Clientelism good, elitism bad

Posted on January 14, 2011 at 01:08 PM

This is a comment that I put up on a guest post by Daniel K Sullivan on www.politicalreform.ie. Daniel is a former candidate for the Seanad, and future I hope because I believe in the value of the Seanad as part of our political system, as regular readers of my blog will know. He gives a suggestion about electoral reform. Now I don't believe our most democratic systems of PR STV should be moved away from. Anything other than PR STV gives the voter less say and much of the calls for things like lists or John Rogers SC and his latest proposal are premised, in my view, on a patronising view of the voter that they cannot be trusted to elect their own representatives. Its no harm having the debate, although elitism is very prominent in some proposals as for e.g. in those of John Rogers. Its also fuelled by the notion that so called "clientelism" and "parish pump politics" is the cause of our economic problems, which is a nonsense. As a recent correspondent to the letters page in the Irish Times, Mr. Anthony Leavy, wrote, it was not at the parish pump that the decisions were taken that have led to our economic crisis.  One of the issues mentioned by Daniel in his post is clientelism and my comment very much responds to the criticisms of clientelism. I am posting it here because I think it very much summarises why I think the criticisms of clientelisms are wrong footed and I am not sure if I were to try to write here again from scratch I could put it better from my own point of view, than I do in the comment. Plus why debates on blogs such as the ones at the political reform blog are so good is because they really are debates and it might be good to read Daniel's post and then my comment to get it in context of the debate he started. The link to Daniel's post is here and my comment I reprint here just below the link. All comments on my comment welcome or you might even consider commenting directly on Daniel's original post on the political reform site.

Daniel's post:
http://politicalreform.ie/2010/12/30/alternatives-to-lists-and-quotas-to-reduce-clientelism-and-offer-the-electorate-more-diverse-voting-options-2/

My comment:

The issue of so called “clientelism” is exagerated. First of all things have moved on a lot in the last few years, less clinics, more emails, less about potholes, more about NAMA and I could go on. The electorate is far more sophisticated than they are given credit for and since the abolition of the dual mandate, whereby TDs are no longer councillors, the public know where the power lies. If its a pothole, a broken light, an uncollected bin, a protest against a planning application, they in the main, and sometimes to the chagrin of TDs, but that’s progress, go to their local councillors.

Secondly, the phrase “All Politics is local” was not coined by an Irish Politician, but an American, the late Tip O’Neill. People are human and their way of dealing with much experience is by looking for the particular in the universal, to borrow and reverse a phrase of my favourite poet Patrick Kavanagh. People live out their lives in local areas, so education policy for the voter comes down to will their be a school place for their child, or will the leaking roof in their child’s school be replaced. The TD takes these concerns and applies them to universal debates in the Dail, such as the need for planned education facilities to cater for our country’s children. Another example of how this works in practice is the Multi Units Development Bill passed through all stages in the Dail before Christmas. Its been called for in the Dail on a regular basis by TDs including myself since I was elected. Why? Because our constituents have told us about their negative experiences as dwellers in the numerous apartment complexes that have sprung up all over the country in the last few years. As the legislation went through the house, the input of TDs was informed by the stories their constituents told them.

In Britain MPs have surgeries, they work at least as hard at constituency work as we do, David Milliband making a virtue of this on the community newsletters he links to on his website, when I last looked. In the recent survey carried out by TCD students for the Oireachtas All Party Committee on Constitutional Reform that looked at how TDs spend the time, the appendix attached to that report showed percentages of constituency work by members of parliaments in other countries, including ones where there is a mix of constituency and list TDs, that were comparable to the percentage of time that emerged for TDs. This was confirmed anecdotally for me by a German diplomat who explained list MPs in Germany do local work because to get on the list they need support from enough party members, who guess what, live their lives in local communities and are impressed with the man or woman with a good record of community work.

So for me in relation to Clientelism as a perceived problem, I think it is fanciful to think that changes to the electoral system will change the fact that the voters will think it is their prerogative to contact their TDs about their issues, be they about their local area or ice melting in the North Pole. I believe our electoral system is not broken, but that it is far preferable to any alternatives that have been proposed, and I would oppose any attempt to change it. Finally the Seanad can provide a place for the type of alternative electoral mandate you are looking for above, but in the Dail everyone should be elected on the same basis in constituencies of roughly similar populations in every corner of the country. More or less what we have already.

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