’t have any great expectation of our political masters willingly adopting democratic concepts. More so when most voters really don’t care. I guess they’ll just keep screwing us and using the word democracy to justify themselves.