A little bit of a research snippet from The Economist:
Political scientists disagree over the causes of the parties’ decline. But a more pressing question is its effects. The decline of partisanship could signal a less tribal, more educated electorate. But research on 36 countries by Professor Paul Whiteley of the University of Essex shows a strong correlation between political partisanship and good public administration. A rise of ten percentage points in partisanship goes along with an increase of one notch in the World Bank’s good-governance table (which assesses countries on a five-point index). A strong party base may help politicians to push through unpopular but necessary reforms. A weak one means that followers flee when the going gets tough.
I haven’t had any success locating the research discussed using Google Scholar, though I’ve come across a number of other articles by Whiteley utilising the same data set – from the Citizenship Study conducted in 2004 by the International Social Survey Program. So I’m unclear as to how precisely the variable of political partisanship has been specified, though the World Bank Good Governance indicators are available online.
I’d have to say, though, that the findings make intuitive sense, as does the suggestion that strong leadership (leaving aside the probably loaded meaning of “reform” employed by The Economist) is more possible with a strong partisan support base. What’s interesting to speculate on, in our own current political environment, is the degree to which such a support base could be created or recreated by said strong leadership.
And also the extent to which the decline of partisanship is an effect, rather than a cause, of deficient leadership by conventional political parties.
Indeed.
Peter Lewis from Essential Media argues that the Gillard Government is in trouble from Labor voters for its current position on asylum seekers:
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/40434.html
Regarding leadership, there seems to be a hint of nostalgia in the air among the press gallery over John Howard’s reappearance with some contrasting his supposed “conviction” politics with the milquetoast now on offer.
I’ve written on this over at The Failed Estate
I think I recall mentioning on this blog a while ago that I was reading-on-the-train Rodney Smith’s Against The Machines about Independent candidates in NSW. Great book, highly recommend it.
Short point is, the experience in NSW was that minority Government in the early 1990s threw up a swathe of institutions and measures that improved good governance (like ICAC, increase of powers to the Ombudsman etc.) but elected Independents in NSW have depended on an underlying hyper-partisanship to throw support their way. The Country later National Party might serve as an example both of how to do partisanship very right and very very wrong.
Lots of non-major Parties claiming or depending on beyond-partisanship require extremely disciplined systems of class/party/sect identification to oppose in their organising, thinking of the old DLP, or One Nation, indeed the Australian Democrats.
The Greens we’ll see about in the next decade.
My own view pace Cavalier considering the decline in Party memberships across the board is that that degree is as near-as-dammit nil.
Mark. do you know how partisanship was defined and measured? I think of countries where the supporters are committed enough to battle in the streets that are not famous for being well administered.
@6 – John D, no, not exactly as I said in the post. I suspect, though, it’s composed of percentage of party membership and base party vote.
Interesting idea. However, there would be plenty of exceptions. For example, the Nationals had a strong grassroots support system during the Joh era. There may also be a difference between cases of “tribal partisanship” (ex: we want power for the benefit of us farmers) vs “issues partisanship” (ex: we want power so that we can save the planet.)
Other things can make a difference. A party and social culture that values honest government and good governance is a start. Upper houses elected in a way that increases the chance that the balance of power will be held by minor parties without strong allegiances to a major party should be another good thing. What else?