Torches, Pitchforks, and Political Parties
Who holds our leaders to account?
Accountability is crucial for the functioning of any democracy, where those who govern are assumed to have a high degree of responsibility toward those who are governed.
However, the days are long gone when an unhappy populace could turn to torches and pitchforks to revolt against a negligent ruler. Accountability in politics has evolved from this more direct and raw expression of sovereignty, and now takes many covert and dissipated forms which are not as easily discernible; and this has a purpose.
As a Westminster system, accountability in the Australian political system theoretically takes the form of “responsible government”. However, this picture of accountability is muddied by the current iteration of ‘political parties’ and the influence of money in politics, and it is worth re-evaluating the state of accountability in Australian politics.
In order to undertake this analysis cleanly, we must start by observing the dynamic system in which accountability happens in the first place. The system is as follows: an executive authority (cabinet and government) with decreed responsibilities toward the electorate, performs its role with a certain agenda in mind (in this case state administration), resulting in outcomes which are expected to fulfil said responsibilities. When analysing the state of accountability, therefore, we must (a) evaluate the government’s execution of their mandate and its results, in light of (b) their established responsibilities and their agenda, with respect to (c) the people toward whom these responsibilities are held. If any of these elements is dysfunctional, then the system of accountability may be said to be dysfunctional as a whole.
Our contemporary understanding of accountability can be traced back to the 17th century, when the first notions of the modern state were developed. Although the role of government and its duties to the populace has evolved plenty since this time, modern constitutional states like Australia still embody a similar social contract between the governing sovereign and the populace.
A classic account of the social contract is that produced by English philosopher Thomas Hobbes in his influential 1651 text Leviathan. Hobbes argues that in order to avoid the chaotic and hostile ‘state of nature’, people must surrender their naturally held liberties and form a social contract to an appointed sovereign, who will ensure security from invaders, and impose the rule of law on the land. In order to do so effectively, he argues that state power must be centralised into a widely feared ‘Leviathan’: in other words, a sovereign with absolute authority. In this raw form, the scope of accountability is simply to make sure the state upholds their end of this social contract by maintaining peace and security. Were they to fail in this regard, the unhappy populace would know exactly in which direction to point their pitchforks and torches, fired by the unrelenting flame of their obedience being betrayed.
In contrast with the Hobbesian take, where the social contract is seen to produce a centralised state with absolute power and limited responsibilities, the Australian state takes the form of a federal liberal democracy. In this system of government, which can also be justified with reference to a social contract, both power and sovereignty are structurally divided between different branches and tiers of government. This presents a firm set of parameters, set out in the constitution, that determine the ways in which the government may be held accountable to the people.
These parameters can be broadly categorised as either ‘liberal’ or ‘democratic’, and it is the somewhat tense compromise between liberal and democratic ideologies that defines the Australian political system. In essence, liberal principles demand the protection of individual freedoms first and foremost, leading to a suspicion of government authority and a prioritisation of limiting state power. From a liberal perspective, these are the responsibilities for which government should be held to account. In contrast, democratic principles, which emphasise the importance of government exercising the will of the people, imply a preference for running a stable, effective, majority government, with less priority for individual liberties.
Given this, the Australian constitution sets out a series of ‘checks and balances’ on government in an attempt to strike a balance between accountability and stability.
The most obvious and first mechanism in this chain revolves around federal elections. Given the executive cabinet is drawn from the party holding majority, the parliament is constitutionally the first point of reference when it comes to accountability, as the same people that can vote a government in can also withdraw their support.
Based on this starting point, the theory of responsible cabinet government describes an accountability chain whereby the cabinet and public service are responsible to the parliament, which is turn responsible to the electorate. As parliament is held accountable by voters on election day, then provided government is effectively held accountable to parliament, this theory draws a clear chain of accountability from the executive to the populace.
However, theory and reality are quite separate things. In order for government to be effectively held to account by parliament, parliament must comprise a proportionally representative collection of independent members, representing the interests of their constituents. In reality, Australia’s parliament is mainly made up of political parties, whose proportion within parliament imperfectly reflects their support within the population. On top of this, as a majority is needed to form government, the government by definition controls most of the house of representatives.
The role of parliament is in practise reduced to one of monitoring and scrutinising the executive publicly, mainly through question time; however, they are unable to actually hold the executive accountable in the sense required by the theory of responsible cabinet government. It makes sense then, to infer that in-between elections, direct accountability in the Australian political system is stifled insofar as the executive responds mainly to the interests of their party rather than to parliament as a whole.
Given this, it might be easy to conclude that Australia’s system of accountability is broken. However, this is to overlook the active role that parties play to ensure some accountability, albeit not always toward the polity. While the formal mechanisms of responsible government are broken, the informal system of party politics still works to ensure some measure of accountability, through a more complex network of responsibilities centred around the governing party and its interests.
To understand accountability, then, we must understand parties. Australia is said to stand out within Westminster systems for its short electoral cycle and speedy party leader turnover, as well as for the presence of a strong culture of party discipline amongst party members who adopt, defend and enact their respective party’s philosophy, sometimes even at the expense of representing their constituents’ views. In the same way that there is party loyalty among MPs, there is also a spectrum of votership loyalty which appreciates the party’s ideological stability in varying degrees. Many senior MPs rely on their electoral division’s loyal votership to remain in power.
Less unique to Australia is the influence of money in politics: in short election campaigns, political parties spend big on advertising and marketing in order to attract more votes. Or, more specifically, in order to attract potentially swinging votes from more contested divisions. It is these swinging seats which ultimately determine the outcome of a given election among two major parties, but convincing these voters entails heavy marketing.
In an environment such as this, the agenda of any political party is evident: ensure power by securing funding.
In this arguably oligarchical setting, the prime minister and cabinet of either major party perform their administration with this agenda in mind. They are primarily concerned with their party’s electoral success, which entails being held accountable first ideologically by their party and their loyal voters, then administratively by their funding sources and by the evaluations of swinging voters at times of elections, relative to marketing efforts. As such, parties must respond not to the electorate per say, but first to themselves and their lobbyists, thus securing the political capital necessary to retain loyal voters and have the power to sway swinging ones.
Catering to swaying voters, discontent with either major parties, minor parties can capitalize on major parties’ focus on party loyalty and gain some political capital to hold the balance of power in the house of representatives. Some other minor parties, on the other hand, may function only to detract voters from other major parties who would represent big corporate losses if elected to govern. Clive Palmer’s infamous 2019 campaigns debasing the Labor party are a prime example of this, amounting for $60 million in election advertising without actually winning a seat in parliament. In many ways, then, taking for granted ideologically stable votership, party politicians resemble less a sovereign ruler, and arise instead as a rather professional administrator who must first ensure its power prior to exerting it.
The resulting chain of accountability, then, is one less based around constitutional values and institutions, and more based on these conventions of party loyalty, votership swinging, and corporate lobbying. Structurally, this is the true model of accountability in Australia: not of responsible government, but of professional government. And in these same professional terms they are held accountable by opposing parties.
Case in point of this is Labor’s misguided promise of budget surplus following the GFC, an instance of rhetorical backfire which made them easy targets after not being able to follow up on this promise. Economists recommended against chasing this surplus because it would require austerity after a crisis which required government spending. Promising this surplus hence cost Labor the next federal elections, and the Coalition now refrains from promise making: an attitude which may cost climate action heavily.
Major parties thus break the assumptions of the classical theory of responsible government. In doing so, they complicate the picture of accountability in Australia, and certainly stifle accountability between election cycles as a government cannot be properly held to account by a parliament it controls.
Australia has certainly moved past torches and pitchforks, and it has moved past the theory of responsible government too. While the theory of responsible government might not survive the existence of parties, accountability has inevitably taken different forms, and has adapted to the forces of convention. Understanding the real picture of accountability in Australian politics allows us to better understand the incentives of government, and better understand how, if at all, they can be held to account when their responsibilities are not met.
