It seems as though the promise by Sky News to televise a debate come what may — even if the debate was between tubs of lard — has forced everyone’s hand, broadcasters and political parties alike. It seems as though now it is going to happen, with the involvement of all the major broadcasters. It also appears as though the three main party leaders are on board (albeit with varying degrees of enthusiasm).

The end of the issue? Of course not. This is just the beginning of the matter. More details will need to be fleshed out. What format should such a debate take? Will there be a number of separate debates? And what about the role of smaller parties?

I am normally fairly ambivalent about calls for televised political debates. Those politicians who call for such a debate usually do so because they perceive that it would advantage them.

Someone like David Cameron will go for it because he is a confident performer, the momentum is behind him and the media appears to have declared him the winner already. Someone like Gordon Brown will reject it because he does not come across so well on television. This time he has been forced into it, partly because of Sky News’ promise to “empty chair” him if he didn’t, but also because refusing to appear would further the idea that Brown is a coward with poor leadership qualities.

The prospect of a televised political debate fills me with dread rather than excitement. I doubt it does much for democratic accountability. Part of me suspects that vain politicians just crave appearances on the television.

No doubt we will be served up a rather unedifying spectacle, like PMQs on steroids. I predict Punch and Judy politics a-plenty. Most likely, as with Question Time, it will be a platform for the most appalling demagoguery, complete with an audience that will clap like seals at any old nonsense.

Most of all, I think the idea of a leaders’ debate just misses the point. While it is useful to know what the major party leaders think, focusing on leaders too much is damaging to the health of our parliamentary democracy. Once again, there is a clamour to bring to Britain a feature of US politics which is a square peg in a round hole.

Televised debates are highly popular in the USA. But that is because the format is practically ready-made for the US political system. For one, the US system is a Presidential system, meaning that voters actually do elect the country’s leader. The US system is also a truly two-party system, with two Leviathans totally overshadowing any minority candidates. This makes it easy to adopt a one-on-one, head-to-head debating format.

Even though the televised debate is more-or-less a perfect fit for a US Presidential election, the format’s success is a matter for debate. In years gone by it may have provided some election-defining moments. But as I recall, the debates involving Barack Obama and John McCain, and Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, hardly set the world alight.

So what on earth makes anyone think that this gimmick will suit British politics? It seems like just another outcome of politicos’ obsession with America. It seems like the idea of someone who has mistaken his DVD box set of The West Wing for real pornography.

Our Parliamentary system doesn’t — or at least shouldn’t — place so much focus on party leaders. Very few voters will actually have any sort of say on who the Prime Minister is. I will have the option to vote for or against Gordon Brown, but only because I happen to live in his constituency of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. I will have no say whatsoever on David Cameron or Nick Clegg.

And what of the smaller parties? In the UK, broadcasters are required to be impartial in the run-up to an election, meaning that legally broadcasters will find it difficult to lock out the small parties. Even if these other parties have little or no chance of forming the government. Even if most viewers will not be as interested in hearing from these parties.

The most noise is being made by the SNP. They are threatening legal action if an SNP representative is unable to play a part in a televised leaders’ debate.

The SNP may have a point. Even though they have only a handful of MPs, and are only contesting seats in a portion of the UK, they have a lot of support in that portion. They are not a loony fringe party. They are in fact in government in the UK. Viewers north of the border will certainly be interested to hear what the SNP have to say in the run-up to the election.

At the same time, their presence may be a distraction from the real purpose of the debate, which is basically to watch the potential future Prime Ministers partake in a spot of verbal mud-wrestling. It is, after all, a “leaders’ debate”. Despite all his ambition, Alex Salmond is highly unlikely to be the next Prime Minister, as is Angus Robertson.

Yet, what if there is the prospect of a hung Parliament? The collapse in Labour support has not been met with a real surge in support for the Conservatives. With so many parties having moderate levels of support, it is conceivable that a party like the SNP could play a king-maker role.

There is no easy answer. This is the core problem with the idea of a televised debate. It might be good for a simple, true two party system such as the USA’s. But for the UK’s more subtle and diverse politics, it won’t fit quite so well.

The fear is that such a move would ruin general election night, the greatest political television show going. There have been plenty of passionate defences of the show, and the “Save Election Night” campaign has true cross-party support: see Jonathan Isaby of Conservative Home, Labour MP Tom Harris, SNP activist Will Patterson and Liberal Democrat Voice’s Mark Pack.

Without a doubt, it is fun to stay up all night watching power switch hands from one MP to another, and gradually from one government to another. And there is no denying that the television show has brought us some of the most memorable political moments of recent times. Everyone knows what you mean if you mention “the Portillo moment”.

But is it important? Is it even right? The political class treats a general election like a big sporting event. It is our Superbowl, and David Dimbleby is our John Madden. Coverage of politics is heaving with horse racing and other sporting metaphors. Correct me if I’m wrong, but an election is supposed to be about the serious business of government, not an entertaining night in front of the box.

Adam Smith famously wrote, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public.” I do think the cross-party support for election night coverage may be to the detriment to what is good for the public.

It is interesting that three of the biggest stories of the past week or so have been about the entertainment side of politics. There is a big debate just now about whether there should be a presidential-style leaders’ debate in the run-up to the election — Sky News is promising to plonk three chairs on a stage and give anyone who doesn’t turn up the “tub of lard” treament. (Of course, all the smaller parties cry, “Why can’t I be on a fourth chair?”) I’m not sure that anyone genuinely thinks such a debate would be a valuable addition to our political discourse, but it will be entertaining so that’s all right then, huh?

Then there is the controversy over the BBC’s decision to invite Nick Griffin onto an edition of Question Time. Chris Dillow summarises Paul Sagar’s point that Question Time is “not a platform for debate but merely a zoo in which soundbites are vomited into an audience who clap like hyperactive seals.”

Now there is this controversy; this fear about the future of election night coverage. Don’t get me wrong. I like a bit of political rough and tumble as much as the next person. And I agree that the votes for a general election should be counted as quickly as possible. There are very valid arguments against moving counts to Fridays, as you will see in the articles I have linked to above.

But the focus on the entertainment value of staying up all night is something that I find a tad distasteful. I am particularly surprised to see this point of view being advocated so strongly by any Liberal Democrats.

That party is quite rightly in favour of reforming the voting system. Most electoral reformers agree that single transferable vote (not to be confused with STV) would be the best (or least-worst) system to adopt. That move would almost certainly put the kibosh on any notion that we will find out the result before breakfast time, but it would still be right.

What is important is that we have a result that is fully reflective of the wishes of the people. In comparison to getting the right result, the speed of finding it out or the entertainment of the televisual spectacle pales into insignificance.

I would rather see a complete end to those sporting analogies I referred to earlier — “first past the post” and “two horse race” being among the most important ones to consign to history. I would happily see the television show “general election night” consigned to history too if need be.

So sacrifice your psephological salivating. Yes, election night can be fun and entertaining. But it would be better for democracy if our democratic institutions operated for the good of the voters, not for the good of politico television viewers.

The decision to vote

A series of posts

1. A pathetic situation
2. Five disturbing things about democracy
3. How should politics be reformed?: Part 1
4. How the new politics might look: part 2
5. European election leaflets: The main parties
6. European Parliamentary Election literature: small parties
7. A second opinion
8. I decided! And I decided to vote

Here it is: that post I’ve been sitting on for upwards of a year. Before I start, I am going to make a few introductory notes about what I do and don’t mean when I call democracy disturbing. I find that all too often debates about this subject are clouded by dogma, which leads to poor thinking and boilerplate arguments.

Before some cheesy person wheels out that Churchill quote about democracy being the worst system apart from all the other systems, yes of course I have heard it. And it is true. I am a democrat because I believe it brings about favourable conditions. For instance, there is the correlation between democratisation and higher GDP per capita. (Whether democracy is cause or effect does not matter. If the value of the higher GDP per capita is greater than the cost of democracy per head — as it almost certainly is — then democracy is a price worth paying.)

Furthermore, I should define more closely what I mean by democracy. Most of the flaws I will point out are actually problems with elections rather than democracy as a whole. Aspects of democracy such as civil liberties, human rights, freedom of speech, the rule of law, due process, and so on and so forth, are of course things that I am deeply supportive of. This will become clear in my first point.

I tackle the issue not from an anti-democratic perspective. Far from it. My problem is with the approach which sees democracy almost like a religion which ought not be questioned — what Bryan Caplan in his book The Myth of the Rational Voter called “democratic fundamentalists”:

Its purest expression is the cliché, attributed to failed 1928 presidential candidate Al Smith, that “All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.” In other words, no matter what happens, the case for democracy remains untouched.

No case should remain untouched. That is why, for me, there is not enough scrutiny placed on democracy. There is a fear of investigating it, because the benefits of democracy are perceived to be so self-evident that anyone who stops to ask what the disadvantages are is instantly regarded as a fool. That must be dangerous. If we agree that the system is imperfect, the only way to improve the situation is to investigate it and have an awareness of what the problems are.

Just as a final point, much of my thinking in this area came about as a result of the research I did for my dissertation, which was about the “paradox of voting“. In case you want to read more about voting behaviour, I have uploaded my dissertation here.

Having got all of the caveats and explanations out of the way, it is time to move on to my five points.

1. Democracy is not guaranteed to uphold freedoms

This is more or less a rehash of The Devil’s Kitchen’s post which I referred to yesterday. Above I said that “aspects such as civil liberties, human rights, freedom of speech, the rule of law, due process” are important. Arguably, these have all taken a battering by recent democratically elected governments.

Wave goodbye to your right to peacefully protest, have a fair trial and take photographs in public. Say hello to ID cards, the database state, endless reams of CCTV footage, mass DNA collection, control orders, detention without charge and extraordinary rendition. Thanks, democracy!

2. Tyranny of the minority

Most people are familiar with the concept of the tyranny of the majority. Thanks to the system of democracy adopted in this country, it doesn’t even take a majority to construct a tyranny. In the 2005 General Election, 9,562,122 people voted for Labour candidates. Assuming a population of 60 million, this translates to around 16% of the population.

The votes of this small percentage of the UK’s citizens has given the Labour Party 55% of the seats in the House of Commons, a majority of 67 seats. What gives the government the right to rule the country with such dominance? Not the people, that’s for sure. Only 16% of the people expressed a preference for the current government. In fact it is the way the system is constructed, and nothing else, which gives Labour its “legitimacy”.

That brings me neatly on to…

3. The system can’t be fixed

Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem states that there can be no voting system which will be able to fulfil a number of desirable criteria:

• The Pareto principle — if everyone prefers x to y then y should not be elected
• Anonymity — every voter should be treated equally
• Neutrality — every candidate should be treated equally
• Independence of irrelevant alternatives — the ability of x and y to win an election should not be affected by the entrance of a candidate z
• Transitivity — if x is preferred to y and y is preferred to z then x should be preferred to z

Independence of irrelevant alternatives is the one that riles up proponents of electoral reform the most. Just think of Ralph Nader, or the farcical events of the 2002 French Presidential election. In this case, the voting system is far more important than the voters themselves. The fifth item on the list refers to Condorcet’s paradox, whereby attempts to find a winner of the election leads you on an endless circle.

We can argue among ourselves about which voting system should be adopted. But (and I’m not saying this will necessarily come as a surprise to anyone), you will never find a system that will please everyone. It will be a matter of choosing the least worst option, as every system has a fatal flaw of some kind. For what it’s worth, my preference is Single Transferable Vote — but that’s a matter for a different post in the future.

For more along these lines, read this post about a talk I attended a couple of years ago. It was given by economist Eric Maskin en route to collecting his Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. He had some very interesting views on electoral reform.

4. An individual vote is almost worthless

If you are concerned with affecting the course of history by having your say on major political issues, going to cast your vote in an election is more or less a complete waste of your time and energy. It is said that you are more likely to be killed on your way to the polling station than to actually cast the deciding vote.

The probability the the outcome of an election will hinge on your vote is minuscule. Even under the fanciful assumption that in a two candidate US Presidential election each other person is likely vote for either candidate with a probability of 0.5, the probability that your vote will be the deciding vote is 0.00006.

Yet the costs of voting are actually rather large. You have to spend time and possibly money learning about each of the candidates and their policies. The time and money spent travelling to the polling booth is not exactly negligible in the context of the minuscule probability of your vote actually meaning a damn thing.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that voting is wrong. People don’t vote because they believe it will affect the outcome. They vote because it makes them feel good. But the fact that you need to resort to non-instrumental incentives in order to justify the act of voting leaves wide open the possibility that people with bad motives (or motives with bad effects) are more likely to vote…

5. Many who do vote base their decision on prejudices

In his very interesting book The Myth of the Rational Voter, Bryan Caplan said that the fact that people vote can be explained by the fact that they like to hold certain political beliefs. Let’s call our voter a sheep. He may hold suboptimal opinions and support policies that would actually make him worse off. This might be due to social pressures, a sense of self-image or whatever. It is, after all, all too common to meet someone who votes Labour just because their dad did.

It is precisely because a person’s vote is so worthless that sheep are encouraged to vote. They like to go and vote because it makes them feel good, reaffirms to themselves their ideological loyalty and so on. But sheep never stop to think if the policies they support would make them worse off. They don’t have to because their vote doesn’t matter anyway. The cost of ideological loyalty is low. Indeed, the benefits of it are enough to outweigh the costs of voting.

Those who hold no strong ideological loyalties, and who may therefore be expected to enter the polling booth ready to judge fairly based on all of the information they have gathered, are actually far less likely to vote. This is because they feel no warm glow from the act of voting for their favoured party.

As such, the traits of voters are the sort of traits you would normally expect to find on a football terrace. They will trudge along to express their tribal feelings, and will keep on doing so even in the driving rain, even if their football team is rubbish and the game is low-quality.

One might say that the political party you support is rubbish and the state of politics just now is low-quality. Who wants to buy a season ticket? Is it not better to leave that sort of behaviour on the football terraces?

The decision to vote

A series of posts

1. A pathetic situation
2. Five disturbing things about democracy
3. How should politics be reformed?: Part 1
4. How the new politics might look: part 2
5. European election leaflets: The main parties
6. European Parliamentary Election literature: small parties
7. A second opinion
8. I decided! And I decided to vote

It’s a funny time in politics. I have written a couple of times in the past about why I would consider abstaining, or sympathise with those that do. That provoked some interesting discussion.

My degree was in Economics and Politics, and I found that the more I learned about politics, the more jaded with the system I became. Conversations with other people have suggested that I am far from alone in experiencing this. Indeed, it has been one of the central points of the previous discussions here, with James O’Malley offering a contribution that backs the theory up:

I think your experiences of becoming more apathetic with age – essentially more apathetic as you became better informed – are pretty similar for a lot of people. I’ve just finished a degree in International Relations, and as a consequence of learning what a horrible bleak mess the world is, I think we all became cynical about almost anything political.

Events since then have only made me more likely to become apathetic. The credit crunch underlined that what goes on in politics does not matter an iota as much as what happens in the real world of business. Politicians don’t have as much power over the economy as they like to make out, and any influence they do have is probably a negative one.

Now we have the expenses scandal, which in fairness is only surprising in terms of the scale of the problem, not the fact that it existed at all — most people took that as a given. It adds to the impression that the system is inherently rigged against individual voters.

Increasingly, when people ask me how I would vote if there were an election tomorrow, I say that I wouldn’t vote. Making a conscious decision not to vote is not the same as apathy. I still have opinions on issues just as much as I have ever done. But my stance does reflect a more jaded view of party politics.

Next week we will be asked to vote in the elections which people are almost certainly the most apathetic about — European Parliament elections. This will put to the test the idea that I wouldn’t vote. If I were to abstain on Thursday, it would be the first time I have ever turned down the opportunity to vote in a major election. Mind you, I have only had the vote for five years so I haven’t had that many opportunities to turn my nose up (although voters my age are the most likely to).

In the background of recent events, the political elites are now becoming aware of how intense the distrust of political types is among the wider public. As such, there are a number of ideas for how to reform the system floating around just now. As someone who takes an interest in constitutional issues, electoral reform and the like, I think it will be worth investigating them.

I find this an interesting situation. In the wake of a barrage of apathy-inducing news, and in the face of the most stupefyingly boring elections on the face of the planet, can I bring myself to vote? Or, more to the point, can I bring myself not to vote? Will feelings of civic duty trump the temptation to rationally abstain?

Increasingly, as Question Time is broadcast, I find that the conversation on Twitter is dominated by discussions about “#bbcqt“. I have not been able to bring myself to watch that programme for a couple of years. That was another thing that has got me thinking. I wrote:

Can’t work out if I want to totally give up on politics, or if now is a good time to get stuck in again. Everyone on Twitter talking [about] #bbcqt

I got one reply, from Chris Hawes: “Get stuck back in!”

So, is it time to get stuck back in? For the next week or so I am going to go on a voyage of discovery. Okay, that’s just a grand way of saying I’m going to write some posts about politics over the next few days. I will start over the weekend by writing some thoughts on the state of democracy, and looking into some of the ideas for reform.

Later on into next week I will write about the upcoming European elections, taking a look at each of the parties standing in Scotland. There will be an election literature review, and I will be asking questions such as, “Who on earth is this Duncan Robertson fellow and why is he suspiciously invisible on Google?”

Most importantly of all, I hope to find an answer to the big question: Will I vote, and if so who for?

The plans are vague because I haven’t written the posts yet, and I genuinely don’t know what the conclusions will be. My post about the democratic system is something I’ve been meaning to get off my chest for over a year now, but I’ve never managed to bring myself to actually write it. Now seems like a good time to do it.

By way of a taster, here is another of the catalysts to this series of posts. It’s a post by The Devil’s Kitchen: Democracy is not a given good. It comes pretty close to summing up my feelings, but you will learn more about that when I publish the next post.

How much more could George Foulkes possibly miss the point? I am trying to work out what the point of this motor-mouth is. I think it must be to come out every so often and say something so blindingly pig-headed that everyone is temporarily distracted from the fact that the Labour Party is in such trouble.

What George Foulkes doesn’t seem to understand in this video is that being paid taxpayers’ money for doing your job is not the same as being paid taxpayers’ money for doing up your home. One is perfectly normal, while the other is egregious, under-handed and borderline fraudulent.

Incidentally, his maths isn’t too hot either. £92,000 isn’t anything like twice what an MP gets paid (£64,766). It’s not even 1½ times (sans expenses, of course).

As for his claim that journalists “undermine democracy”, I don’t think I’ve heard anything so dangerous outside of a BNP pamphlet in a long time. Journalists in fact do the very opposite. They uphold democracy, and it’s just as well they exist, no matter how much they are paid, because it’s the only way these people are ever held to account.

The BBC can pay its journalists as it sees fit, and it is important for the independence of the BBC that this is the case. Unless you want the BBC to be staffed entirely by work experience kids, that means paying the market rate. Wouldn’t it be good if MPs were paid the market rate? There isn’t any shortage of applicants you know.

It is none of a politician’s business what a journalist gets paid, and it is especially dangerous for one to stick his nose into the BBC’s decisions. I think it is ominous that a politician should take such glee in telling the BBC how it should allocate its resources — and at the same time demand that it stop asking him questions that the viewers want answered. It is indeed this sort of demand that undermines democracy.

I can’t believe the rudeness of George Foulkes, and full credit to Carrie Gracie for just coming right out and revealing her salary. MPs had to have the information about their expenses prised out of their mitts, and now we know why.

Update: According to Iain Dale, George Foulkes earns £110,000 in salary from the taxpayers! Not bad work, and almost three times what a newsreader earns!! (Via Aye we can! at Malc in the Burgh.)

I suppose the reason why this is a particular issue now, as opposed to previous Olympic meetings, is the fact that the Beijing games enables the nationalists to piggy-back on the Free Tibet campaign (as you can see in the penultimate paragraph of the SNP’s press release). Is it just me who thinks this is particularly low?

It is not even as though Scotland is in anything like the same situation as Tibet. The reason Tibet is an issue is because freedom of speech and freedom to choose your own political beliefs is not an option in Tibet. Without these rights, the people of Tibet are left without a voice. That is the issue. The issue in Scotland is that we do have these rights. The problem for the SNP is that despite this great freedom to express a preference for independence, there is precious little clamour for it in Scotland.

Anyway, I agree with most — e.g. Scottish Unionist, Jeff Breslin, Malc in the Burgh — in that the IOC’s rule on flags is absolutely ridiculous. Stephen Glenn points out why the IOC’s strange rules are inappropriate for someone from his kind of background.

But I still think it is pathetic that the SNP even brought the subject up. As has been noted in some of the posts above, it is not even as though the rule is policed that strictly anyway. But as Political Dissuasion notes, all of Britain’s Olympic athletes agreed to take part as a member of Great Britain’s Olympic team so I hardly think it’s beyond the pale to expect them to stick to that commitment.

After all, could you imagine, for instance, a Scottish international footballer scoring a goal then taking his shirt off during the celebration to proudly reveal, say, a Celtic top underneath? Of course, he could be proud of being both a Scotland player and a Celtic player — but it’s just wrong to confuse the two notions.

As Political Dissuasion points out, this is just the sort of guff we have come to expect from nationalists. I don’t mind people expressing their opinion about this sort of thing, but this is blatant political point-scoring and for what? SNP people always come up with this stuff about the Saltire, whether it’s what flutters above Edinburgh Castle or what athletes fly at the Olympics. It’s just pathetic. Aren’t there, you know, important things to worry about?

It’s worth pointing out, too, that even if Scotland were to become independent this would still be an issue. Because while Scotland would enter an Olympic team, flags like this and this would still fall foul of the regulations. For some reason (*cough*oil*cough*) the SNP are quieter about these flags.

My attitude towards this is affected somewhat by the fact that I just don’t “get” flags in general. What on earth are they for? I certainly don’t know what the appeal is. Maybe it is because I’m not so insecure about myself and my identity that I don’t need to attach myself to these symbols. I might be a Scot, but I don’t go around the place grinning about it. First and foremost I am Duncan Stephen, and that’s what concerns me. I would still be Duncan Stephen no matter what nationality I was, so I just don’t see what flags are all about.

This is also one of the many reasons why I can’t stand the Olympics. The emphasis on the nation just gets me down so much. I have written before about why the notion that sportsmen represent their countries is just absolutely ridiculous. A follow-up post at the height of the media-driven rivalry between Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso subsequently became the most popular post on this blog (according to post ratings).

The Olympics is just the place that shows all the worst aspects of national sport teams. Gibbering, gormless housewives stare at the idiot-box for hours on end watching events such as “discus”, “ping pong”, “yngling” and all manner of other sports that they would otherwise not touch with a bargepole. Yes, it’s great that minority sports get coverage during the Olympics. But they should be getting coverage anyway. At least, if you genuinely did like minority sports you would think that. The fact that it takes the Olympics to get badminton on the television is nothing to be pleased about.

Then when a representative of their country wins a medal, the housewives declare themselves to be “so proud”. Proud of what? They didn’t win the medal — the athlete did! All they have done is sit on their fat arses watching people throwing sticks around. This kind of nationalism only promotes supreme mediocrity and laziness.

And don’t even get me started on the “non political” nature of the Olympics. My hairy arse hole! The fact is that the Olympic Games are the planet’s primary platform for pathetic political posturing. What is the Olympic Spirit? I think it has something to do with Cold War willy-waving.

Then there is all the drugs. I bet you if the Olympics never existed, we wouldn’t even think about drugs in sport. All those countries with dodgy Communist governments come along and drug their athletes to the brim so that they can go around the world feeling smug about themselves for being 13th in the medals table. Yes, the Olympic Games are so noble!

Ah, and don’t forget the great selling-out when they decided there was more money in dropping the requirement that Olympic athletes be amateur. Because of course the pros don’t have enough places to rake in the cash already!

Bleeargh. I’m with Mr Farty. The Olympics can take a running hop, skip and jump.

Before I start I should point out that I have never abstained in an election that was at local government level or above. In fact, in the local government elections last year I listed a whopping four preferences. Not bad for a cynic! (Having said that, it was admittedly for negative reasons — I wanted to vote for everyone except Labour).

Nonetheless, I struggle nowadays to understand why abstainers are so vilified, as though they are sub-human. I think sometimes people conflate abstention with apathy. In reality it is perfectly consistent to be interested in politics and yet not vote when the election comes round.

In his first comment Jeff said:

I find it incredible that someone can maintain such a thoughtful and intelligent political blog with all these numerous opinions and then, when an election comes around, he may not take part.

Compare and contrast with James O’Malley’s comment:

I think your experiences of becoming more apathetic with age – essentially more apathetic as you became better informed – are pretty similar for a lot of people. I’ve just finished a degree in International Relations, and as a consequence of learning what a horrible bleak mess the world is, I think we all became cynical about almost anything political.

I have gone through a similar process. Being interested in elections and voting behaviour, whenever there was an opportunity to study them at university I took it. I wrote my dissertation on what motivates people to vote. The whole learning experience has led me to become less likely to vote and more sympathetic towards abstainers.

(As an aside, if anyone’s interested, I have decided to upload my dissertation here since it got the best mark of anything I ever did at university so I feel quite good about it! So if you’re interested and you have a bit of spare time, have a read and you might get a bit more insight into my current thinking about voting.)

In short, Jeff asked why someone like me would not vote despite knowing so much about politics. What slipped his mind was the possibility that someone like me would not vote because they know so much about politics.

For a few months now I have been meaning to outline a few problems with elections and democracy as we know it (this post isn’t it by the way, it’s still coming). This is not because I am not a democrat, because I am. However, I am disappointed in the poor standard of analysis of democracy. Discussions about it frequently descend into a list of clichés and slogans. It leads me to think that most people are democrats because of blind faith rather than because they have actually thought about it.

That’s a dangerous situation to be in because it breeds complacency. The flaws of democracy are constantly swept under the carpet. But the only way to improve things is to put the flaws on a pedestal and debate them properly. Simply pulling out that hoary old Churchill quote doesn’t bring us any further forward.

That was the case in the comments to the post about student apathy. All I said was that I understood why some people would not vote. Before I knew it, commenters made out that I was advocating something resembling anarchy, I had no right to complain if I didn’t vote, I was doing an injustice to the people of Zimbabwe, and, yes, that bloody Churchill quote was wheeled out. A who’s who of clichéd arguments that get us no further forward.

Bellgrove Belle began proceedings by advocating compulsory voting — albeit with a ‘none of the above’ option (how gracious of you!!). I let that slip by at the time, but only because I didn’t want to go down that tangent. However, now that I have started a separate post I will outline why compulsory voting is the most outrageous idea.

Firstly — and this should hardly need pointing out — people are not the servants of politicians. Yet. Politicians are the servants of the people. Having a government frogmarching everyone to the polling station is not my idea of freedom. The point about the right to vote is that it is a right. That means that you can choose to use it or not. If you are forced to vote, it is no longer a right — it is an oppression.

A vital principle of our liberal way of life is that people know for themselves what is best in almost all instances unless their actions cause harm to others. If people do not vote, it is not because they are wrong (which is a view typically only found among political elites). It is because, for the abstainers, it is costly to go out and vote. And if it is costly for an individual, in turn it is costly to society.

Beyond the cost of sending everyone out to vote, what is wrong with just leaving people be? People should be perfectly entitled to abstain if they want. Forcing people to do things they do not want to do will only breed even more cynicism and apathy.

Having a ‘none of the above’ option is the ridiculous fig leaf to all of these criticisms. There is already a none of the above option. People know very well that they can spoil their paper when they get to the polling station. If people were screaming out for a none of the above option, we would know it by now.

I have only ever heard compulsory voting being advocated by two groups of people: politicians and aspiring politicians. It is funny that these people should select the one ‘solution’ to apathy that is almost guaranteed to give them more votes. What a coincidence! Moreover, it is the lazy option for them to choose. It implies that it is the voters who have done wrong, which is a very undemocratic stance to take in actual fact. For politicians, the idea that it is they themselves who have caused apathy — and that it is their job to fix it — is too difficult for them to comprehend, so it seems.

Jeff was next up, suggesting that the logical conclusion of my defending abstention for an individual is advocating mass abstention. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, it is the very fact that others vote in their millions that makes abstention as an individual a reasonable option.

If no-one else voted then I would find the voting decision very easy — I would cast the deciding vote, probably for myself. We don’t live in that world, and my stance is a pragmatic recognition of that fact.

There is that old guilt trip: “what if everyone else thought like you?” The point is that not everyone does think like me. And it would be rather egotistical of me to think that my actions would be copied en masse by the population as a whole. If it were the case that I was so influential, I would find myself sharing the same bed with six and a half billion others every night. As Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt point out:

Imagine that you and your 8-year-old daughter are taking a walk through a botanical garden when she suddenly pulls a bright blossom off a tree.

“You shouldn’t do that,” you find yourself saying.

“Why not?” she asks.

“Well,” you reason, “because if everyone picked one, there wouldn’t be any flowers left at all.”

“Yeah, but everybody isn’t picking them,” she says with a look. “Only me.”

Then Jeff pulls out that old one — if you’re so dissatisfied with the candidates, why don’t you stand yourself? The answer, I would have thought, should be obvious. Standing for election would involve immense personal financial and other costs. I would have to give up my job to dedicate enough time to campaigning, meaning a loss of income. Then I would have to somehow fund the campaign itself.

On top of that, I would probably lose my deposit. The political system is heavily biased in favour of the large parties — partly because of the voting system, partly because of the media and whatever else. The fact is that if you want to be successful in an election you almost always need the backing of a big party machine.

Independent candidates are successful from time to time, and small parties do break through. But in reality these are all led by either someone with a lot of money or a celebrity figure like Tommy Sheridan or Martin Bell. The other successful independents are single-issue (often local-issue) candidates, and I am interested in more than one local issue.

The point I am making is that were I to stand for election tomorrow, no matter how good my policies were, I would have almost no chance of making any kind of impact whatsoever. Am I supposed to believe, as Jeff suggests, that this is the extent of my democratic powers? You can’t exactly blame someone for not doing this when the odds are so heavily stacked against them.

Get ready for another cliché now. “If you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain.” Aaah, *tick*.

This is one of the oldest ones in the book. Yet even though it’s a catchy slogan, what is always omitted is exactly the reason why you don’t have the right to complain. Is that because there isn’t one?

Democracy is about so much more than elections. For sure, an election is a vital cog in the democratic process, but it is just one cog among many. China has elections, but that doesn’t make it a democracy. Just this week we have witnessed a sham election in Zimbabwe.

I would think that the idea that elections are the only valid form of political participation in a democracy would come as a surprise to the many pressure groups, non-governmental organisations, media outlets, publishers, think tanks, academics, mass demonstrators, lone protesters, letter writers, bloggers even, and others — all of whom play a vital role in a democracy. Is it really more valid to enact change “from within”? Then we are to do away with all of these vital elements of civic society? Are these people all supposed to stand for election as well? Are they harassed about their voting behaviour before being permitted to speak up?

Democracy is so much more than putting an X in a box. It is about speaking out, debating and persuading. If you have next to no power in the ballot box, what is so illegitimate about using a different method of trying to improve the world? I think that suggesting that people don’t have a right to speak out because they recognise that their vote is near worthless is actually an intensely anti-democratic view to take.

Jeff’s position is apparently to say that the only valid way I have to express myself is to vote for someone, even if it is the “least worst” candidate. Am I really supposed to believe that the extent of my democratic rights is to vote Lib Dem instead of Labour?

Even when I do express a preference in the polling booth, that vote is a drop in the ocean. My reasons for voting are lost among those of thousands of other voters (or, in a national election, millions of others), each of whom voted for different reasons. The politician then cherry-picks the reasons that suit his agenda best. So what have I achieved by voting?

I can say that the time I have spent voting is a waste when I could have spent that time engaging in another democratic activity. For instance, I could have spent that time writing here. That way I can articulate my views in an infinitely more nuanced way than I would by voting. This makes my voice louder than it otherwise would have been. I believe that I can make more of a difference by doing this. What would be so illegitimate about that?

This is all without even getting into the instance where you genuinely are undecided. If a voter is guilt-tripped or compelled to haul himself into the polling station, what is he supposed to do? Toss a coin? Close his eyes and see where the pencil lands? Given that your vote is essentially a way of enforcing your views onto other people, I am amazed that anyone thinks that the decision to vote should be taken so lightly.

Finally came the guilt trip from Ideas of Civilisation. He brought up the current situation in Zimbabwe saying, “it’s a reminder of the freedoms, and responsibilities, we have here.”

The thing is, I believe that recent events in Zimbabwe support my view. Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out of the contest because the election was a “violent sham”. Was that illegitimate? Or should he have contested the election because otherwise he doesn’t have the right to criticise? Of course not. His voice is louder outside the contest and he has made the point about the current situation in Zimbabwe very forcefully. It is a perfect example of making one’s voice heard outside of official electoral channels.

Of course, the situation in Zimbabwe is very different to the situation we face in this country and other, freer, more democratic countries. I suspect the point IoC was making about Zimbabwe was that, in such countries whenever there is a free election is usually has a comparatively high turnout.

That is right, although it is a very different situation. When you are given hope in the shape of an inspiring candidate you are bound to grab it with both hands. That is the case even more so if the bandwagon theory (discussed in my dissertation) is true — people want to feel a part of making a big change so will take part in the vote.

You don’t have to live in an unfree country for such a thing to happen, so that doesn’t put this country’s politicians off the hook. Barack Obama is currently doing it in the USA by engaging certain parts of the electorate at levels that have never been achieved before. It’s just that right now there is no such candidate in this country.

Back to the unfree country though. Even in the hypothetical watershed election that brings everyone hope, turnout will not be 100%. It might be higher than the turnouts we see in this country, but it will be nowhere near 100%. In fact, if turnout was anywhere close to 100% accusations of vote rigging will be flying.

This fact demonstrates that abstention is a perfectly natural and legitimate position to take in an election. In fact, it serves a very useful function in a democracy. Any attempts to eradicate it should be viewed with as much suspicion as attempts to eradicate any other political view.

I’ve been tagged by a meme twice in recent weeks. One of them will be more exciting for you readers, and I have been meaning to write a post like that for about a year anyway. But I will do this one first because the other one will take a bit of preparation. Because I need to preserve all that brain power for the exams.

This is from Angry Steve. I can’t actually see what the common theme that runs through this is. Still, if you have been tagged in a meme and you don’t take part the punishment is fifty lashes in the blogospheric dungeon. So here goes.

1. The rules of the game get posted on the beginning.
2. Each player answers the rules about himself [or indeed herself].
3. At the end of the post, the player tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they’ve been tagged and asking them to read his [or her] blog.

What I was doing ten years ago:

According to my excellent maths skills, I was 12 years old. So I was probably being exceptionally annoying at primary school. I was probably preparing myself mentally for arriving at the big school with all the big bullies.

Five things on my To-Do list today:

Well, I am posting this last thing on Saturday. So here is my to-do list for Sunday.

1. Watch the GP2 race
2. Go for a walk round the park
3. Watch the Spanish Grand Prix
4. Begin revising for my next exam
5. Uh, go to bed

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

Given that I would be financially secure, I would ditch all of my formal commitments and get round to all of those leisure activities that have been building up. The pile of CDs that I bought way back in October and still haven’t had the time to listen to. The DVDs. The books I bought for my summer reading in 2006 and the books that have been added to that pile since. The issues of The Economist which I unwisely purchased a three year subscription to before realising that I didn’t have the time to read a single bloody issue.

Three of my bad habits:

1. Weighing up the possibilities for so long that the opportunity completely passes by
2. Eating too quickly
3. Fingernail biting

Five places I’ve lived:

1. Glenrothes
2. Kirkcaldy

Uhh… and that’s it.

Five jobs I’ve had:

1. Lifting furniture about for an antiques shop run by a family friend
2. Sales assistant at Woolworths

Uhh… and that’s it.

Five books I’ve recently read:

Hmm difficult one. I don’t often get a chance to read a full book (I think my pace is about two per year). But I have read most of a few books at university so I’ll put the details here.

1. The Economic Development of Modern Scotland, 1950-1980, Richard Saville (ed.) — Skim-read many chapters for my exam on the Scottish Economy. It’s not very “modern” any more though — it was published in 1985 (no modern perspective on oil, little if anything about electronics, poll tax what poll tax?). Good chapters on the Highlands and Islands Development Agency and the Scottish Development Agency though. Shame they never came up in the exam!
2. The Myth of the Rational Voter, Bryan Caplan — Food for thought for proponents of “more democracy”. I thought it would be really useful for my dissertation. It was kind of, but I enjoyed the read more for the bits that weren’t much to do with my dissertation.
3. A Logic of Expressive Choice, Alexander A. Schuessler — A theory on voting behaviour and things like that (cases which should be collective action problems but aren’t). It gets a bit technical towards the end, but the early chapters are fascinating to read. If you want to know why the US President is just like a can of Dr Pepper, this is the book for you!
4. Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner — Finally something I read in my spare time. Quite fun to read.
5. The Worldly Philosophers, Robert L. Heilbroner — I found this book very boring; it took me over a year to read. It’s okay when it’s talking about people you’ve heard of. But in the chapters about people I’ve never heard of, it was a real struggle to read.

Five people or communities I’m going to tag:

Well first of all, bollocks to leaving a comment as per rule 3 at the top. It’s bad enough tagging someone as it is. I will tag five people here and if they notice it they can carry on the meme if they wish.

1. Colin
2. Jeff
3. Mat
4. Rhys
5. Sarah

Labour blogger Kezia Dugdale has been involved in a campaign called Scotland for Obama. SNP blogger Calum Cashley was none too impressed. Then a number of other bloggers — SNP supporters among them — decided to take Calum Cashley to task.

I have to confess that I’m not a great fan of Calum Cashley’s blog. To me, it seems unnecessarily confrontational, negative, sarcastic and maybe even a bit boorish. It’s certainly not the sort of thing that would persuade me to vote for him come election time. But despite the response to his most recent post, in this instance I’m probably more inclined to agree with Cashley.

Maybe it’s just a reflection of my increasingly anti-political or apolitical (certainly in terms of party politics) viewpoint (I will consider the roots of this in a future post if I can get round to it). But there is something about the amount of attention that the US Presidential election receives that rubs me up the wrong way a bit. It’s not that I don’t recognise that the position of US President isn’t an incredibly powerful one. But political campaigns in general are starting to really get my goat.

Mostly, it is the implication that a campaign like Scotland for Obama will make a difference. It just comes across as a bit attention seeking. “Look at me and look at how much I care!”

I am pretty sceptical of most political campaigning. Of course, I have my views. But I have never joined a club, I’ve never gone on a demonstration and I’ve never worn any political t-shirts. This is because I know it will make next to no difference.

Come election time, of course, I love it. I stay up all night to watch the results. It’s great fun to cheer on the good guys and boo the baddies. As Jeff says in the tagline to his blog, “Elections – Probably the Best Spectator Sport in the World”. But beyond that, what does political campaigning mean?

Do I need to go on a rally to prove how much I care? Not really. Will the Scotland for Obama campaign make a jot of difference to the outcome of the election? I hardly think so. In fact, as Calum Cashley rightly points out, if enough Americans find out that those pinko Europeans are campaigning in Obama’s favour, if anything it will probably have a negative effect.

I am not sure it’s my position to tell Americans how to vote anyway. I know it has been pointed out in the posts I have linked to above that Scotland for Obama is not intended to tell Americans how to vote. But the point still stands.

Imagine if the boot was on another foot. What if somewhere in America a group of people gathered to express their support for, say, David Cameron. What would you think of it? I would think they were the most enormous fools. I would roll my eyes. I might ignore them. But it would more likely make me even less inclined to vote for Cameron.

The thing is that our viewpoint is unquestionably altered by the fact that we don’t live in America. The issues, the agenda and the political climate are completely different over there.

I know that whenever I have heard visiting foreign students express an opinion about Scottish politics (there is no shortage of this in the Edinburgh Uni politics department) it has often been the most ill-informed bum drizzle. You can’t blame them for that. They cannot possibly have as good a feel for the issues as someone like me who has barely set foot out of Scotland. They are projecting their views on American (or whatever) politics onto a map of Scotland. But it’s a square peg in a round hole.

I recognise that the same phenomenon would occur in reverse. In deference to this, I mostly keep my viewpoints on other countries’ politics to myself. I have my own opinions, of course. I do care what goes on in other countries. But you wouldn’t find me going around the place wearing an Obama badge or anything like that.

I have done a few of those online quizzes that tell you which candidate you should vote for. The results are here and here. When I did those quizzes though, there were a number of questions that I didn’t have the first clue about. In some cases I had not even heard of the issues and I couldn’t possibly have an opinion on them.

The same even applies when you’re in the same country. When I tried out Vote Match London about a quarter of the questions were about issues that I had never heard of, and half of the questions I had no opinion on whatsoever. For what it’s worth, it told me that I should vote for Boris Johnson. Would I vote for Boris Johnson if I was an actual Londoner? I simply don’t know because I’m not a Londoner.

And here is the thing. I am sure that London does not need my help to elect their Mayor. Equally, the USA does not need to hear my views on the Presidential campaign. An argument against this has been put forward by Political Dissuasion:

Would you criticise me for organising a rally against Robert Mugabe’s treatment of the people of Zimbabwe, where people are dying, starving and being jailed for actions and rights that you and I take take for granted?

There is quite a noticeable difference between the USA and Zimbabwe. One of them is democratic and the other is not. For all of its faults, at least in the USA there is a reasonable expectation of free speech, a reasonably free press, reasonably free markets and so on. None of this exists in Zimbabwe. So the people of Zimbabwe need international support so much more. Even then, I would limit myself to saying that I think Zimbabwe should be freer. Once they have the “rights that you and I take for granted”, I am sure they will be able to conduct their own affairs without the help of the likes of me.

The USA needs no help in this regard. They have their freedoms that they take for granted. If I were to stick my nose in, I would most likely be batted away. And if an American sticks his nose into my country’s politics, I would bat him away as well.

There is the other argument that US politics affects us all, which I suppose is true to an extent. But does it really affect us? I have my doubts. The likely winners of the election are much of a muchness. People like to pluck out the Iraq War as an example of how much American politics affects us, but these people forget that most Democrats were all for invading Iraq at the time as well!

Incidentally, I do have an opinion on the US Presidential candidates. As it happens, I favour Barack Obama. But I don’t pretend that this is based on any nuanced policy view. It is based on the fact that John McCain is a baad, baad Republican and that Hilary Clinton is a screeching maniac. Honestly, Clinton drives me nuts. She is like that teacher you could hear giving someone a row from the opposite end of the corridor.

There are other reasons, which I covered here. I really dislike the tone of Clinton’s campaign. You can just tell that she came into the campaign thinking she had a divine right to be President. The message of experience is total bunk. Her sumtotal of experience is limited to being married to a former President. Big wow.

At least Obama’s message is more positive. But here is another area where I agree with Calum Cashley. If the American public buys into all of the hope rhetoric, it is lining itself up for disappointment. We have seen this in Britain in the 1990s. Labour pulled off the exact same trick. “I’m here to save you from those awful conservatives!” Well we all know how that turned out.

The truth is harsher. No matter who you vote for, the government gets in. I’d love to see Barack Obama usher in a new era of hope for America. But if he actually does it I’ll eat my hat.

All of that said, I don’t criticise Kezia Dugdale or anyone else for getting involved in Scotland for Obama. It is a harmless campaign and if the people involved get a buzz out of participating then that is all good. We are all adults living in a democracy. By the same token, Calum Cashley is perfectly entitled to chip in, and I don’t think the points he made were as awful as some people are making out.

Is refusing to accept a referendum undemocratic? I don’t think so. In this country at least, referendums have been used for periods of significant constitutional change, pursued by whichever party is in power. In essence it provides a double mandate to go ahead and make those changes.

The first mandate is when a majority of the legislature supports the change and proposes the referendum. The second mandate comes when the referendum is won. Essentially, it is a mechanism to make bloody well damn sure it is what the electorate wants.

And there is the big sticking point for supporters of independence. Because while the SNP have a plurality seats and got a plurality of votes in the election, they have nowhere near a majority.

As I said on Friday, there is no mandate for a referendum. That post provided a reaction from an anonymous commenter:

If there’s a majority for it in parliament there is. Simple as that.

To which I reply, “precisely”. Because there is not a majority for it in Parliament.

On the Lib Dems’ refusal to enter into coalition, Iain MacLaren says,

This is a real disgrace and shows the contempt with which the LibDems treat their own voters.

In fact, the opposite is true. The Lib Dems’ “own voters” voted against independence and voted against holding a referendum. If they were to make a slippery deal with Alex Salmond on an independence referendum, they would have utterly betrayed their own voters.

He goes on,

Will we now see the same attitude over local council coalitions too?

But this misses the point a bit, I think. Presumably — and correct me if I’m wrong here — none of the parties that the Lib Dems might go into coalition with in local councils is asking them to commit to breaking up the country.

At Island Life (emphasis mine):

So, for “Liberal Democrats” that were willing to get into bed with a party who undemocratically went to war in Iraq, undemocratically want to renew Trident and undemocratically close A&E departments in busy hospitals, only to completely dismiss out of hand forming a democratically chosen parliament with a party who wants to ask the people’s opinion on an important constitutional matter is the most narrow minded and petty nonsense I’ve ever heard.

That completely misses the point as well. Calling the Iraq war and suchlike “undemocratic” is popular, but what is the definition of democracy? In this country we have a representative democracy. A party asks for a mandate, gets it, then does what it wants. No matter how much we might disagree with it, the Labour party was democratically elected. So what makes any of their policy pursuits undemocratic?

And the fact that this is and important constitutional matter only underlines why you should be cautious not to hold referendums at the drop of a hat.

The SNP were the only party to make gains on Thursday, but have a look at the bigger picture when it comes to independence. Of the six largest parties in the Scottish Parliament, three were in favour of independence and three were against.

Of the three against, all made losses, but not big losses. An overall loss of six seats.

Of the three in favour, one made big advances. But the other two have disappeared without a trace (one spectacularly so), save for a couple of Greens.

In terms of pro- / anti-independence split in the Scottish Parliament, things are not much different to how they were before. Yes, the SNP are the largest party — but mostly at the expense of the other pro-independence parties.

The split in seats and votes is just over a third in favour, and almost two thirds against independence. Opinion polls asking voters their views on independence tend to discern roughly the same split.

The protests from supporters of independence are mostly along the lines of, “how can they call themselves a democratic party if they aren’t willing to hold a referendum? They must be scared of the result!”

That misses the point. Put simply, no party has ever campaigned for a referendum on an issue they disagree with. If the SNP ever found themselves in a position to do so, they would never hold a referendum on, say, bringing back the death penalty. That is because they are against bringing back the death penalty. But aren’t they scared of the result?**

Well, no. You just don’t hold referendums willy-nilly. This is not a direct democracy, and most people like it that way. Even Alex Salmond takes a cautious stance on referendums. I saw him on Newsnight a couple of weeks ago where he said that a referendum is something that should only come round once a generation.

I’m not sure that it’s a generation since the last referendum. But whatever, he might want a referendum but he accepts — as I think most people do — that you don’t just hold referendums at the drop of a hat. And a margin of victory that could not possibly be tighter, with over 60% of the Parliament having been elected on an anti-independence manifesto, is hardly an apt circumstance to hold a referendum on independence.

* Is nationalism a liberal ideology? Hmm.
** Unlike the issue of independence, opinion polls on the death penalty suggest that a majority are in favour.