How Strengthening the Opposition will improve Democracy

~A research project by Governance Innovation Labs

A strong opposition is an integral part for the smooth functioning of a democracy. It ensures accountability, represents diverse ideologies and encourages better governance. Strengthening the opposition does not only enhance the democratic process but also ensures that it remains responsive, transparent and effective in serving the needs and interests of all citizens.

1. Chronological Listing:

• Establish a systematic process for the daily tracking of allegations against the government. There should be a public platform with easy access to all, where the short fallings of the government are chronologically listed. This should include data collection from credible sources such as news reports, official statements, and public complaints.
• Regular upgradation of the curated list is required with the most pressing issues. This list should be also categorized and organized to highlight recurring problems and emerging trends.
• The government should be required to provide detailed action plans and timelines for addressing issues, and should be held accountable for meeting their commitments. They should be answerable to things like where they failed, and what they are going to implement to see no such things happen in future.

Best Practices:

• UPENN, has a comprehensive chronological list of major public apologies and issues related to it.

2. Weighted Listing:

• Develop a method to rank issues based on their impact. Assign weights to government mistakes and shortcomings, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of their significance. This can help prioritize which issues to address first.
• Factors to consider include the severity of the problem, the number of people affected and the potential long term consequences
• Assess government performance and weigh them based on how effectively the issue is identified, this includes tracking the implementation and impact of their actions. The performance evaluations reflect ongoing developments and responses. There should be regular updates on the time in which they respond. This ensures that evaluations remain relevant and accurate.

3. Compartmentalized Opposition:

• Organizing the opposition’s efforts by categorizing and focusing on specific sectors or government departments. This can be done by curating a list of allegations based on each sector. The opposition can thus scrutinize based on sectors such as health, education, infrastructure, defense etc.
• Creating chronological and weighted lists according to departments

Chronological List: Keeps track of issues and allegations in the order of their occurrence, categorized department wise.

Weighted List: Assigns importance to issues based on their impact, severity and public concern for each department.

• This allows different opposition members to focus on each department and improve the quality and depth of critiques. This type of targeted criticism enables a more precise and effective way of focusing on specific government departments and their policies.

4. Technocratic Opposition:

• A political entity ruled by experts — or technocrats — who are selected specifically for their expertise in the area over which they are delegated authority to govern, is known as technocracy.
• Employing subject matter experts as a form of parallel government in fields of economics, healthcare, education, and infrastructure to analyze government schemes. The experts can use their knowledge to identify flaws, inefficiencies, and areas for improvements in government policies.
• Based on their analysis, technocrats can propose well researched and cost cutting techniques to strengthen these policies. This increases the credibility of the opposition’s critiques and focuses on positive solution oriented outcomes instead of mere criticism.

Best Practices:

• The former government of the Soviet Union has often been referred to as a technocracy. Many leaders like Leonid Brezhnev, often had a technical background. In 1986, 89% of Politburo members were engineers.
• Leaders of the Chinese Communist Party is often cited as an example of a technocracy, as it has appointed many leaders with technical knowledge and expertise.
• Singapore is also considered having a technocratic style of governance.

5. Shadow Cabinet by Opposition:

• The Shadow Cabinet consists of shadow ministers who generally take roles that mirror and scrutinize the current government, and develop policies for the party. They are prepared to take up the responsibility of forming a government if the present government resigns or is defeated. This allows for a structured critique and alternative policy development.
• They should highlight inefficiencies and propose cost effective alternatives. The opposition should advocate for reducing unnecessary expenses while maintaining service ensuring that proposals are practical , well searched and feasible.
• Before advocating for large scale changes, they should test alternative policies on a smaller scale, this allows for adjustments based results.
• Conduct thorough analysis to identify potential drawbacks in existing and proposed policies.

Best Practices:

• In the UK, the shadow front bench decides if amendments are required to a legislation brought in by the treasury benches. Currently, Leader of the Labour Party Keir Starmer is leading the ‘shadow front bench’. The Labour Party is the main Opposition party in the UK House of Commons. Similar concepts exist in Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand and South Africa, among others, in some form.
• In India, there have been experiments with the running of shadow cabinets. However, these have happened only at the state level.
• In 2005, a shadow cabinet was formed by the opposition BJP in Maharashtra to counter the then chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh-led Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) government.
• The Congress had also formed a shadow cabinet in Madhya Pradesh in 2014 to counter the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led government.
• In 2015, a shadow cabinet was formed in the coastal state of Goa. However, it was not formed by the opposition, but by a NGO called Gen Next.
• The most recent example came from Kerala where a shadow cabinet was formed in April 2018 by social activists, and not members of the Opposition, to analyze policies of the Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) government.
• In the Lok Sabha Elections of 2024, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) secured a combined vote share of 42.5%. The combined vote share of the INDIA alliance was close behind, at 40.6%, just 2% lower than that of the NDA. While India might not have an official shadow government at a national level, this election results could pave the way for assembling an official shadow cabinet, with designated shadow ministers.

REFERENCES

https://www.livemint.com/politics/news/rahul-gandhis-7-big-responsibilities-as-leader-of-opposition-in-lok-sabha-shadow-pm-must-oppose-but-11719403909139.html#google_vignette

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/shadow-cabinet

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/india/what-is-a-shadow-cabinet-and-does-india-need-one-4057701.html

https://www.newsreel.asia/articles/the-case-for-an-unofficial-shadow-government-in-india

https://www.upenn.edu/static/pnc/politicalapologies.html