A reflection on emergent behaviour in democracy
I watched Total Control recently on iview. I thought it was a great show, and enjoyed the political intrigue, drama, subtle lessons on how Australian democracy, politics, and government works today, and Indigenous representation.
If you haven't watched it and want to, stop reading here! Spoilers ahead.
The second and third season revolve around independents and fighting back against the political party system that exists today. A thought that struck me while watching the drama play out and the concept of an independent alliance unfolded was that Political Parties are not an inherent trait of the system.
I mean this in the sense that what is written is for each region of the country adjusted for population to have a representative, a seat at the table, and that together they choose a strong leader and then form government, negotiating between running the country and handling emerging external situations with the internal developments and needs of their respective communities.
The concept of a political party is not written down, but emerges as a result of human behaviour (and the fact lobby groups existed when Australian's democracy was formed). The dysfunction and inability for a government to run in today's political climate is not fully the result of the system, but the way we think about and treat it.
Take the concept of a stronghold. Sometimes a party holds a seat for ideological reasons. If everyone illudes themselves into believing the seat is lost then no one competes for it. However, at some point that seat is ripe for a local voice to stand up and challenge the status quo and rightly so.
Now, when you have a group of individuals trying to form government things become very difficult; and one thing the show seemed to suggest is that the role and pressure of government is somewhat different to the management of the development of the nation.
Government exists to unite a group of individuals, resources, land, and culture and represent them on a world stage. To put it one way. Government in a sense is a response to interacting on a larger and larger scale. Towns can negotiate with towns. A city to a city. However, to represent millions of people across kilometres of land to another group of people that are millions in number and have their own land, culture, identity, etc. Things become a bit difficult one on one. Thus government. A result of the progression of social contracts. Democracy too is a result of a communal approach to governance, as compared to say dictatorship which is a result of a authoritative or power approach.
Then due to a complex economy we need to summarise and present our assets and resources on a global stage, pool resources to invest in larger projects or shared resources (like a military). So the government goes from representing people to needing control and power over aspects of society.
Then you have laws, rules, and think the central group that already exists should probably just watch over that as well. However, notice we didn't centralise it completely. I'm sure there are complex historical reasons why the three state system exists as it does, but simply put one possible reason is the separation of core, shared, but not necessarily dependant systems.
You can represent the people without controlling assets and investment, and without controlling the judicial system. Yet the party system overthrows this slightly. Blurring the line between each branch. An interesting sentence from the Wikipedia on the Australian Cabinet is that senators are not explicitly allowed or expected hold portfolios. Some are actively protesting it. Yet that is how the system currently behaves where any elected official can hold ministerial position and the party system naturally provides a pool of elected officials from both houses.
Finally, as Australia considers independence and becoming a republic; who will be our true Government? Without a royalty living in another country having the final say will we be able to truly separate the running of state from 'politics' or are we doomed to share America's present issues of Presidential overstep and power.
Welp enough politics for one day. Thanks for reading :)