If one were asked to go spelunking around the dim caverns of
neology to come up with a satisfactory moniker for the type of
political energy currently driving modern liberal democracies, one
could do worse than to settle for "centrifugalism". Instead of
imploding due to the objective contradictions of their economic
systems, these states have had to contend with an explosion of
subjectivity -- a fecund ecology of highly politicized identity-bearers
has developed, and they appear bent on asserting their diversity in
the face of outmoded centripetal institutions designed to falsely
homogenize or assimilate their experiences, needs and priorities. For
the most part, the owners of these newly invigorated
consciousnesses see the political infrastructure of liberal democracy
as a barrier to their fulfillment that is every bit as formidable as the
economic relations of liberal capitalism. This impression has
manifested itself in escalating challenges to the legitimacy of
traditional practices of representative democracy which, depending
on the ideological concerns of the observer, are either decried as
symptomatic of society's "ungovernability", or celebrated as a
blossoming of healthy pluralism.
Canada has not been immune to
these developments. The explicit recognition in the 1982 Charter of
Rights and Freedoms of aboriginal, multicultural, female and
disabled citizens helped to congeal these as distinct and legitimate
political identities in Canada.1 Additionally, recent years have
witnessed the increasing activism of various religious,
environmental, and gay rights groups who, together with the
aforementioned "Charter Canadians", have grown increasingly
frustrated with the limitations of a political discourse constructed
exclusively upon the brokerage of regional and linguistic interests.
This debate crystallized around the popular rejection of the Meech
Lake Accord in 1990, and was evident in subsequent critical public
commentary on the deficiencies of Canadian representative and
parliamentary democracy.2 It quickly became evident that the
traditional party system was an insufficient collector or conduit for
the burgeoning democratic aspirations of a heterogeneous citizenry
not content to see their diverse interests brokered away to the
margins of political consideration.
This recent flurry of
identity-based group politics, with its implicit rejection of traditional
representative institutions, would appear to vindicate the
observation made by John Meisel over a decade ago, that an increase
in the role of organized groups in the processes of interest
articulation was leading to a decline in the aggregative capacity of
traditional brokerage parties in Canada.3 Indeed, the idea that
organized interest groups are a democratic threat of one sort or
another has since appeared as a common focus of two otherwise
divergent offspring of the malaise afflicting the Canadian party
system: the recent Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party
Financing (RCERPF) and the Reform Party of Canada. While the
RCERPF's concern appears to be that democracy in Canada suffers as
organized interest groups assume, but ultimately fail to fulfil, the
role and functions of traditional political parties, Reform's approach
to the "problem" of "special interests" is quite different. In this
paper, I will use the example of its recent forays into the world of
electronic plebiscitarianism to argue that the Reform party's brand
of populism is designed specifically to combat the threat organized
interests pose to the unfettered free market distribution of political
and economic values, rather than as a democratic corrective to the
rise of pluralism and the decline of parties. By contrasting it with
the RCERPF in the context of the decline of party thesis, I intend to
show that Reform's use of these techniques represents neither a
serious desire to alleviate public alienation from the representative
system, nor a sincere response to citizens demanding increased
opportunities for meaningful democratic participation. Instead, I will
argue that Reform's adoption of teledemocracy is an essentially
cynical attempt to capitalize on the present climate of democratic
unease, as a means of legitimizing the party's real goal of contracting
the public sphere of political decision-making in Canada.
The Decline of Party
In a provocative essay written in 1979, John
Meisel argued that while Canadian political parties still performed
the classic structural roles of providing a framework for voting and
recruiting political leaders, their ability to function as centers of
governmental organization and policy formation was on the wane.4
In particular, Canadian parties were declining in terms of their
capacity to act as effective vehicles for the integration, mobilization
and aggregation of political interests. As a result, Meisel observed, "
... an increasing number of Canadians have sought to participate in
politics and public life outside the framework of parties."5
Among the reasons listed by Meisel for this decline were the
development of sophisticated electronic media and polling
techniques, the burgeoning complexity of the modern state, and the
dominance of the national political agenda by executive federalism
and major economic actors. But well before the explosion of group
identities that would follow the adoption of Charter in 1982, Meisel
identified "pluralism and the rise of interest group politics" as a
major factor contributing to the growing ineffectiveness of
brokerage parties.6 At this time, Meisel referred vaguely to
unidentified "vested interests" and "lobby groups", but in a 1991
addendum to his original essay, citizens of the post-Charter "new
Canada" -- women, ethnic Canadians, aboriginal peoples -- and the
"non-party organizations" that represent them were explicitly
referred to as the authors of a serious challenge to the efficacy of
the country's traditional democratic party structure.7
Reforming Canada's Parties
Over ten years after the appearance of
his original essay, Meisel's predictions regarding public
disenchantment with political parties in Canada have seemingly
been borne out. According to the RCERPF: "Canadian political parties
are held in low public esteem, and ... their standing has declined
steadily over the past decade."8 The RCERPF reported that between
1979 and 1989, the percentage of Canadians who expressed "a great
deal" of confidence in political parties fell from 30 to 18, while the
number of those expressing "very little" confidence in these
institutions grew from 22 to 33 per cent.9 Massive numbers of
citizens agreed that political parties in Canada engage in excessive
"squabbling" (81%), confuse issues rather than illuminate them
(87%), and inappropriately constrain the activity of individual MPs
(78%).10 Most seriously, 79 per cent of those surveyed felt that once
elected to Parliament, party politicians generally "lose touch" with
the people they represent -- an increase of 14 per cent from a
decade earlier.11
The corollary of the declining fortunes of
parties has been a surge in support for alternative, non-elite driven
democratic practices. The research studies accompanying the RCERPF
showed that the vast majority of those surveyed trust "ordinary
people" more than "experts and intellectuals" (65%), and consider a
devolution of decision-making power to "people at the grassroots" to
be a plausible and constructive alternative to party democracy
(74%).12 In what can only be regarded as a stunning distillation of
this sentiment, the RCERPF found that a full 26 per cent of Canadians
actually believe that "true democracy" could be better achieved in
the absence of political parties.13 At a minimum, the report of the
commission warns that, "Canadians would like greater control over
their representatives and over public policies, especially between
elections."14 In attempting to isolate the source of these
symptoms, the RCERPF points to institutional inertia within the party
system itself, insofar as it has been unable to manufacture
significant opportunities for meaningful participation by individuals
whose representational needs extend beyond the capacity of
traditionally-oriented parties.15 When it comes to issues other than
leadership and election campaigns, Canadian brokerage parties are
failing both as convincing vehicles of interest aggregation and
mobilization, and as effective managers of collective political
action.16 Interestingly, this disaffection with parties has not
necessarily translated into a flight from political involvement
altogether: the RCERPF reports that while the number of people
joining political parties is indeed dwindling, overall levels of
"political voluntarism and activism" remain high.17 How is this
activism manifesting itself, if not in partisan attachments? In the
absence of opportunities for effective democratic participation under
the auspices of brokerage parties, "ordinary citizens" are seeking to
satisfy their political aspirations through what the RCERPF has called
"specialized interest groups".18 These groups, which encompass those
concerned with "environmental causes, [or] the rights of women and
minority groups", are characterized by the commission as "single-
issue organizations with the sole purpose of promoting a specific
cause".19
Despite their apparent vitality, the RCERPF was not
convinced that the proliferation of organized interest groups in the
political arena is necessarily an indicator of a healthy Canadian
democracy. While it conceded that such groups excel in articulating
interests and mobilizing political energy, the commission felt that
they lack some of the more complex skills required to fulfill the
aggregative role traditionally played by mass or brokerage parties.
In focussing on single-issues, "specialized" interest groups are
charged with representing "at best a limited spectrum of public
opinion."20 Furthermore, the RCERPF contends that such
organizations neglect the need to "accommodate their goals with
competing interests", and goes so far as to suggest that they are
even "largely unconcerned with balancing competing objectives
within the organization" (emphasis added).21 Thus, in the estimation
of the RCERPF, the decline of brokerage parties as aggregative
institutions has led to a flight towards circumscribed political
organizations that are structurally disinclined to assimilate the "big
picture" into their ideological agendas.
The RCERPF prescribed a
number of measures intended to cure the ailments plaguing
Canadian democracy, the details of which fall outside the focus of this
discussion. However, it is useful to note that the aim which directed
the commission's recommendations was the "strengthening [of]
political parties as primary political organizations."22 Most of the
proposed reforms regarding parties center around enhancing their
recruitment, education and policy development functions, as well as
encouraging them to nurture broader and more extensive partisan
networks.23 The hope of the commission is that traditional parties
can be democratized to the extent that politically invigorated
citizens will choose them over the more narrow organizations that
have fragmented the Canadian polity. In the rhetoric of the authors
of the commission's final report: " ... the continued health of
Canadian democracy requires that people in Canada become more
involved in political life through political parties."24
Canada's Reform Party and Teledemocracy
The Reform Party of
Canada appears to have arisen in response to many of the same
concerns that motivated the investigations of the RCERPF. Like the
commissioners, Reformers recognize that a growing number of
"ordinary Canadians" are choosing to opt out of participation in the
representative system, and point to organized interests and failing
brokerage parties as the cause of this disaffection. In Reform's view,
the Canadian polity is currently suffering under the yoke of a
"tyranny of the minorities" wherein "special interest groups ... get
everything they want to the detriment of the people paying the
bills."25 These so- called special interest groups are aided in their
capture of the public purse by "old- line politicians" who "don't care
what their voters think" -- members of brokerage parties beholden
to opinion experts, lobbyists and party whips -- and so misrepresent
their constituents.26 In response to this situation, Reform proposes
to usher in "a type of government that more accurately reflects the
will of the people,"27 through the use of "more efficient and less
expensive" electronic voting and communications technology.28 In
short, Reform's response to the challenge organized interests pose
for brokerage parties has not been to recommend a restructuring of
the latter to accommodate people attracted by the former, as
suggested by the RCERPF. Instead, the Reform party portrays these
actors as irretrievably undemocratic, and offers to eliminate both of
them from the political calculus by using technology to make direct
appeals to "ordinary Canadians".
This response begs a number of
questions. One set of questions asks whether interest group activity
is actually the danger to democracy that it is portrayed as, whether
increased direct participation by unaffiliated citizens is the
appropriate tactic to offset this danger, and whether electronic
technology can be used to enhance the democratic character of this
process. However, in order to engage the Reform position on these
important issues, it is necessary first to determine if the party's
concern for democracy is sincere. Does the Reform party's rhetorical
commitment to an increase in the quantity of participation include a
desire to increase the quality of democratic life in Canada? Is the
championing of greater participation by private citizens pursuant to
the establishment of a reinvigorated democratic civic and political
culture in Canada, or is it oriented towards the achievement of
another set of ideological goals? A brief look at Reform's brand of
teledemocracy in practice should help to answer these questions.
Referendum '94 & Canada Speaks
In mid June of 1994, North
Vancouver Reform party MP Ted White, in cooperation with
Maritime Telephone and Telecommunications Technologies of Nova
Scotia (MT&T), sponsored Referendum '94, a telephone referendum
on proposed changes to Canada's Young Offenders Act (YOA).29 The
impetus for this exercise was two-fold. First, Mr. White was seeking
to gauge his constituent's opinions on the current state of trial and
sentencing practices for youth criminals, with the intent of drafting
and tabling a Private Member's Bill in the House of Commons,
proposing amendments to the YOA which would reflect these
opinions. However, shortly before Referendum '94 was to take place,
federal Minister of Justice Allan Rock tabled his own set of
amendments to the YOA, prompting Mr. White to suggest that his
results would be used " ... to confirm the approach in Mr. Rock's Bill,
or to suggest amendments to the Bill during committee stage in
Parliament."30 Secondly, the telephone poll in North Vancouver was
intended to represent the Reform party's first attempt to, "show all
of Canada how the occasional use of electronic referenda can ensure
that MP's are much more responsive to the wishes of the people
they represent."31 Calling this the "first ever electronic
referendum," and an opportunity for his constituents to, "show the
world how democracy can be improved using the very latest
technology," Mr. White presented Referendum '94 as an example of,
"government with due regard to the views of the majority. In other
words, true democracy."32
This claim is based on the contention
that Referendum '94 was an exercise carried out in observance of
the principle of "universal suffrage", rather than merely a poll of
randomly selected opinions.33 Each registered voter in Mr. White's
North Vancouver riding was mailed a confidential, randomly-
generated Personal Identification Number (PIN) which granted them
a single access to MT&T's computerized vote counting system.
Constituents intending to vote were asked to call a 1-900 number,
enter their PIN, and answer "yes" or "no" to a series of questions
pertaining to proposed changes to the YOA, all via the keypad of
their touch-tone telephone.34 Students in the riding were issued a
special set of PINs so that their votes could be tabulated separately
from the general electorate. A similar arrangement was made for
federal members of parliament, who were also encouraged to
register their opinion. Finally, citizens across the country were able
to cast their votes in a separately counted opinion poll which used
the same questions but a different telephone number; no PINs were
required for participation in this part of the exercise, meaning that
people with a particular interest in the outcome of the poll could,
conceivably, vote as often as they pleased. The average duration of
the voting process was approximately two minutes, and participants
were responsible for the two dollar cost of this telephone time.35
Public response to the telephone poll was less than
overwhelming in terms of numbers participating, and predictable in
terms of results (see Appendix A). Voters were asked three
questions: should the minimum age at which a charge could be laid
under the YOA be reduced from 12 to 10 years of age?; should young
offenders charged with "serious" crimes be automatically
transferred to adult court?; and, finally, should violent or repeat
offenders be subject to harsher sentences under the YOA? Of the 70
000 registered voters in North Vancouver, approximately 4600 --
roughly 6% -- took part in the referendum.36 A strong majority of
voters (67%) expressed agreement with the proposal in Question 1 to
reduce the minimum age for charges under the YOA to ten-years of
age. It should be noted that a significant number of callers to the
Referendum Help Line indicated that they voted "no" to this
question because they felt the minimum age should either be lower
than ten, or eliminated altogether. Support among registered voters
for the amendments proposed in Questions 2 and 3 -- automatic
transfer to adult court for serious crimes and increased sentences
for repeat violent offenders -- was a staggering 97% and 99%
respectively.
Results for the other three categories of
respondents generally mimicked those of registered North
Vancouver voters, both in terms of low participation rates and
preferences. The nation-wide poll elicited approximately 2200
responses, while merely 44 of a possible 700 North Vancouver
student voters, and only 16 federal MPs participated in the televote.
Despite these small numbers, the distribution of opinions across all
categories of voters was relatively consistent with those indicated
by Mr. White's constituents. One exception to this general rule was
the MP response to Question 1, which produced a much higher
number of "yes" votes (94%) than any other category of participants.
Clearly, turnout was much lower than expected in all categories of
voters. Mr. White attributed the low rate of participation to a
number of factors, including a lack of media attention due to
competition with the Stanley Cup riots in Vancouver and Father's
Day. According to Mr. White: "The most commonly given reason for
not voting was that the Government had already announced
amendments and that those amendments would be rammed through
Parliament so there was no point in voting."37 Nevertheless, Mr.
White praised those who did participate for being "pioneers," and
indicated that he was confident he had received a clear enough
indication of his constituent's feelings on this issue to act as
directed.38
In October of 1994, the Reform party embarked on an even
more ambitious experiment, sponsoring an exercise billed as,
"Canada's first, live, nationally- televised, interactive Electronic Town
Hall meeting."39 Similar to the North Vancouver referendum,
Canada Speaks served two purposes for the Reform Party. On one
level, this combined television program and telephone poll provided
the Reform party with an opportunity to both publicize and elicit
feedback on its plans to "reconstruct our federal system and rebuild
the principles by which we govern ourselves."40 On a second level,
this was yet another occasion for the Reform party to enlist the aid
of sophisticated communications technologies in fulfilling its
rhetorical commitment to increased citizen participation in major
policy decisions. Accordingly, Canada Speaks was portrayed as a
"citizen participation project" designed to facilitate "consultation
between elections", affording "a unique and historic opportunity for
you to participate in this electronic town hall meeting from the
comfort of your own living room."41
The Canada Speaks exercise
was organized as a week long national telephone poll, culminating in
a panel discussion held in Fort Calgary on October 3, 1994, televised
live by approximately two-thirds of Canada's cable networks.42 In
the week prior to the telecast, for an average cost of two dollars,
anyone with access to a touch-tone phone could call Reform's 1-900
line and offer their opinion on three questions regarding the future
shape of Canada's federal system. First, callers were asked to
respond with a "yes" or "no" to the question of whether "Canada [has]
reached a point in its history when the issue of national unity must
be resolved once and for all." Next, callers were asked to choose
which of the following four courses of action they thought "best for
Canada": "complete separation of Quebec from Canada"; "a special
association between Canada and an independent Quebec"; "changing
the federal system for the entire country"; or "continuing the present
federal system". Finally, respondents were presented with two
options as to "who should set the framework for Canada's future?":
"the Canadian people through a bottom-up process"; or
"governments and political leaders".
The telecast, dubbed an
"electronic town hall meeting" by its organizers, gave viewers the
opportunity to call in their response to these questions one at a time,
after the issues had been discussed by participants in the televised
forum. Panelists leading discussion included Reform Party leader
Preston Manning -- hailed as "the uncontested parliamentary pace-
setter in the race to the brave new world"43 -- a handful of political
scientists and economists, a constitutional adviser, an opinion
researcher, and a former adviser to the Bloc Quebecois. In addition to
these experts, viewers at home and the 140 audience members in
studio were treated to recorded testimonials from a number of
prominent members of the country's political and media elite.44 The
telephone lines remained open for a short time after the forum, for
those who wished to register their opinions in a single call after
having seen the entire telecast.
Following the exercise, Reform
party leader Preston Manning indicated that he was "encouraged by
the response".45 Mr. Manning's satisfaction was hardly surprising,
given that the overwhelming majority of callers registered opinions
which confirmed policy positions already held by the Reform Party.
Of the 9406 "total registered responses", 92% favoured resolving the
national unity issue "once and for all", and 58% echoed the Reform
party's preference to do so via a comprehensive overhaul of the
entire federal system. The "complete separation" of Quebec was
advocated by 29% of callers, 10% were inclined to accept the status
quo and, most gratifying for the Reform party, only 3% were
prepared to accept special status for Quebec. Similarly, in a
reflection of Reform's populist rhetoric, 92% of the responses to
Question 3 indicated that this overhaul should be directed by "the
Canadian people through a bottom-up process", rather than by
"Governments and political leaders" (see Appendix B). Aside from
their predictability, by far the most interesting aspect of the results
of the Canada Speaks televote was the manner in which they were
portrayed to and by the mass media. Numerous print and broadcast
media took for granted that 9406 "total registered responses" meant
that "about 10 000 Canadians reached out and touched Preston
Manning's national unity telethon."46 Actually, a closer look at the
numbers would indicate that this is far from the case. Firstly, PINs
limiting participants to a single vote were not distributed before the
poll, and this means that interested parties could potentially have
voted several times in an attempt to pervert the results. But even
more compromising is the fact that each answer to any of the three
questions was counted as a distinct "caller". During the forum
telecast, viewers were asked to respond to the questions in three
separate telephone calls, and it is conceivable (though unlikely) that
each response during this period was registered by a different
person. However, in the week before the television broadcast, and in
the hours following it, when the bulk of responses were registered
(70%), callers likely addressed all three questions in a single call.
Nevertheless, each answer to every question during this time was
also counted by the Reform party and the mass media as coming
from a distinct respondent. Furthermore, a randomly selected
control group was solicited in advance to participate in the exercise
as a measure of the statistical validity of the tele-poll's self-selected
sample population. This control group was also included in the total
number of participants, again with each response to every question
being tallied as a distinct caller (which is probably even less likely
in the case of the control group than in the general sample). The
result of these unorthodox calculations was a vastly inflated
perception of the level of public participation in Canada Speaks. As it
stands, it is statistically impossible to make an accurate
determination of how many people actually participated in this
exercise.47
The Real World of Reform's Teledemocracy
The Reform party is
not unique in attempting to harness the formidable potential of
communications technology to political participation in one form or
another.48 However, most of the experiments with teledemocracy
conducted to date have been suspect in terms of the quality of
democracy involved, and similar questions can be raised about the
Reform party's performance thus far.49 Elsewhere, I have detailed
the ways in which Reform's attempts at pushbutton populism have
fallen well short of the technical requirements of a legitimate
exercise in democratic decision-making.50 On the most basic level, it
would be difficult to sustain an argument that labelled as
"democratic" an exercise requiring citizens to pay a fee to
participate, in which people could vote as often as they liked, and
which took the opinions of a self-selected sample as representative
of some greater constituency. On a deeper level, none of the Reform
televotes to date have involved serious attempts to encourage
citizens to set their own democratic agendas or to consider the full
range of options and implications pertaining to any particular policy
issue. Instead, the subjects of the party's televotes and electronic
town halls have reflected Reform's own preoccupations, and have
featured questions skillfully crafted to produce results
complimentary to existing party policy on the issues under
consideration. Most serious from a technical standpoint, the Reform
party has failed to either engage in concerted campaigns to inform
voters thoroughly prior to soliciting their opinion, or to institute
sustainable mechanisms for ongoing participation, both of which are
integral elements of legitimate democratic decision- making. The
Reform party's low regard for the qualitative requirements of sound
democratic practice is evident in the cavalier manner in which it
manipulates the actual results of its tele-populist schemes. The
evidence suggests that the Reform party is relatively unconcerned
with either the inadequacy of these exercises as reliable and
accurate opinion gathering devices, or even the veracious portrayal
of the responses they do receive. In each of the cases under scrutiny
here, the Reform party has been quick to point out that it is aware
that the process involved is not "scientific", and that the resulting
sample is not "statistically valid" as a representation of opinion at
large.51 Nonetheless, Reform promises to act on the basis of these
responses, which can only be construed as an indication that they
actually do not care whether they are proceeding according to the
wishes of the majority of Canadians or not, and that their interest in
conducting these exercises lies elsewhere.
This was made clear in
the case of Referendum '94. Prior to the televote MP Ted White
insisted that at least 50% of the 70 000 registered voters in his North
Vancouver riding would have to participate before he could be
confident of having received a decisive direction from his
constituents.52 Despite this seemingly firm threshold, when less
than 10% of voters actually registered opinions, Mr. White had
somehow, "come to feel comfortable with the results," and decided to
act upon them anyway.53 Once again, a commitment to adhere only
to a thorough expression of citizen preferences was clearly not a
priority of this exercise. Similarly, a studied disinterest in
communicating an accurate portrayal of public opinion may also
account for the Reform party's spectacular inflation of the actual rate
of participation in the Canada Speaks televote.54 Apparently,
creating the illusion that 10 000 people were involved in this
exercise was more important to the Reform party than either a
truthful account of the real numbers, or an accurate estimation of
Canadian opinions about national unity and federalism.
Why might
this be the case? Why would a party supposedly committed to the
unmediated representation of majority opinion solicit and depict it so
carelessly? The answer is that accurate representations of public
opinion as expressed in meaningful democratic processes are not the
goal motivating the Reform party's use of teledemocratic
technologies. Instead, it is the desire to construct a democratic
discourse conducive to the realization of the rest of Reform's
ideological agenda that directs these applications. Before making a
case for how the technological exercises discussed here were
configured to achieve this, a brief review of the main elements of
Reform's ideological programme is necessary.
In his recent
attempt to unravel the populist rhetoric of the Reform Party of
Canada, David Laycock offers the following insightful distillation: " ...
the major thrust of the Reform party project is to redefine Canadian
public life by substantially contracting political -- and often
democratic -- modes of decision-making in policy spheres that deal
with distributional issues."55 According to Laycock, at Reform's
ideological core is a standard neo-conservative commitment to the
protection of the "natural" market distribution of economic, political
and social values. Any attempt by the state to use re-distributive
policy instruments in order to redress substantive inequalities is
considered an illegitimate intrusion into the market, the costs of
which are disproportionately borne by individual property-holders
through the imposition of confiscatory taxation regimes. The
primary beneficiaries of this unnatural desire to give substance to
liberalism's promise of formal-legal equality are the "special
interests" and the "new class" of bureaucrats who are their patrons.
In the eyes of Reformers, "a special interest is seen as any group that
requests publicly provided benefits that require governments to
skew market distributions of resources."56
The "new class" is
defined as, "a self-perpetuating bureaucratic class in government ...
whose employment requires expansion of programmes to meet the
demands of special interests."57 Standing opposed to this elite
symbiosis of organized interests demanding entitlements and the
bureaucrats who provide them are "the people" who pay for them,
defined basically as all those "ordinary Canadians" who are members
neither of the new class, nor the special interests.58 The
comparative policy neglect suffered by ordinary Canadians can be
attributed, in Reform's estimation, to the capture of old-line
brokerage parties by the new class to the extent that they have
become merely "instruments of the special interests". Conversely,
the Reform party envisions itself as the "representative of the
unrepresented", the champion of the silent majority in the face of a
tyranny of the minorities.59 Ironically, it is at this point that
the Reform party's special interest in contracting the public sphere
of democratic decision-making becomes apparent. Convinced that
traditional, pluralist mechanisms of decision and policy making are
dominated by special interests intent on hobbling the free market
allocation of social and economic goods, the Reform party sees no
choice but to substantially shrink the political arena in which these
interests operate. This end-run around the mediating/meddling
influence of organized interest groups, public institutions, social
agencies and advocates is accomplished by simply eliminating them
from the policy process, through direct appeals to "the people" for
direction or decisions. Liberated from the distorting influence of
entitlement-seeking, organized interests and the bureaucrats
beholden to them, "ordinary Canadians" can express their true
preferences as consumer-voters in a free market of political and
economic options. In this scenario, concerns that were once public,
collective and political are properly converted into isolated,
individual, private choices, and in the process an entire layer of
relations between civil society and the state spontaneously
vanishes.60
For Reform, this configuration relieves the, "
'democratic excess' [that] results from too many people taking the
promises of liberal egalitarianism seriously."61 Traditional liberal
pluralism encourages an institutional environment wherein, "too
many groups with inflated senses of their own disadvantage make
too many claims for state support," resulting in rampant social
spending, huge deficits, burgeoning debt-loads and escalating
taxes.62 By marginalizing special interests and their benefactors,
and replacing them with "the people" in the policy process, Reform
hopes to halt the scourge of inappropriate interventions in the
market, and to alleviate the strain felt by the propertied and
entrepreneurial classes who unfairly bear the burdens of this
juggernaut. It is not surprising, in a time of economic insecurity and
widespread alienation, that such a vision would hold great appeal
not only to "the people" it serves, but also to a wider range of private
citizens who harbour a legitimate sense of being underrepresented
in the decisions which most closely affect their lives.63 However, it
should be stressed that the Reform party's advocacy of more direct
forms of interest representation do not spring from a serious desire
to bolster the quality of democratic political life in Canada. Instead,
Reform's appeals "the people" are merely instrumental to their
broader goal of eliminating "the public", by marginalizing organized
interests, state bodies and representative structures in the policy
process, in the interests of enabling the unfettered procession of
private initiative and accumulation. By reducing citizens in
communities to individual consumers in markets, Reform's promotion
of direct democracy emerges as little more than one element in a
total strategy for the systematic depoliticization and privatization of
public life.
By now, the reason for Reform's attraction to these
technologies should be clear: teledemocracy as practised by the
Reform party is perfectly suited to accomplish exactly the
contraction of the public sphere they so covet. Generally speaking,
teledemocratic endeavors organized on the plebiscitarian model have
had as their explicit purpose the redress of perceived deficiencies in
the representative system, and the exclusion of special interest
groups from the decision-making process.64 Likewise, one of the
key selling features of MT&T's teledemocracy services package is
that, "it has the capability of removing special interest groups."65
There is little doubt that this coincidence of the technology's
strengths and one of the key points in Reform's ideological agenda
accounts for the party's unqualified embrace of teledemocracy. The
party goes so far as to publicly affirm this goal prior to every
televote it conducts, and when asked about his choice of this
technological configuration, MP Ted White was quick to confirm that
its primary appeal was that, "It is going to break down special
interests."66 It does so by removing the practical need for any type
of group or institutional mediation in the formation and articulation
of individual preferences.
Clearly, the Reform party could not have
asked for a sharper tool with which to lobotomize the democratic
process. By providing a medium for individual voters to express
established private choices directly from the isolation of their living
room armchairs, the execution of teledemocracy according to
plebiscitarian priorities effectively eliminates the social processes
and political institutions which moderate particular interests in light
of the needs of the community as a whole.67 This apparent
shortcoming is a strength in Reform's view, because these institutions
and processes are fertile breeding grounds for exactly those special
interest group claims that direct the state beyond its proper role as
a protector of property and minimalist enforcer of market freedom.
Once we begin to recognize that Reform's primary aim in these
exercises is the elimination of mediating institutions and groups that
involve the state in distributional decisions, we can see why they are
indifferent to democratic values such as, for instance, educating and
enriching citizens by encouraging ongoing participatory processes.
Reform's lack of serious effort in engaging voters prior to the
televotes has already been mentioned, and when asked what ideas
he had for continued citizen involvement in finding a solution to the
problem of youth crime after Referendum '94, Ted White responded
by saying: "I think they've done their piece on this ... I think this
process is pretty much over."68 The fact is, the Reform party simply
cannot recognize the educative value of ongoing participation,
because this would involve a tacit endorsement of precisely the role
that mediating groups and institutions play in a vigorous democratic
political culture.
The reduction of democratic participation to a
series of isolated transactions in a competitive market that uses
votes as currency also explains how the Reform party is able to
equate "pay-per-vote" with universal suffrage. For Reform,
democratic equality extends only to an equal right to accumulate and
dispose of one's property in the marketplace as one sees fit -- not to
equal access to political participation regardless of means. Given this
market orientation, it should not be surprising that Reform is so
enthusiastic about the possibility of "reducing the unit costs of
democracy" by enfranchising only those willing to pay to participate.
When asked if he was at all troubled by the deterrent effects of the
user-fee on participation, MP Ted White responded by suggesting
that, "If someone is not willing to pay $1.95 to have their MP carry
out their will in Parliament, then why do I owe them any
representation."69 Those who feel strongly enough about their
opinion on a particular issue will be willing to pay to have that
opinion heard -- special interest groups and state agencies are little
more than a costly means of artificially amplifying the interests of
people who do not value their opinion sufficiently to finance its
expression on their own. In Reform's view, pay-per-vote
teledemocracy simply allows the invisible hand of the market to
naturally muffle the voices of those who have become too
dependent on the pilfering hand of the state. The ultimate payoff is
that these technologies enable the Reform party to accomplish this
diminution of democratic public life while claiming to expand it.
Teledemocracy as practiced by Reform amounts to little more than
an elaborate public relations performance: here we have a high-
profile vehicle for the raising of issues pursuant to the Reform
party's overall project, under the guise of soliciting public input and
encouraging citizen empowerment, with no danger of eliciting
responses that do anything other than vindicate Reform's previously-
established positions on these issues. This explains why Reform
shows little concern for encouraging genuine grassroots participation
in the formulation of agendas for their teledemocratic exercises, and
why they see nothing inherently biased in the way they pose their
questions to voters. Reform's selection of issues and questions is
designed for "the construction of problems to justify solutions" to
which they are already ideologically committed.70 This technology
makes it possible for Reform to raise issues and manufacture
opinions which support their overall goal of shrinking the public
sphere, using a process that itself embodies this goal, while
appearing to do exactly the opposite. In this picture, Reform party
televotes and electronic town hall meetings emerge as cynical,
carefully managed spectacles which, rather than celebrating the
potential of "ordinary Canadians", show nothing but contempt for
them. This was made abundantly clear in the Reform party's
second national electronic town hall meeting and televote, broadcast
from Toronto in February of 1995. Timed to capitalize on growing
public anxiety just prior to the release of the federal budget, the
National Tax Alert was a crystalline example of how Reform is able
to use this technology to reduce democracy to the level of spectacle
and performance. The electronic town hall consisted of brief
responses by a panel of experts to three questions about taxation
and deficit reduction. The panel was nearly uniform in its general
support of the Reform position on these issues, with the sole
exception being a token remark referring to the fact that taxation
levels may be considered too low only if considered in relation to
what is needed to service current payments on the national debt.
Panel responses were supplemented by alarmist "tax facts"
presented entirely without context or discussion of the possible
social repercussions of massive spending cuts, and pre-recorded,
cleverly edited testimonials from "the streets of Canada" decrying
taxes and the cost of social programs. Audience members prepared
to ask questions were known to organizers in advance of the event,
and those with impromptu questions were summarily overlooked by
the moderator. In one case, an obviously enthusiastic, but repeatedly
ignored, audience member with an unscheduled question was
approached by the event organizers off camera and asked about the
nature of his question, the contents of his handbag, and encouraged
to "settle down". At no time was spontaneity, citizen-to-citizen
contact, or deep, critical consideration of the issues encouraged. This
supposed exercise in direct democracy ended with one of the young
event organizers slipping into a reserved seat near the platform and
asking Reform leader Preston Manning, as if on cue, the event's final
question: " ... will lower taxes help or hurt the average Canadian?"
Following Mr. Manning's "non-partisan" response, the results of the
televote were announced -- approximately 95% of respondents
indicated that they felt current levels of taxation were too high, and
advocated deficit reduction through spending cuts and a legislated
cap on tax increases -- all of which mirror the Reform party's
previously held positions on this issue.
Conclusion
The evidence gathered by the Royal Commission on
Electoral Reform and Party Financing would seem to corroborate
John Meisel's view that the current level of interest group activity
presents a formidable challenge to the traditional representative
role and practices of brokerage parties, and that this situation
constitutes a democratic deficit, particularly for unaffiliated Canadian
citizens. At the core of this argument seems to be the perception of a
binary opposition between the interests of "ordinary" Canadians and
those of people attached to one or another organized social, political
or cultural group. It is the explosive tension inherent in this binary
that the Reform party has taken to an extreme conclusion in its high
tech attack on "special interests" and the "old-line" parties
supposedly held hostage by them.
The possibility that this
binary may be a false one -- that perhaps the recent flurry of
interest group activity is the sign of a newly invigorated democratic
discourse rather than an impoverished one -- seems to have escaped
the consideration of those who have taken it upon themselves to
reform and resuscitate Canadian democracy. The RCERPF was guided
by the assumption that organized groups necessarily pursue the
narrow interests of their circumscribed constituencies to the
exclusion of competing or general interests, and are consequently
unable to facilitate the degree of compromise necessary in a complex
and advanced polity. Despite an obviously genuine concern with
improving democracy, the RCERPF failed to recognize that
contemporary social movements are keenly aware of the importance
of inclusivity, accommodation, communication and education, and
carry out these processes to a degree that far exceeds the
accomplishments of brokerage parties in this regard.71 Whereas
brokerage parties seem tied to an aggregative paradigm oriented
towards conlict mediation via the bartering of mutually acceptable
individual preferences, social movements appear more inclined to
invoke integrative strategies aimed at the formation of collective
consensus through deliberation. These strategies necessarily involve
the kind of continuous education and ongoing participation that
both traditional parties and Reform teledemocracy either lack, or
studiously avoid.72 In their recommendation to renovate existing
political parties so they might be more attractive to those citizens
who are now choosing to participate through alternative
organizations, the RCERPF implicitly devalues the contribution made
to Canadian democracy by these groups. Unfortunately, by
overlooking the fact that social movements are currently one of the
most democratic elements of Canadian political life, the RCERPF
missed an opportunity to investigate and develop sites of democratic
renaissance that are already thriving.73
The Reform Party, on
the other hand, is not unaware of the potential of social movements
to contribute to a substantial democratization of Canadian political
life, which is why they have expended so much sophisticated effort
to discredit and marginalize them. Reform's rhetorical commitment
to populism is a veneer which covers their fervent ideological
distaste for those who believe that democracy is more than merely
the sum of capitalism and the periodic opportunity to vote. In their
view, the free market distribution of private political and economic
values must be protected against those who would seek to alleviate
the inequities of such a system through concerted and organized
public activity. For Reform, the correlates of the binary opposition
between "ordinary Canadians" and "special interests" are an
opposition between "the people" and "the public" and, ultimately,
between democracy and the market. Thus, in contrast to the RCERPF,
the concern of the Reform party is not that social movements suffer
from too little democracy, but rather that they portend too much of
it. It only follows that, again differing from the RCERPF, Reform feels
that the solution to the problem of "special interests" is less, rather
than more, qualitative democracy.
In 1979, John Meisel felt
confident that, " ... no one is trying to eliminate Canadian parties, or
even to reduce their importance."74By this he meant that the
decline of brokerage parties was an incidental consequence of, among
other factors, the rise of interest groups, rather than a matter of
design. Times have certainly changed, but it is not Canadian interest
groups who are engaged in an explicit effort to undermine
traditional political parties. Nor is it the RCERPF, which went to great
lengths to assert its belief that parties are an indispensable
component of representative democracy in Canada. It is the Reform
party, which sees the retraction of not only interest groups, but also
of other organized mediating institutions -- including political
parties -- as part of its overall goal of eliminating those arenas and
institutions in which private choices are moderated by the
democratic consideration of public needs and priorities. Since the
arrival of Reform, Canadian political parties are no longer simply on
the decline -- they are, like organized social movements and other
public "spaces", under concerted attack.
As I have argued in
this paper, one of the chief tactics employed by Reform in its war on
the public sphere has been the use of highly sophisticated
communications technology to engage in mock exercises of direct
democracy that are little more than spectacles designed to raise the
party's profile as champions of participatory populism. It is
interesting to note that electronic media were identified by Meisel
as another primary contributor to the decline of party, and the
RCERPF firmly rejected direct democratic mechanisms such as
referenda and recall as solutions to Canada's democratic woes.75 The
question to be addressed is whether Reform's special way of
employing electronic media to encourage participation is the only
possible use for these instruments. Neither social movements nor
communications technology are going to disappear in the foreseeable
future. Developing a more progressive, democratic configuration of
the relationship between these two phenomena certainly seems a
worthwhile endeavour. It remains to be seen whether such an
arrangement is possible, and who will undertake it.
Appendix A
Referendum '94
June 15 - 20, 1994 -- North Vancouver, B.C.
Question 1: Should the age be reduced to 10 for charges to be laid
under the Young Offenders Act?
YES NO
Registered Voters: 3067 (67%) 1539 (33%)
Student Voters: 29 (66%) 15
(33%) MPs: 15 (94%)
1 ( 6%) Canada Opinion Poll: 1508 (69%) 678
(31%)
Question 2: Should there be automatic transfer to adult court for
serious crimes such as murder?
YES NO
Registered Voters: 4474 (97%) 125 ( 3%)
Student Voters: 38 (86%) 6 (14%)
MPs: 16 (100%) 0 ( 0%) Canada
Opinion Poll: 2105 (97%) 73 ( 3%)
Question 3: Should there be a special category in the Young Offenders
Act for repeat and dangerous offenders?
YES NO
Registered Voters: 4539 (99%) 53 ( 1%)
Student Voters: 40 (91%) 4 ( 9%) MPs:
15 (94%) 1 ( 6%)
Canada Opinion Poll: 2151 (99%) 20 ( 1%)
Total Registered Voters: 70 000
Appendix B
"Canada Speaks"
Sept. 26 - Oct. 3, 1994 -- Fort Calgary, Alberta
Question 1: Do you think the issue of national unity must be resolved
once and for all?
YES NO
Canada Opinion Poll (COP): 2011 (95%) 102 ( 5%)
Control Group (CG): 681 (84%) 131 (16%)
Question 2: Which is the best course of action for Canada?
COP CG
A) Complete separation of Quebec: 873 (32%) 146
(17%) B) A special association with an independent
Quebec: 72 ( 3%) 43 ( 5%) C) Changing the federal
system for all of Canada: 1639 (60%)
446 (52%) D) Continuing the present federal
system: 143 ( 5%) 221 (26%)
Question 3: Who should set the framework for Canada's future?
COP CG
A) The Canadian people through a bottom-up process:
2022 (96%) 639 (81%) B) Governments and political
leaders: 86 ( 4%) 151 (19%)
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The Recline of Party:
Armchair Democracy and The Reform Party of Canada
Darin David Barney Department of Political Science University of
Toronto
Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the British Columbia
Political Science Association, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby,
British Columbia
May 6, 1995.
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1 See Alan Cairns, "The Charter, Interest Groups, Executive
Federalism, and Constitutional Reform", After Meech Lake, David E.
Smith, et. al., eds., (Saskatoon: Fifth House, 1991); Alan Cairns,
"Political Science, Ethnicity and the Canadian Constitution",
Federalism and Political Community, David P. Shugarman & Reg
Whitaker, eds., (Peterborough: Broadview, 1990); and Allan Cairns &
Cynthia Williams, "Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in
Canada: An Overview", Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in
Canada, Research Studies, Royal Commission on the Economic Union
and Development Prospects for Canada, vol. 34, Alan Cairns &
Cynthia Williams, eds., (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services,
1985). 2 See Canada, Citizen's Forum on Canada's Future (Spicer
Commission), Citizen's Forum on Canada's Future: Report to the
People and Government of Canada, (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and
Services, 1991). 3 John Meisel, "The Decline of Party", Party Politics
In Canada, 6th ed., Hugh Thorburn, ed., (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall,
1991). This essay appeared originally in 1979, in an earlier edition
of this volume. 4 ibid., 178-80. 5 ibid., 179. 6 ibid., 181. 7 ibid., 198-
99. 8 Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing,
Reforming Electoral Democracy: Final Report, vol. 1, (Ottawa:
Minister of Supply and Services, 1991), 223. 9 ibid., 224. 10 ibid.,
226. 11 ibid., 225. 12 Andre Blais & Elisabeth Gidengil, Making
Representative Democracy Work: The Views of Canadians, Research
Studies, vol. 17, Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party
Financing, Toronto: Dundurn, 1991), 19. 13 ibid. 20. 14 RCERPF,
Reforming Electoral Democracy: Final Report, vol. 1, 227. 15 ibid.,
208. 16 ibid., 292. 17 ibid. 18 ibid., 228, 297. 19 ibid., 222. 20 ibid.,
228. 21 ibid., 222, 228. 22 ibid., 11. 23 ibid., 290-92. 24 ibid., 292. 25
Ted White, M.P. (Reform), North Vancouver. Interview conducted 22
June, 1994. 26 Ted White, interview conducted 14 June, 1994. 27
ibid. 28 Preston Manning, The New Canada, (Toronto: Macmillan,
1992), 324-25. 29 It should be noted that MT&T was involved in
each of the electronic leadership selection exercises alluded to in
note 6 above. In its promotional material, MT&T's teledemocracy
services division markets televoting as "democracy at your
fingertips". 30 Ted White, "A Week to Go", North Shore News, 8 June,
1994. The Minister's amendments included increases in the
maximum sentences for first and second degree murder to ten and
seven years respectively, an automatic elevation of 16 and 17-year-
old violent offenders to adult court, and an increase in the minimum
time before youth murderers could seek parole from five to ten
years. 31 Ted White, "Mixed Topics This Week", North Shore News, 1
June 1994. 32 Ted White, Referendum '94 (householder), May/June
1994. 33 Ted White, interview conducted 14 June, 1994. 34
Constituents who did not have access to a touch-tone phone were
encouraged to contact a 24- hour help line to make alternate
arrangements. 35 A charge of 95 cents was levied for each additional
minute a voter spent on the line. The amount of the user fee was
calculated as follows: the telephone company charged 35 cents per
minute for use of a 1-900 line, as well as 10% of the total billing
amount as a collection fee; the remainder of the fee was calculated
on the basis of the costs involved in administering the referendum.
In this case, MT&T assumed a substantial portion of these costs as a
promotional expense, thus artificially deflating the cost borne by the
voter. 36 This figure is approximate because the actual number of
respondents varied from one question to another: 4606 responded
to Question 1; 4599 to Question 2; and 4592 to Question 3. 37 Ted
White, press release, 21 June 1994. 38 Ted White, interview
conducted 22 June, 1994. 39 Reform Party of Canada, Canada is Our
Home, (national direct advertising supplement), October 1994. 40
ibid. 41 ibid. 42 The event was broadcast in English, with
simultaneous French translation available through some stations.
Due to satellite specification problems, the French and English sound
signals were temporarily reversed in a number of significant areas,
including Vancouver, Ottawa and parts of Toronto. This may have
caused some viewers to switch the program off prematurely. 43
William Gold, "Should a Leader be Manning the Phone?", Calgary
Herald, 5 October, 1994. 44 Although organizers estimated that only
50 out of the 140 audience members present were Reform party
members, assembled participants were characterized as "an
overwhelmingly pro-Reform audience." See, "Technical woes plague
Reform TV" Edmonton Journal, 4 October 1994. 45 As quoted in Kim
Lunman, "TV poll backs Reform stand", Calgary Herald, 4 October
1994. 46 ibid. Similar characterizations were presented in the
Edmonton Journal, op.cit., and in Joe Woodard, "Cross-country
feedback", British Columbia Report, 17 October, 1994, 12. A Reform
party leaflet promoting the National Tax Alert townhall referred to
Canada Speaks and asserted that, "Almost 10 000 Canadians took
advantage of this opportunity to voice their opinions." 47 Although
it should be noted that a precise measurement in this regard was not
technologically impossible. MT&T could have configured the system
to isolate the exact number of callers, but the Reform party was
apparently uninterested in this figure. 48 See variously: Christa
Daryl Slaton, Televote: Expanding Citizen Participation in a Quantum
Age, (New York: Praeger, 1992); Iain Maclean, Democracy and the
New Technology, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989); and Benjamin
Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age,
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). 49 For a thorough
critique of the history of the American televoting experience, see
Jeffrey Abramson, et. al., The Electronic Commonwealth: The Impact
of New Media Technologies on Democratic Politics, (New York: Basic
Books, 1988) and F. Christopher Arterton, Teledemocracy: Can
Technology Protect Democracy? (Newbury Park: SAGE, 1987). 50
Darin David Barney, "Pushbutton Populism: The Reform Party and the
Real World of Teledemocracy", unpublished paper to be presented at
the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association,
Montreal, June 1995, 10-20. 51 Following the Canada Speaks
televote, Preston Manning was quoted as saying: "These, of course,
are responses calling in to a television program. They are not a
scientific sample." As quoted in Susan Delancourt, "End Unity Debate,
Reform TV show told", Globe and Mail, 4 October 1994. Similar
comments were made about Referendum '94 by Ted White,
interview conducted 14 June 1994, and by the moderator of the
National Tax Alert electronic town hall, 12 February 1995.
52 Ted White, interview conducted 14 June 1994. 53 Ted White,
interview conducted 22 June 1994. 54 see "Evaluating
Teledemocracy" subsection above. 55 David Laycock, "Reforming
Canadian Democracy? Institutions and Ideology in the Reform Party
Project", Canadian Journal of Political Science, (XXVII:2, June 1994,
213-247), 214. 56 ibid., 217. According to this definition, feminist
women's groups, aboriginal organizations, organized labour,
multicultural and linguistic groups, directorates of crown
corporations, gays, lesbians, students, environmentalists, public
sector workers and even the province of Quebec are all deemed by
Reform to be "special" interests. 57 ibid., 217. 58 ibid., 219. 59 ibid.,
220. 60 ibid., 211, 230, 244. 61 ibid., 243. 62 ibid., 243. 63 ibid., 219.
64 See Christa Daryl Slaton, Televote, 184, 192; see also Richard S.
Hollander, Video Democracy: The Vote From Home Revolution, (Mt.
Airy: Lomond, 1985), 40. 65 Michael Pollard, interview conducted 14
June 1994. 66 Ted White, interview conducted 14 June 1994. 67
Jeffrey Abramson, et.al., The Electronic Commonwealth: The Impact
of New Media Technologies on Democratic Politics, (New York: Basic
Books, 1988), 21. 68 Ted White, interview conducted 22 June 1994.
69 Ted White, interview conducted 22 June 1994. 70 Murray
Edelman, Constructing the Political Spectacle, (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1988), 21. 71 Alexandra Dobrowolsky & Jane Jenson,
"Reforming the Parties: Prescriptions for Democracy", How Ottawa
Spends 1993-94: A More Democratic Canada ...? Susan D. Phillips, ed.,
(Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1993), 66. 72 For more on the
distinction between aggregative and integrative approaches, see
Michael M. Atkinson, "What Kind of Democracy Do Canadians Want?",
Canadian Journal of Political Science, XXVII:4, (December 1994, 717-
745), 723-4, 737. 73 Alexandra Dobrowolsky & Jane Jenson,
"Reforming the Parties: Prescriptions for Democracy", 45-6, 68.
74John Meisel, "The Decline of Party", 192. 75 ibid., 183-84; Royal
Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing, Reforming
Electoral Democracy: Final Report, vol. 2, (Ottawa: Minister of Supply
and Services, 1991), 230-47.
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