Political parties are not convenience stores

There’s a pretty excellent post by Bruce M. Hicks over at This Magazine today. In just a few short paragraphs, Hicks lays out a lot of great ideas and leaves the reader with a great deal to think about.

The article itself is about the Canadian political parties and a sudden shift in their attitudes towards the environment. British Columbia’s NDP is singled out for vowing to eliminate a carbon tax, a move so at odds with their traditional platform that environmental groups and progressive think tanks “were put in the awkward position of having to enter the campaign to challenge the NDP.” Indeed, Hicks asserts that “the NDP across Canada appears to have abandoned the environmental file.”

Hicks says it’s the Green Party that’s prompted the shift. “It doesn’t matter that the Greens have yet to score an actual electoral victory,” he explains, because “their simple presence in the campaign has altered the other parties’ strategies.” This is where some interesting ideas come into play. Hicks points to a concept of spatial location which suggests that the ideal location for a business is as close as possible to its competitor, so that it can attract everyone coming from one direction. “That way, when someone leaves the house to purchase, say, a carton of milk, they will stop at your store because it is closer, even if just by a few feet.”

When you apply the same principle to politics, you can begin to understand why the Democrats and Republicans can have such similar policies and still be seen as representing the left and the right. The greater number of viable political parties in Canada should mean that it’s easier for each of them to stick to their values as they compete for votes, but as Hicks argues, the emergence of the Green Party has forced the other parties, and the NDP in particular, to reposition themselves on a number of key issues.

“The NDP needs to ask itself what it believes in,” Hicks concludes. “Does the party want voters to walk the extra distance for their policies because they’re the right ones – or do they simply want to offer policies that are convenient?” Hicks draws a particularly compelling contrast between economics and politics by stating that the former is based on the idea of people making simple, selfish decisions, while democracy itself is based on the notion of people choosing on behalf of the common good. The choice of one strategy over the other, among other things, says a lot about a party’s view of the voters, not to mention its chances of winning them.

Many thanks to Eva for posting a link to the story this morning. Meanwhile, there’s a discussion unfolding on the Green Party blog responding to an article in the Post, which suggests that the NDP might pursue a merger with the Greens. The response is basically a bunch of grandstanding, but in this context it’s interesting reading.

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