The phenomenon of political fatigue is of particular concern in Germany, for obvious historical reasons; it is therefore worth pausing to consider the evidence in the German case more closely. It would certainly be misleading to lay too much stress on the fall in the percentage of Germans declaring themselves ‘interested in politics’ from 57 per cent in 1990 to just 40 per cent in 1997. German reunification was responsible for boosting public interest in politics after 1989, an effect which wore off in 1992 but was still making itself felt in 1994 and 1995. In any case, positive interest in politics had been significantly below 40 per cent in the 1950s and 1960s (in June 1952 only 27 per cent of the population declared themselves interested in politics).121 Nevertheless, there has undoubtedly been a marked change in attitudes towards politicians as a group in the past twenty years. In 1972 some 63 per cent of West Germans answered ‘Yes’ to the question ‘Do you believe that one needs considerable abilities to become a Bundestag deputy in Bonn?’ Just 23 per cent said no. In 1996, by contrast, 25 per cent of those asked said yes while 59 per cent said no. The process of disillusionment has been even more rapid in the former East German states since their accession to the Federal Republic. In 1991 some 44 per cent of former East Germans answered ‘Yes’ to the question about Bundestag deputies’ abilities; by 1996 the figure was down to 22 per cent.122 More than two-thirds of Germans surveyed in 1995 thought that a Bundestag deputy’s most important role was to represent citizens’ wishes and interests, but only a third believed that their elected representatives actually gave this function priority. Almost as many believed that deputies cared as much about ‘the realization of their own personal ideas and goals’. And more than half of those questioned in the same survey thought their elected representatives were overpaid, while 78 per cent were opposed to a decision to increase parliamentary salaries – a point we shall return to in the next chapter.123
The periodic surges of disillusionment with all four major political parties are also striking. In 1983 just 29 per cent of West German voters expressed themselves ‘disillusioned’ with all the big parties; ten years later that figure reached a peak of 57 per cent. Although disillusionment declined sharply in 1993 and 1994, it rose back above 50 per cent in April 1997. East German attitudes have moved in an almost identical way since 1990.124 Perhaps even more perplexing is the decline in public understanding of the German system of proportional representation, which gives each voter two votes, one for a constituency candidate and one for a party list; the latter vote determines the actual balance of the parties in the Bundestag. This basic fact was understood by 54 per cent of voters in 1980. In recent surveys, however, only around a quarter of voters are aware that the second vote is the decisive one.125
It would be quite overblown to describe these as ‘Weimar symptoms’. The majority of today’s Germans have been taught and have learned from the past to reject anti-democratic political options, especially those dressed up in nationalist or racialist garb. In any case, the phenomenon of Politikverdrossenheit is not peculiarly German. When French voters were asked in November 1999 how they reacted when they thought of politics, 57 per cent replied ‘with suspicion’, 27 per cent ‘with boredom’ and 20 per cent ‘with disgust’. Only 25 per cent thought they were well represented by a political party or leader.126 Nevertheless, it is always worth recalling that the most spectacular collapse of any democracy was preceded by at least some of these signs of malaise: electoral volatility, splintering of parties and public perceptions of political corruption.
There is, however, a third reason why governments may find it increasingly difficult to persuade voters that they ‘feel good’. That is the simple fact that to do so – especially in the face of diminishing returns from materialism and mounting ‘politics fatigue’ – may call for advertising campaigns more expensive than modern political parties can actually afford.
In 1956 the Democrat Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson told his party’s convention: ‘The idea that you can merchandize candidates for high office like breakfast cereal – that you can gather votes like box tops – is … the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.’127 He retained his dignity, but lost two successive elections to Dwight Eisenhower. Perhaps, as the feelgood theory suggests, Ike owed his victory to the rapid growth of the American economy in the 1950s. But the possibility that he owed it to superior campaigning cannot be ruled out. It is to that cash nexus – the link between party finance and electoral success – we now turn.
9
The Silverbridge Syndrome: Electoral Economics
‘It’s the game I looks to. If the game dies away, it’ll never be got up again; – never. Who’ll care about elections then?’
TROLLOPE, Can You Forgive Her1
When Anthony Trollope’s dashing young hero Phineas Finn stood for parliament as a Liberal, the election was a foregone conclusion. There were only 307 registered electors and ‘the inhabitants were so far removed from the world, and were so ignorant of the world’s good things, that they knew nothing about bribery’. In any case, the local grandee, the Earl of Tula, withdrew his support from the Conservative incumbent, his brother, with whom he had quarrelled.2 However, when Trollope himself became a parliamentary candidate – the year after he had completed Phineas Finn – he was less fortunate. The constituency he contested was Beverley, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, one of the most notoriously corrupt in England. Since arriving on the scene in 1857 the Conservative member, Sir Henry Edwards, had systematically ‘bought’ the electors, to the extent that ‘the Working Classes [newly enfranchised in 1867] look[ed] upon the privilege of the vote only as a means to obtain money’.3 The publicans too were paid by Edwards to dispense free beer. Even in municipal elections, the Conservative agents would sit in the aptly named Golden Ball tavern, dispensing coins and carefully noting the names of the recipients in a book. Trollope spent £400 on his campaign, but came bottom of the poll with 740 votes, compared with Edwards’s 1,132. So brazen was the bribery that a Royal Commission was set up to investigate the Beverley election. It found that more than 800 voters had been bribed, and duly disfranchised the constituency.4
To read Trollope’s fictionalized versions of this experience in The Prime Minister and The Duke’s Children is to realize how little English political life had changed between the 1750s and the 1860s. In the imaginary constituency of ‘Silverbridge’, candidates are forced to hand over cheques for £500 to local attorneys, ‘honest citizens’ brazenly ask for ‘the smallest pecuniary help’ in return for their votes, the local brewer is defeated by the protégé of the local aristocrat and a defeated candidate threatens to horsewhip one of his rivals.5 Two major Reform Acts had been passed in 1832 and 1867; yet Trollope’s Silverbridge seems only marginally less disreputable than the Hanoverian election so vividly depicted by William Hogarth in 1753.
Nothing of the sort would happen in a modern-day Silverbridge, it might be thought. These days an MP can be turned out of the House of Commons if he or she is found to have exceeded the legally fixed maximum for campaign expenditures even by a few pounds. And of course none of the money today’s candidates spend goes directly into the pockets of voters. Yet there are other respects in which the politics of the early twenty-first century do recall the age of Trollope. Votes in modern democracies are not bought directly; but money still has to be spent to secure them. Instead of being bribed, today’s elector is badgered into voting by a barrage of political advertisements. And it is the rising cost of this process, more than the moral deficiencies of individual politicians, which is causing new strains of corruption to spread insidiously through the body politic.
POLITICS AS BUSINESS
On the morning after the Labour Party’s May 1997 election victory the International Herald Tribune hailed the election of ‘Blair & Co.’ Three months later the new prime minister gave an insight into his own thinking when justifying the use of ‘citizens’ juries’ to sample public opinion on specific policies: ‘If you’re
running a business like Sainsbury’s or Marks and Spencer, you keep having to test what you’re doing.’ As the Guardian commented: ‘CEO Tony Blair wants to keep his job, so he gives the customers what they really want.’6 The Observer, meanwhile, urged Blair to manage his party ‘like a modern company’, giving everyone ‘a stake in the new governing enterprise’. Such rhetoric was rapidly matched by action. There have never been so many Labour ministers drawn from the world of business as there were in Tony Blair’s government in 1997. The Conservatives, the undisputed party of business in Britain since the days of Stanley Baldwin, hurried to imitate this new model of the party as business. In the wake of their crushing defeat, they turned for leadership to a former McKinsey’s management consultant and the chairman of the Asda supermarket chain. William Hague and Archie Norman hurried to give the party a new managerial structure which vested supreme decision-making power in a ‘Board’.7
This is not a peculiarly British phenomenon. All over the world, the language of management and the language of politics are tending to converge. Ross Perot’s bids for the presidency in 1992 and 1996 were based on the idea that only a businessman could ‘turn the US round’, as if it were some enormous but unprofitable company. In July 1999 the chief executive of Siemens urged the German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to base his fiscal policy on the idea of ‘benchmarking … a familiar concept in companies, but … less usual in the political world’.8 In the same month the head of the Russian security council, Boris Berezovsky, explained why he believed more businessmen should seek election to the parliament: ‘Crudely put, capital hires the authorities for work. The form of hiring is called elections. And so far as elections take place in a competitive way, then this choice is rational.’9 Berezovsky himself made millions in car dealing and advertising before entering politics. The Wall Street Journal was saying much the same when it described ideas as ‘the only commodity in the political marketplace … The best ideas are what sell, the consumers are the voters, and they make their selections in the voting booth.’10 A widespread assumption is that businessmen can bring to politics distinctive skills, acquired in the corporate sphere but applicable in government: this is the essence of the media mogul Silvio Berlusconi’s political appeal in Italy. In its extreme form, however, this is reduced to the notion that politics itself is simply a business.
But how far has the winning of votes become a business like any other? Perhaps the best way to pursue this analogy is to think of elections as takeover battles for the control of a major utility which, in view of its core business, we might call Welfare plc. Welfare plc is a troubled behemoth, despite having a near monopoly in a number of mass markets, a vast client base of consumers (taxpayers and their dependants), most of whom are also shareholders (voters), a large number of whom receive dividends known as benefits. The company provides consumers with a wide range of services. It runs hospitals, schools and an immense road network. It is also a security company operating the police, prison and armed services. And it has controlling stakes in a range of other businesses, from universities to a broadcasting company. The problem with Welfare plc is that in nearly every year since 1973 it has made a loss. In order to carry on paying dividends it has been forced (a) to slash capital investment; (b) to put up the prices of its services across the board; (c) to impose periodic pay freezes on its huge workforce; (d) to reduce the real value of dividends and to cease paying them altogether to certain classes of shareholder; and (e) to increase central control of its regional and local branches. Small wonder that consumers (around 58 million), shareholders (43 million) and employees (3.6 million) are all dissatisfied.
Now turn to the political parties. These are much smaller entities, whose prime objective is to win and retain control of Welfare plc. To do this, the main opposition party has to wage a protracted takeover campaign, pointing out the shortcomings of the current management. The aim of these campaigns is to persuade the shareholders (voters) to vote in favour of their bid at the next quinquennial general meeting (general election). If the opposition party succeeds in this, there follows a merger between it and Welfare plc, as a result of which the board of Welfare plc is replaced by the board of the opposition. It is also possible for the opposition to assist its takeover campaign by gaining control of Welfare plc subsidiaries (such as local government) and infiltrating its workforce, though in recent years the centralization of public finance and the decline of the public sector unions have made these tactics less effective.
One of the most obvious differences between the business of politics and real business is the inherent implausibility of nearly all takeover bids. In opposition, a political party is little more than a cross between a think tank, an advertising agency and a leisure club (though the last of these functions has all but withered away). Unless it has substantial local or regional power, the opposition party is not in fact engaged in the business of governing that it claims to be good at. In power, however, a party is charged with managing the vast corporation that is the modern state. As in the nineteenth century, voters must be persuaded to change their allegiances, but this can no longer be done simply by providing free beer at the hustings. Instead they must be wooed by promises of future improvements in the management of Welfare plc, whether in the form of higher investment, lower prices (taxes), better conditions for employees, higher dividends (benefits) or some kind of restructuring to enhance efficiency. The governing party, however, can offer all of these immediately; moreover, it has far greater resources to carry out research and to propagate policy.
Figure 22. The real cost of British elections: candidates’ declared general election expenses, 1880–1997
Sources: Pinto-Duschinsky, British Political Finance, p. 27; Butler and Butler, British Political Facts, p. 241; Butler and Kavanagh, British General Election, p. 223.
It is here – in the realm of finance – that the crucial difference between politics and business is to be found. Perhaps the most striking feature of modern democracy is the wide discrepancy between the budgets of parties and that of the state they seek to manage. While the latter has, as we have seen, tended to rise in relation to gross domestic product over the past century, the former have declined dramatically. Total expenditure by candidates on the 1880 election exceeded £1.7 million.11 In 1997 prices, this amounts to over £20 per vote, compared with a figure in 1997 of 42 pence. In relation to GDP, expenditure by candidates on general elections has fallen by an astonishing 98 per cent since 1880 (Figure 22).
Nevertheless, there has been an undeniable rise in the operating costs of parties in the past two decades. They now rely less on volunteers working for nothing and more on professional administrators and consultants. As is well known, the 1997 election was significantly more expensive than that of 1992. The Conservatives spent £24 million, Labour spent £17 million and the Liberal Democrats just under £3 million – in all £44 amillion, compared with total expenditures by the three major parties of £32 million five years before.12 Figure 23 adjusts for inflation to show the marked real increase in election expenditure by the major parties since the 1970s. In 1997 the Conservatives spent nearly three times what they had spent in February 1974, as did Labour. Even as a proportion of GDP, total party expenditures have risen by almost 55 per cent since 1979. Moreover, these figures do not take account of the rising costs of day-today party management. When figures for central party expenditure, including routine, non-election payments, are analysed (Figure 24), the upward trajectory of party expenditures is confirmed, most obviously for the Labour Party. The Conservatives too experienced a clear upward shift in their routine expenditures from the mid-1980s.
Figure 23. Total general election expenditure of the three main British parties, 1964–1997 (thousands of 1997 pounds)
Sources: Webb, ‘Party Organizational Change’, p. 112; Butler and Kavanagh, British General Election, pp. 223, 242. Figures deflated using cost-of-living index.
This problem is far from unique to Britain. In Europe the pat
tern has been the same. Austrian campaign expenses doubled between 1975 and 1990; so did those in Sweden between 1982 and 1988. Irish parties have also been spending more and more on electioneering: Fine Gael’s budget for this quadrupled in real terms between 1969 and 1989.13 (The Netherlands is the exception that proves the rule: campaigns there seem to have got slightly cheaper.14)
Figure 24. Conservative and Labour parties, central expenditure (routine and election), 1900–1992 (thousands of 1997 pounds)
Sources: Pinto-Duschinsky, British Political Finance, tables 11, 15, 21, 23, 25, 28, 31, 38, and ‘Trends in British Party Funding’, tables 1, 2; Butler and Butler, British Political Facts, pp. 133, 151.
The American case is especially notorious. According to estimates in mid-1999, the campaign to elect President Clinton’s successor could cost as much as 50 per cent more than the 1995–6 campaign.15 Candidates for the United States House and Senate spent $459 million in the 1987–8 two-year election cycle, more than double the figure of ten years before. Candidates in presidential primaries spent a further $250 million; while the presidential candidates themselves spent $90 million.16 The equivalent figures for 1995–6 were $765 million, around $244 million and at least $153 million.17 The round numbers are daunting by European standards. The British general election cost the three major parties little more than $66 million; yet the total cost of the federal electoral process in 1995–6 (including primaries, presidential race and elections to Congress and the Senate) exceeded $2 billion.
The Cash Nexus: Money and Politics in Modern History, 1700-2000 Page 31