The rise and fall of Kevin Rudd’s popularity illustrates this switching between sources of legitimacy in the political cycle. His Government has proved to be yet another example of a political party in power that has failed on its promises to revitalise probity, enhance democracy and deliver on its election promises. Most recently, there has been the pathetic justification of the decision to publicly fund advertising of the government’s policies for taxing the mining sector. That decision followed serious breakdowns in due bureaucratic process in the implementation of the home insulation scheme; a failure to deliver on the undertaking to build new child care centres; an unwillingness to embrace comprehensive taxation reform; a disappointing set of health initiatives that do not tackle the real sources of contemporary patterns of disease; and a retreat from “moral” commitments such as the implementation of an emissions trading scheme and demonstrating greater generosity towards refugees.

Politics loses its rational legitimacy with the repetition of this cycle. It becomes clearer that power has effectively migrated away from the community and into the formal political system itself: the community becomes a spectator of the political process rather than being an active participant within it; politics consists of strategic ploys for maximising power that are barely contained by the framework of conventions and rules of liberal democracy; and the first priority of political leaders is to their party rather than to the national interest.

Citizens are, as a result, losing faith in the capacity of politics to solve social and economic problems. This disillusionment is partly expressed in disengagement with the political process, as evidenced in the rise in informal voting. But it also gives rise to moves towards some kind of revitalisation, such as involvement in nonpartisan social movements, the election of more independents in parliament, and increased support for minor parties such as the Greens. These latter developments represent a potential to increase the rational authority of our democracy. In the meantime, charisma and tradition are playing a far greater role that they should in propping up political legitimacy.

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.