Representation, Leadership and Democracy

Author: Dr Martin Leet

Date: 01 August 2009

In a representative democracy, politicians are supposed to represent the views and interests of the people. But public policies often appear to have a very tenuous relationship with the popular will. In this article, Martin Leet reflects on the nature of ‘representation’ in contemporary Australian democracy.

Anna Bligh recently announced a ‘package of strategic asset sales’ as a response to the impact of the global financial crisis on the Queensland government’s balance sheet. She argued, among other things, that the sales were consistent with the changing role of government, and that they would free up public resources to invest in other, more pressing infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and roads.

The Premier anticipated that her ‘Renewing Queensland Plan’ would meet with a lot of popular resistance, but she hoped that ‘instinctive’ reactions would give way, over time, to a reasoned acceptance of the proposals. She emphasised that her decisions were not taken lightly and that her responsibility was to govern in the long-term interests of Queenslanders.

The Bligh Government’s asset sales policy comes not long after an election campaign in which the policy did not feature. It received no mention at all even though the impact of the global financial crisis on the economy and on the government’s finances was a well-established and central theme. Of course, it would have been political suicide for Bligh to have run with such a policy in the campaign given the extent of popular resistance to privatisation. She may now claim to have a mandate to govern, but is it reasonable to introduce, without prior announcement, such substantial measures so soon into the government’s term in office?

There is always a tension between representation and leadership in liberal democracies such as ours. In theory, power resides in the people. Politicians are appointed to represent the views and interests of the electorate. But they are also expected to have qualities of leadership and so make decisions, often difficult ones, that may involve ‘taking people with them’ rather than simply reflecting popular desires.

It would have to be said, in the case of the Queensland asset sales, that Bligh has chosen to exercise ‘leadership’ at a convenient time. It has become routine for politicians to run safe and cautious election campaigns and put on merely the airs of leadership, only to make the really ‘tough’ decisions in the honeymoon period that follows the vote. Clearly, however, such decisions amount to neither representation of the people nor leadership.

Why, then, do such decisions get made in spite of democratic process? The answer lies in the real nature of ‘representation’ in contemporary representative democracy. Essentially, politicians appear obligated to ‘represent’ the demands of a number of sectional interests before they consider representation of the popular will. If the two collide, it is often the sectional interests that win out. Consider two such sectional interests.

In an interview on the ABC’s 7.30 Report following the 2001 federal election, Prime Minister John Howard responded to a line of questioning about whether and how he had successfully regained the support of voters who had earlier switched from the Liberal Party to Pauline Hanson. At one point, he said: ‘Can I just say that I’ve always sought to maximise the primary vote of the Liberal Party, that’s the first obligation of any political leader’. I remember being taken aback by this statement at the time and I was surprised that Kerry O’Brien did not at least follow it up with a query. Is the ‘first obligation’ of a political leader really to their party?

Here we have a bald declaration of a sectional interest that gets in the way of representation of the popular will in contemporary democracy. The immense majority of members of parliament belong to one of the two major political parties and it is quite clear that they must represent the interests of the party first. A long time ago, when political parties had more grassroots membership and when party discipline was not so stifling, it could be argued that parliamentary members could meaningfully represent their electorates. Nowadays, political parties are more like corporations than organs of the people. They conduct numerous polls and focus groups, but not so much as to gauge public opinion in order to represent it. Rather, they use the results as a means of positioning themselves strategically to ‘maximise their primary vote’. Political parties, in the single-minded pursuit of power, have become ends in themselves rather than as a means of representation.

The interests of political parties always have a short-term quality because of the nature of the electoral cycle. The resulting myopia explains why many policies are geared toward more or less immediate electoral advantage and therefore fail to develop the long-term strategies required to address many social and economic problems.

This well-known feature of Australian politics does not quite explain the case in point however. The Bligh Government asset sales have faced stiff opposition within the Labor Party and the union movement, and polls indicate an electoral backlash in many seats. Is it true, then, that the long-term interests of Queenslanders are governing policy formulation in this instance, as the Premier argues?

It could be that the power of another sectional interest is involved in the asset sales strategy. In her justification of the policy, the Premier refers to the vital need to restore the budget to surplus and regain the State’s triple-A credit. But whose needs is this really representing? It may be the needs of a second sectional interest interfering in the relationship between the electorate and political actors, a sectional interest that has been exposed more clearly by the financial crisis: a global class of bankers and financiers. Credit rating agencies are a primary part of this global class.

Credit rating agencies are supposed to provide information about, among other things, the financial prospects of various institutions, including companies and governments. They ‘lubricate’ the operations of the market by providing objective information about the soundness of investment opportunities. They have, understandably, been criticised strongly for failing to provide reliable information to hundreds of thousands of investors around the world who have suffered major losses over the past few years because of corrupt financial practices.

In October 2008, the Treasury and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission released a joint report into credit rating agencies. The report observed that it ‘is now widely acknowledged internationally that flaws in credit rating agencies’ assessments of US ‘sub-prime’ residential mortgage-backed securities and collateralised debt obligations were among the principal underlying causes of recent market turmoil’.

The judgments of credit rating agencies, then, can hardly be thought reliable but the Queensland Government feels obligated to satisfy them in order that the State be considered a place for sound and safe investment. But is that really the case? Surely, any potential investor could see that Queensland has an enviable record of economic growth, still has huge potential for further development, and has a long history of political and financial stability that will certainly continue.

Instead of supporting economic development, governments have compromised it by adhering to an orthodoxy espoused by credit rating agencies and other global institutions. The idea that budgets must always be in surplus has meant that public infrastructure still lags far behind broader economic development, thus stultifying the latter. One can surmise, however, that the interests of credit rating agencies are unlikely to figure highly in the minds of citizens whose access to public goods and services is less than what it could be because of unnecessary budgetary constraints.

In considering just these two sectional interests, then, it can be seen that the interests of the people are hardly represented well in the workings of contemporary democracy. And there are many other sectional interests which are closer to the ears of those in power than the voters who turn up on election day. Citizens are now more like observers who must watch a process of representation being played out above and beyond them, rather than effective participants in the democratic process.

Dr Martin Leet is Senior Research Officer with the Brisbane Institute. He studied political science at the University of Queensland and was awarded a BA (Hons) and PhD. Over the last ten years, he has taught and researched in the fields of political economy, public policy and political theory. Martin has published two books, as well as numerous journal articles and book reviews. His most recent book, Aftereffects of Knowledge in Modernity (State University of New York Press), examines the ambivalent cultural consequences of the search for knowledge in the modern western world.