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Ed Walsh, electoral reform and the talents of our pols.
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So again the notion that we lack public representatives with the experience and talent to sort things out and how electoral reform might serve as a means to get us better TDs who could serve in government is raised today by Dr. Ed Walsh in the Irish Times. We’ve been here before of course, indeed I suspect I’ve made annual visits to this topic over the past 4 years and let’s face it many more people have been talking about it for much longer than that.
I enjoy tinkering with the electoral system but whatever the system we adopt the core problem is not the system, it is the people who are using it and that’s the electorate. Whether we have PR-STV, FPTP, national or regional lists (open or closed), presidential or parliamentary appointed executives, the public if they so wish to continue to elect the person whose aim it is to protect their slice of the pie instead of ensuring there is pie for everyone.
Changing the system without changing the mindset of the people is next to pointless.
Dan,
People can only vote for the candidates nominated by their respective parties or the odd single issue independent, ‘community’ candidate or representatives of fringe groups that find their way onto the ballot paper. It’s common enough in times of prosperity that politics don’t appear so important to the electorate – and we’re just at the end of an era of prosperity – and that many people, especially the young, become progressively disengaged from the democratic political process. Ireland is far from unique in that respect, I think.
In a crisis, the character and capacity of our public representatives is thrown into relief because the importance of politics and quality political leadership becomes apparent, as does the mediocrity of so many of the spineless numpties who grace our national political stage. But they didn’t get where they are without knowing how to hang on to public office, thinking very well of themselves without any reasonable cause, and having a profound knowledge of how to fend off any party rivals that might threaten their personal grip on an electoral quota.
You’re maybe a bit harsh in judging that the voter’s principal motivation is to protect their own slice of the pie instead of generating pie for everyone. I think it’s more complicated than that. On holiday with some friends recently we had several discussions about the state we’re in and I was surprised when one of my friends, whom I know has always voted for a particular party, said she didn’t care any more; at the next election she was going to vote for the best and brightest on the ballot paper and whomever she figured had the courage and character to lead us out of this mess. I suspect – judging from recent opinion polls – that her view is not universally shared. At least, not yet.
On the other hand, I’d hate to live in a country dominated by the likes of Ed Walsh or the autocracy that he advocates. I just wish there were more people like yourself – and James Lawless too – with ideas, ability and a fresh perspective, elbowing your way to the front. As a country we could do with a serious shake-up of what’s on offer when we go to vote rather than the same old, same old.
I’m sort of one of Ed’s babies via UL and while I don’t always agree with him, his mentality that ran as a strong strain through the NIHE/UL environment at the time that ideas and opinions are there to be challenged and tested has stood me and good few others well. So I’m grateful to him for that, I also think that in some cases the actual comments he has made are heard through the prism of his other expressed views or views that are ascribed to him.
My view about the motivation of the voters doesn’t apply to all of them but rather to too large a portion of them. Many voters express opinions about looking for talent or leadership or ideas or whatever but when it comes to their marking of the ballot paper over factors appear to take over. We have the evidence of this all over the Oireachtas.
Over on my own blog I’ve outlined a means to address the issue of the limited pool of candidates at election time by removing the downside of transfers in parties securing seats.
As said above our present system relies on the people. To those who designed our system nearly 100 years ago justice, fairness and such were of prime importance.
But it was quickly learned by those who had no interest in the common good that you get elected by applying a very simple formula – the lowest common denominator. To put it simply you get elected by finding what is common to the majority of the electorate and this is easily done nowadays through opinion poll sampling.
Using this formula anything is possible – like the smoking ban where the majority, in ostracising smokers, did not mind how much pain and discomfort they caused for no legitimate reason.
The insidious side to this is that unscrupulous politicians can, using a complicit media, manipulate the electorate in any way they wish. Hense our present difficulties.
“the majority, in ostracising smokers, did not mind how much pain and discomfort they caused for no legitimate reason.”
Are you seriously telling us that the exhalation of smokers which is harmful to the health of others is no legitimate reason? Smokers are free to smoke all they want provided they keep the waste product to themselves.
Dan,
Eoin O’Malley of DCU responds to Ed Walsh in an interesting piece in today’s IT. O’Malley suggests the obsession among establishment figures with our electoral system is “disturbing”. Instead he points to the lack of government accountability and the functioning of the Cabinet as the real problem, and one which might be more easily fixed than tampering with the electoral system, making a number of valid points for his argument along the way.
I can’t agree with his singling out the Department of Finance as an example of ‘closed’ government – that may have been true in the past, but the approach taken by the current Minister, encouraging public debate on every major proposal and taking on board amending proposals put forward by the opposition, has been unusually progressive, sometimes almost to a fault. Proposals put forward by Fine Gael for reform of the budgetary system, the recent review of the DoF announced by the Minister, and general acceptance that a fiscal review council would be a useful innovation are almost revolutionary in their implications for shaking up the traditional modus operandi of the Department of Finance, and not before time.
I believe that Lenihan, if he’s left there long enough, will follow through; though I’m not sure that any of his likely successors in that job would be quite so keen. After all, Finance is where the real power lies, a power jealously guarded by successive Ministers for Finance, irrespective of their party or professional background, since the foundation of the State.
Daniel: I seriously believe that the smoking ban was brought in as a test to see how much politicians could get away. Otherwise why not have smoking and non-smoking areas as had previously been the case and which we now see with smoking areas in pubs etc.
Again, in regard to mathematicl formulae, I gather that modern political science has designed formulae for getting people to do the silliest things.