Dialogue: Will the Alliance survive? Maybe by a Harre's breadth

By TIM BALE*

Tales of serious differences within the Alliance over its strategic direction could be wildly exaggerated.

Perhaps Jim Anderton really has convinced his heterodox caucus and his highly astute party president that once the Kiwi Bank and paid parental leave are up and running, the Alliance will eventually gain credit for "keeping the Government honest" as well as in power.

But let's hope not. Because, if there really is no argument going on, the Alliance could be in trouble. At least if its members are arguing, it means they are facing up to the big question that may decide the party's prospects as a vital component in the still-fragile pluralism that has emerged under MMP.

What exactly is the Alliance now for?

Given that it appears to have achieved its (albeit unintended) "historic mission" of rescuing Labour from the electoral suicide that would have resulted had it not pulled back from neo-liberal nirvana-seeking, what is there left for it to do that Labour can't - or won't - do by itself?

Is it merely a case of brand management? Do the left and right under MMP simply need, like the makers of soap powder, a segmented range of products to ensure complete market coverage - even though those products do basically the same thing?

Or is the Alliance more than the Dynamo to Labour's Cold Power? If so, what is the core problem and core constituency out there that it - and only it - can attract and serve? Does it have an identity and an approach that will help it to recruit and retain the active members that small parties still need to survive and prosper?

Most pressing of all: to what extent are the answers to all these questions affected by the Alliance being - or not being - in Government?

A glance overseas shows that we are by no means unusual among countries with proportional systems in having a significant party to the left of our larger, often governing, centre-left party. Indeed, many of them command a vote share not dissimilar to that of the Alliance.

Take the most recent elections in Scandinavia. Alliance equivalents in Norway took 6 per cent of the vote, in Denmark 7.5 per cent, in Finland 11 per cent and in Sweden 12 per cent.

And it's not just in Scandinavia that socialists of the left do reasonably well. Next to Spain and Germany, where they took around 5 per cent, in Portugal the "Red-Greens" took 9 per cent while their Dutch counterparts won 7 per cent. In France, the more traditional PCF took 10 per cent.

What makes us more unusual, however, is that our left party participates in that Government with its more centrist big sister - a situation replicated today only in France and in Finland.

Most left parties are acutely aware that they often do best when a centre-left government in which they play no part is seen to be drifting too far right. This helps them to carve a niche as defenders of the interests of the lower-paid and welfare-users, especially women and young people - a strategy seemingly associated here with the combative, but effective, Laila Harre.

It certainly accounted for the large swing to the Swedish Left Party in 1998. Instead of going into a coalition, however, the party chose simply to cooperate with the minority Labour Government.

This has allowed it to influence policy in return for confidence and supply but still maintain its integrity and identity - and, if opinion polls are accurate, to increase its support.

Where left parties have joined governments, the impact on them has been mixed at best. True, the Finnish Left Wing League seems to be keeping its end up and signs are that the French PCF isn't yet suffering quite as catastrophically as it did when it last got into bed with the Socialists, in the 1980s.

Both have the advantage, though, of being just one of a genuine range of parties in coalition - multiplicity making, paradoxically perhaps, for the easier maintenance of separate identities.

A far more worrying lesson comes from Ireland, where in 1994 the fledgling Democratic Left entered a coalition with Labour and another larger party.

Objectively, everything seemed to go well. The economy boomed, the party's ministerial performance was judged favourably by pundits and public alike, and it was able to point to concrete achievements, such as increases in child benefit, anti-discrimination measures and a national anti-poverty strategy.

Yet when the elections came round, the league's vote nearly halved to a derisory 2.5 per cent. Even though, under STV, the personal reputation of its leadership earned it four seats, continued parliamentary representation could not prevent the party's quick collapse and its merger with Labour.

Inquests in Ireland suggest that the party parliamentary leadership's rush to get into Government led it to ignore the need to maintain a strong organisation outside Parliament and prevented it from mobilising on those issues that would have helped it to forge a clear identity and a secure, albeit limited, class base.

And because policy-making inevitably switched from open party forums to closed Government processes, the party found it difficult to claim credit for its own initiatives. Even where it could, such policies were played down by Government media managers concerned not to offend business sentiment.

While it is tempting to draw parallels - on the last point, the lack of fanfare accorded last week to Laila Harre's victory on the minimum wage springs to mind, for instance - there is no inevitability that the same path will be trodden.

The Alliance would argue that it has deeper social roots, a bigger membership and superior leadership. That may mean it will get more credit for the "responsible" role it is playing than its Irish counterpart.

Having rescued Labour, the Alliance's other historical mission has clearly been to rescue MMP from the disrepute into which it fell under National and New Zealand First.

It is to be hoped, however, that providing security and stability to a Government that perhaps it should never have joined in the first place won't earn the Alliance a place in the history books at the expense of its own future.

* Tim Bale lectures in European politics at Victoria University's political science school.