Every Kingdom Divided Against Itself is Brought to Desolation

Excerpt

“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.” – Matthew 12:25

Democracy is a delicate machine composed of many moving parts: electoral systems, campaign financing regulations, districting committees, media laws, election commissions, and myriad other pieces each pull in their own directions. In a healthy democracy, the parts mesh like well oiled gears and the whole moves forward, from election to governance to election to governance.

But sometimes bits break down, the wrong part pulls the machine too much in one direction, or a gear is weak and cracks under the strain, and adjustments have to be made. For example, in 2017, it was becoming clear that large amounts of money were being donated to Australia’s political parties from funders tied to China, raising questions about the effect that could have on policies (unlike the United States, Australia allowed unlimited foreign funds to go to political parties). Not only did that potentially undermine national security, it undermined democracy – as parties might be tempted to ignore the desires of their voters in favor of the desires of their funders. And so, in a win for democracy, the laws were changed.

Additionally, parts that might work in one context, might not work in another. For example, countries with term limits say that is a way of precluding individuals from amassing too much power. Countries without term limits say that offering politicians the hope they might be reelected is a better way of ensuring that leaders don’t just spend their terms lining their pockets and paying back the ‘friends’ who got them elected. The first might be more appropriate for a presidential system, and the second for a prime ministerial/parliamentary system. Though both require strong access to information protections and a free press to curb excesses.

Political parties

Another major variable in designing an effective democracy is population size. Many who come from larger countries assume the words ‘multiparty’ and ‘democracy’ are inextricably linked, and yet that form of democratic government is relatively recent.

Often, Commonwealth nations model their parliaments on the one in the UK and yet, originally, Members of Parliament at Westminster were elected as independents. Much later on they formed loose alliances. And it was only in the 19th century, with constituencies so large that personally knowing one’s member of parliament was unlikely, that rigid political parties as we now know them came to prominence.

As a result of the change, voters were asked to choose not between people, but between a predetermined set of positions put forth by those who ran the parties. Too often the positions existed just to show how different one party was from the other. If one party liked ice cream, the other had to hate it.

The development of political parties meant that the system went from a consensus model, in which the broad goal was to reach agreement with as many others as possible, to an oppositional model in which the goal was to beat the other side, regardless of the cost to the nation.

The potentially corrosive nature of political parties was clear from the start. In the United States, the first President, George Washington, was not a member of a political party and thought them such a danger to democracy and the state that he devoted much of his Farewell Address (1796) to warning against them.

[The ‘spirit of party’] serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

[…] However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

President Washington proved prophetic. Not only are there increasing concerns about foreign influence, the American political system has become so antagonistic it has forced some of the most public spirited and good-hearted leaders to become oppositional, and led many fine candidates to withdraw from political life for fear of the cost to their family, friends, and personal reputation.

Democracies with large population sizes are not going to do away with political parties. Their destructive influences will need to be mitigated, part-by-part, through transparency, accountability, and vigilance – the very things that large western democracies have been telling the rest of the world for decades.

Cleo Paskal is an Associate Fellow in both the Asia-Pacific program and the Energy, Environment and Resources department at Chatham House (a.k.a. Royal Institute of International Affairs), as well as a Non-Resident Senior Fellow for the Indo-Pacific in the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and is on the International Board of Advisors of the Kalinga Institute of Indo-Pacific Studies. Follow her on Twitter @CleoPaskal. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.