One of the most fascinating aspects of the UK election is the role of the Liberal Democrats - something that I think has received no coverage in the Australian media, but has been discussed in the blogosphere.
The Lib Dems face an interesting strategic challenge in this election - squeezed by a first past the post electoral system, they have to be competitive against both Tories and Labour. Their voting demographic is similar to the Tories’, and their support largely regional and suburban, but they also can’t afford to be seen as too close to an unpopular Prime Minister. To some degree their chances of taking more than the 53 seats they hold (leaving aside a recent Labour defector, who’s not recontesting his seat) are very much a prisoner of the Tory vote. If the Tories do well, they take seats of the Lib Dems, and conversely the Lib Dems are in second place in many marginal Tory constituencies. With the polls showing the Tory vote stuck at 33%, and Labour set to have a a majority of 130 odd MPs, observers argue that the Lib Dems’ real chance is in 2009.
I’ve been doing a bit of reading about the Lib Dems. One interesting observation from a couple of political scientists who’ve published a comprehensive monograph on the party - Neither Left nor Right: The Liberal Democrats and the Electorate - is that Downsian economic theories of democracy which see voting and party positioning as akin to a market are completely inapplicable to the Lib Dems. Rather than moving to the centre, as the model predicts, they’ve enjoyed much more success since abandoning the tactic of “equidistance” after the 1992 election, and staking out their own territory. In fact the Lib Dems have enjoyed most success by pushing for an increase in taxes, and for hypothecated taxes dedicated to education. So rather than occupying a political space to Labour’s left, or between Labour and the Tories, they’ve tried to stake out a position as radicals who are “neither Left nor Right”.
Perhaps more evidence that passionate politics helps centrist parties?
Elsewhere: The Guardian has comprehensive coverage of the Lib Dems’ campaign, strategy and policies and a handy map [link to .pdf] of Tory and Lib Dem target seats, with margins.
Just in: Tim D provides a poetic perspective on the Lib Dems.
I think I like them even more after this post.
I could well be wrong, but I don’t think the Tories are going to do well in this election. The Lib Dems might well have an excellent chance of picking up several seats at their expense.
I expect that they might well give Blair’s mob a run for their money in certain seats as well.
Mark
I haven’t seen this book, but it seems obvious that it’s only possible for a party to be distinctive without being left nor right, if the issues cut across across two dimensions. It’s true that in this situation the median voter theorem may fail to predict an outcome. But this is because the median voter may not exist. And this is a standard result in the public choice theory: there is a lot of literature on the causes and consequences - poitive and normative - of the phenomenon. It’s hardly fair to suggest that it somehow defies or discredits the ‘economic theory’. There may be lots of things wrong with public choice theory, but overlooking multi-dimensionality in policy options isn’t one of them.
James, I wasn’t really talking about public choice theory but Downsian theory in pol sci. As I said I skimmed the book - but I’ll have another read of the chapter on the model and the median voter if I get a chance over the weekend.
I don’t think they are neutral, I think, particularly given where the lines are presently drawn, they are notably left. However they are also different, in a context where politics is no longer a simple continuum (if it ever really was).
Their key constituencies appear to be socially liberal. The derided chardonnay or latte left, well educated, inner city, seem to like them. Non-white people who aren’t enamoured with Labour’s socialist and unionist roots would find them an attractive alternative too, given they know how close to the top of the conservative hand lies the race card. I think the seats they’ve picked up may reflect this, but correct me if wrong.
Socially left, economically centrist, perhaps?
And can I add, I vivid contrast to our flaccid Democrats, and extreme Greens, and clearly an unheeded lesson in how to break into a two party system. Sure, some of it has to do with the voting system, but I think that’s a cop out. They’ve staked out much clearer and more consistent policy positions than our Dems did, and made it clear they are a party who anticipate, and are ready for, leadership.
Agreed, Martin, but the Lib Dems also have to avoid appearing too “left” because they also pick up Tory voters who aren’t the “chardonnay set” but nevertheless are pissed off with the extremism and general hopelessness of the Tories.
Mark, you’ve misunderstood the theory. The point of the median voter is that people will vote for the party nearest their preferences. Since the greatest number of voters congregate near the median voter, it makes sense for parties wishing to win overall majorities to congregate their.
But it’s not true to say that this is the only strategy for winning votes. In fact you can see how the model predicts votes for parties closer to the fringes - they are closer to X voters, who will stop with them rather than heading towards the median. However that number will always be smaller.
One finding of the more advanced theory - and I admit I didn’t fully understand the argument - is that there are multiple clusters of median policies in a voter hyperdimensional issues space. Political landscapes can suddenly and very rapidly migrate from one to another: in Australia the sudden blossoming of One Nation is an example which swept away the Keating Consensus.
s/their/there
Also, you should remember that the median voter is different in each electorate - part of the challenge for parties is to tailor their position for different areas.
Well, Jacques, save me a seat in that hyperdimensional issues space, and buy me a gin and tonic, it’s your shout. Here and I thought that the rise of the Pauline Hanson One Nation Party was a function of radical right-wing reactionary politics, combined with electoral clever-dickyness from David Ettridge and David Oldfield, finally coming into its own after a decade of tedium.
Keating Consensus? What were you smoking in 1996? I don’t recall a consensus about anything. People hated Keating and all he stood for far more than anybody dislikes Howard these days.
Liam;
The point is not that politics moved towards One Nation because of abstract notions, the point is that it forms an example of the abstract theory’s predictions.
“Hyperdimensional” sounds like science fiction. It essentially means “more than three dimensions”, reflecting the fact that there are more than three issues in a given election (surely).
Calling the Keating consensus was probably optimistic, however you must admit that the shape and discourse of politics under Hawke-Keating had some hangover into the early Howard years, until Hanson excused and made permissible commentary on issues of race, immigration etc from perspectives which were generally squished during the Keating years.
Jacques, I’ll have a read of the chapter where the authors set out the theory tonight and get back to you. It’s not one I’m familiar with, so I might not have it right!
Jacques, the theory being talked about in the chapter is parties chasing voters not voters making decisions about their preferences and values and which party to support.
The authors write:
It is intereating that George Monbiot puts the view that because the LibDems need to take votes off the Tories to hold their gains and gain some more, as a Labour voter a vote for them would be a vote for some policies you almost certainly would not want. He says:
By choosing the Liberal Democrats, you are sending an equivocal signal. Are you voting for them because you think Blair is too right-wing, or because you fear Old Labour might resurface? Are you choosing them because you are a liberal Tory who detests Michael Howard, or is it because you can’t make up your mind, and they represent the middle position? There are, in other words, too many reasons for voting LibDem. Your voice is lost in the noise of conflicting intentions, and your decision becomes unintelligible. Whoever takes power after the next election cannot be sure why the votes fell the way they did.
If, on the other hand, you were to vote Green, Plaid Cymru, Respect or Scottish Socialist, you would send an unequivocal signal about the kind of politics you are rejecting and the kind of politics you are embracing.
He says that:
All four of them are solidly to the left of Labour. They have been consistently anti-war, anti-privatisation, pro-distribution and pro-environment. No one who has read their manifestos can doubt that a vote for one of them is a vote against the current deference to wealth and rank.
And, he claims, a vote for the minor parties will not let the Tories in.
Mark, I may have read a different introduction to you. I read a few books on public choice while doing a govt 1001 unit at Sydney Uni.
They did discuss scenarios where room was available for third parties on the fringes.
Remember also that Australian parties can stray further from the median to capture more wing votes, because preferences eventually flow to them. You might think of two overlapping curves.
hey. ummmm is this where i can ask questions? because i am a year ten student and am doing a yr 11 course at school. i have been given an assignemt essay of 1500-1800 words on green economics and i really don’t know where to start looking for information, if someone could please write a comment explaining what green economics is and some of the theories about it i would very much appreciate it, thankyou.
sam I’d suggest you go to Google and type in “green economics”, hit ‘Google search’ and you’ll get this.
Then you’ll have 38,700,000 articles to choose from!
mark says:
Downs never claimed to have developed a universal theory of electoral democracy for all times and places. His theory was conditioned for a particular time and place, the West during the “end of ideology” fifties. To the extent that more states resemble this form of life then his theory will be more applicable. There is a strong sense of deja vu between that time and “the end of history” nineties.
The economic theory of democracy predicts that, in two party contested electorates where the ideological preferences function presents a unimodal distribution with little deviancy, there will be a policy convergence between the parties as voters chase the median voter. Tweedle dum and Tweedle dee.
This model fairly well predicts the behaviour of Australia’s party system where the underlying socio-biology of the electorate more or less fits the models assumptions. This was not the case in the pre-war era when the ALP and the LN/P were committed to (ethnic) clan-based (economic) class conflict ie Orange v Green
Australia is now well on the way to “the Great Convergence” of parties since our basal level of class, clan and cult conflict is now fairly low. This is in part due to Howard’s aggressively normalising cultural policies and his own elegant back-flips.
The Left have given up on class war, the Right have won the cult war, we are all so over the civilization clash and we are all Greenies now. So parties are all in a rush to get on the me-too bandwagon.
In the case of the US and UK there is substantial class and cult conflict based on social fragmentation of communities. In the US this has caused a major party cleavage as the Republicans have lurched to the Right of the Dems.
Downs theory does predict median voter convergence where ideological preferences diverge on multi-dimensional issues. In the UK Blair pushed the Labor party to the Right on economics whilst the Lib Dems have listed to the Left on cultural matters. Britain, in short, is a divided community where there is no sensible median.
Whether Downs conservative democratic model returns back to earth depends on how these states handle the problem of reconciling global trend of increasing economic stratification with decreasing ethnic segreation.