Comment 63002

By Mogadon Megalodon (anonymous) | Posted May 03, 2011 at 09:42:10

Democracy is working much as it always has. I don't know that it's any more Manichean than it was seven weeks ago. It might even be less so.

Our country was forged by a coalition. Our first PM resigned over a scandal. Our second led a minority government. Fully half of our 22 PMs have been designates. Since WWI, roughly half of the parliaments have been led by Liberals, half by Tories. Even the current arrangement of a id-superego government may not be so novel. The WWI-era Conservative-Unionist governments of Borden and Meighen seem like they might have exhibited a similar ideological chemistry (albeit necessitated by industrial workplaces and the need for conscription).

And if you think that the Grits are less electorally manipulative than the Tories, consider that in 1993, 5% of the Liberal caucus was made up of appointed candidates; by 2008, that had almost quadrupled to 19%, meaning that almost 1 in 5 aspiring pols skipped the nomination process entirely.* (This, for those just joining us, was during the ethically less-than-sterling Chretien-Martin era.) This obviously centralizes power in the office of the party leader and isn't especially great for democracy.

[*Data drawn from Royce Koop and Amanda Bittner’s "Candidate Nomination, `Parachuted Candidates', and Legislative Roles in Canada," a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Concordia University, June 1-3, 2010.]

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