Dialogue: Anderton should free his political child

The Alliance's troubles are a further expression of the reassertion of the democratic impulse, writes RUSSEL NORMAN*.

Jim Anderton has decided to split from the Alliance because he can no longer control it. After nearly 13 years of the NewLabour Party and then the Alliance, he finally has a ruling council that will not do as he wishes.

The conflicts about policy (the war on terrorism) and strategy (relations with Labour) are just the particular territory over which this battle for control of the party is being waged.

The key power of the duly elected Alliance national council is the power to rank the party list. Mr Anderton knows that his allies, such as Matt Robson, are unlikely to get high on such a list, so he would rather attempt to kill his political child than let it go free.

With this imminent split, we may be witnessing the exhaustion of the tremendously creative wave of democratic reform generated in response to the radical Labour and National Governments from 1984 to 1993.

The new right policy revolution of that period was carried out against the wishes of both party members and the general population, seriously undermining the credibility of both the parliamentary democratic structures and the internal party democratic structures.

As American political scientist Jack Nagel put it: "The way that politicians enacted economic liberalisation was more crucial than its substance or even its questionable success. Their methods fundamentally disturbed the political culture and drastically weakened New Zealanders' confidence in their country's political institutions."

This produced a crisis in legitimacy for the three great democratic institutions that had governed New Zealand from the end of World War II: the Labour Party, the National Party and the first-past-the-post parliamentary system. Members rose up against parties that ignored them and citizens against a Parliament that ignored them.

Out of this crisis emerged three new institutional forms - the Alliance, New Zealand First and MMP. They were intensely creative responses that placed New Zealand several standard deviations outside the political norm for English-speaking OECD countries.

The common denominator between each of these new institutions was an attempt to reassert democratic control after the blitzkrieg of the Rogernomics-Ruthanasia years.

It is recognising this democratic impulse that is key to understanding the current troubles in the Alliance.

Many commentators, in seeking to understand the break-up of the Alliance (and New Zealand First), draw attention to the pressures that coalition government places on the internal politics of the minority coalition partner.

But if coalition government inevitably throws up policy conflicts within the smaller partner, these conflicts need not necessarily result in a split. It all depends on how it's handled within the party.

And it is here that the democratic impulse that drove the formation of the Alliance came into conflict with its internal democratic deficit.

While researching the Alliance, I was repeatedly confronted by Alliance members who wanted to have some say over the party but felt, and indeed were, thwarted by the ruling group around Mr Anderton. This resulted in a tremendous waste of talent as members were excluded.

The late Bruce Jesson, the central figure in saving the Ports of Auckland from privatisation, used to call the leadership of the Alliance a "cabal" - others called the phenomenon "Jimism".

Mr Jesson found himself on the outer, as did former Cabinet minister Phil Amos, political commentator Chris Trotter and a host of others.

In fact, trying to track the political trajectory of those close to Mr Anderton was akin to reconstructing those Stalinist portraits where various people are airbrushed out.

Consider this: of the 12 people who constituted the core of the 1990 NewLabour Party campaign committee, only Matt Robson remains a loyal Jimist (along with Jim himself, of course) and eight became dissidents (two I failed to locate).

Of course, this is hardly new stuff and it is much broader than just one man. Robert Michels, the founder of the study of party organisation, wrote back in 1911 that social democrats may talk of democracy, but in a political party, democracy is not for home consumption but is rather an article made for export.

Peter Fraser, the wartime Labour Prime Minister, told the Labour conference: "I would be dishonest if I let the conference believe that any resolution passed compelled the Government to do anything".

Prime Minister David Lange nicely echoed this when he said that the Government was prepared to go on ignoring party remits for years and years, if necessary.

The parties on the right of politics are no better. There is a longstanding tradition within political parties of limited internal democracy.

This has become particularly acute in the Alliance because, while it was formed around the principle of democracy, Mr Anderton refuses to brook any significant democratic limitation to his authority.

Anyone concerned with political democracy should be concerned about the ructions in the Alliance as part of a broader problem of democracy. Mr Anderton is replicating the democratic deficit that led him to leave Labour in 1989.

Of the three institutions that developed in response to this deficit, New Zealand First and the Alliance are now in serious trouble and the third, MMP, will be weaker as a result. If only the Greens and Act remain, MMP becomes vulnerable.

National and Labour would have fewer democratic restrictions without MMP.

The reason this whole process started was that their party members found it difficult to control the leaders, and this is unchanged.

Labour and National are professionalised parties that rely on unions, business and wealthy individuals to fund their campaigns.

They rely on professional pollsters and spin doctors to shape their message and on professional analysts to define their policy. Rank and file members have little say.

Without the competition of the smaller parties, the limitations of MMP or rigorous internal democracy, there is nothing to stop Labour and National doing 1984-1993 all over again.

For the sake of democracy, Mr Anderton should do the fatherly thing and welcome his new, free-spirited teenager - even if he does not always agree with it.

* Russel Norman studied the Alliance's internal organisation while completing a PhD in politics at Macquarie University in Sydney.

He now works in the Green Party's parliamentary office in Wellington.