Ian Shapiro

Frances McCall Rosenbluth

Saving Democracy from Itself

Responsible Parties

Stephen Campbell

Briefly - the authors argue that democratic reforms to give voters more choice, such as in candidate selection or to increase proportionality, actually undermine democratic decision making. The Westminster system, with two strong, disciplined parties, incentivises convergence on the “median” voter and generally leads to more coherent policy platforms and democratic decision making in the long term. 

By contrast, coalition governments in proportional systems, or candidates selected by by primaries / open-lists, are more irresponsible policymakers forced to cater to “insular minorities” with intense preferences. They will try to protect their own voters while externalising the costs onto other groups, with no incentive to govern for the majority of people. This is a recipe for poor and expensive public policy. Democracies should resist the temptation to respond to voter disaffection with democratic reforms that will hamper policymaking and further entrench disaffection. 

This is a self consciously contrarian and counter intuitive argument and at first I found myself fairly sympathetic to it. 

This was somewhat undone by the authors' unacknowledged and unexamined normative assumptions about e.g. who the "median" UK voter is and what constitutes "responsible" politics. They are reflexively dismissive of Corbyn, seeing him as an aberration catapulted to leadership by the same misguided democratic reforms they rail against. The politics he represented is dismissed as fundamentally unserious, at best. 

This is a familiar view among British political scientists, for whom any politics not centred on middle class homeowners is considered fundamentally illegitimate, or even dangerous populist demagoguery. This normative bias blinds the authors to the fact that the idealised "median" voter in the UK is a product of the electoral system itself. Middle-class homeowners and pensioners in suburban swing seats are more politically advantaged than young renters or gig economy workers in urban centres, whose votes are largely wasted. Accordingly, Westminster politics converges on the former group at the direct expense of the latter, with very poor outcomes in policy areas like welfare, social insurance, redistribution etc. Contrary to the authors' argument about better and more responsible policymaking, the Westminster system's track record in these areas does not compare favourably to the PR systems of Western Europe. 

The authors do belatedly address this point in the final chapter, albeit briefly and rather unconvincingly. They argue that larger single-member districts is the route to better policy outcomes in these areas. Ideally every constituency should constitute a microcosm of the UK as a whole. As for the better track record of PR systems, there is a throwaway sentence that the PR advantage on redistribution might be dissipating in the face of declining union membership and left party fragmentation. This argument is contradicted by even the most cursory glance at Scotland, where PR and centre left electoral competition has meant better redistributive policies, like the introduction and increases to Scottish Child Payment, and even plans to introduce rent controls. On this axis, these are significantly better policies than anything offered by the majoritarian Westminster parties. 

Oddly, I don't feel these criticisms totally undercut the book. I found myself intrigued by the case put forward and it felt honestly argued. The authors offer some useful insights on making better public policy. I think even supporters of more proportional systems could get something from it - if only to hone our own arguments in favour of PR.

Responsible Parties Saving Democracy from Itself

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