I’ve been thinking recently about what makes a good political party (it may or may not have something to do with a recent federal election) and I’ve come up with a tripartite model.
The first is the part of values. It can be thought of as the character or ethos of the party. First among these, whatever other values the party might hold, must be an honest and full commitment to the public good, without placing the interests of any individual or group above those of the commonwealth.
Exactly how best to pursue the public good is needless to say a matter of considerable disagreement. It is the struggle over the meaning and value of ideas like freedom and justice. It is the struggle over how the fruits of society should be distributed. And the struggle over what kinds of things it is legitimate for the government to control and what kinds are not.
The second is the part of policy, the specific actions that a party would take in government, the laws that would be enacted, the programs to be implemented by government agencies. This is the part of instantiating values in the world.
The third part is strategy, the way in which a party comes to power, the segments of the electorate appealed to, the deals made with other parties or organisations, the methods in campaigning, electioneering, and advertising considered permissible.
A party must start from their values. While there may be feedback between policy and strategy neither of them should determine values.
When strategy is placed first, this is the result of the professionalisation of democratic politics. It is the neoliberal model of politics where the policy preferences of the voters are determined beforehand, set in stone and parties must compete with each other to offer the most enticing policy package as if they were selling used cars.
When policy takes the lead, this is technocracy. Values are somehow taken to be common and political questions become about who is more rational, who has the better experts, who is more evidence-based. The main virtue that needs to be displayed (or its absence criticised) is competence. Technocratic debates are anti-democratic because they obscure the true differences in values that underlie different policy positions and they alienate most voters who lack the technical expertise to follow the arguments.
And when values are held without thought to strategy, this might be called virtue-signalling. Values are held impotently. They are performed, the purpose of this performance being the social or psychological effect they produce for the signaller rather than the achievement of real positive change in the world.
The usefulness of this model at first glance is the acknowledgement that modern parties spend too much of their day to day thinking deep in the domains of policy and strategy while the fundamental character of the project itself languishes without consideration or reflection.