It’s very popular all over the democratic world to deplore those damn politicians. A certain populist line of thinking goes, if only we could get people who aren’t politicians into power, then they would fix the mess. Sometimes it really seems as if proponents of this line of thinking believe that politicians are some other sort of species.
Of course, very often people running for office who run as “not politicians” find themselves captured by bureaucrats, interest groups, or completely ineffective upon getting into office, because they don’t really know how to control government. The alternative is that they quickly end up being very “politician-y”.
And so the cycle begins again, “the damn politicians have mucked it all up, let’s get someone in who is for real this time.”
Getting the occasional person with little political experience into office can be a good thing to do from time to time, but the truth is that politics, like any profession, requires you to develop a set of skills and networks to be able to do the job well.
But what is the job?
Representation
Well, the idea of representative democracy is basically that the politicians represent the voters. Different political figures understand representation differently. Some believe that this means doing what your voters want on every issue. Others take the view that your job is to use your judgment, and that voters elect you on your character and broad promises rather than on the specifics of each issue.
There are arguments for both these views, but the real reason most voters feel disconnected or unrepresented by politicians is, I believe, because there are far too few elected officials, especially in our parliament.
Let me back-track for a minute to examine the psyche of this creature known as the politician.
Politicians are people too. Some do it for the fame, some for the money, some because they believe in a vision for society and some because they believe they can uplift their communities. However, even the most ideological, corrupt, or self-interested political figure knows that you need to be in power to achieve any of these aims, and that means, in a democracy, appealing to at least some voters.
Politicians do often try to represent voters, or at the very least, what they think would be good for voters.
In practice, however, politicians struggle to represent people, partly because knowing what voters want is tricky. Even high-quality polling, which is expensive, can mislead you, because a badly-formed poll question or the tendency of people to be untruthful with pollsters can slip you up. Another problem is that sometimes people will say they support one thing in a poll, and then when that thing becomes a reality, they will change their minds.
Loudest and most organised
As a result, politicians usually end up listening to the loudest and most organized groups in their environment. This is why even completely amoral, unideological, self-interested politicians who only care about re-election can become captured by ideological interest groups or narrowly focused factions. Interest groups can convince you that they are true representatives of “the majority” or they can promise you access to donors and finance in return for your support.
What does this have to do with there being too few people in Parliament?
Well, these problems of unrepresentative political leaders get worse, the more people each individual politician represents. The best way for political leaders to represent the wishes of their communities is to be in touch with them. The more people you represent, the more disconnected you are from them, simply because the bigger the size of your constituency, the more diverse and complex it becomes. Politicians in these environments will listen more closely to the loud organized voices and often not represent their voters.
Now this all sounds like a problem for constituency-based political systems like in the UK or America. In South Africa we use a list system, where you vote for a party, and it gets the number of MPs in proportion to the number of votes. Constituencies are so vital for political organisation and operations that all the major political parties in South Africa actually assign MPs to constituencies they themselves draw. You may not realise it, but there is in fact likely an ANC, DA, and EFF MP who has your area as their “constituency”. Whilst this would work better if we did have some sort of constituency system in our elections, even without it the ratio of politicians to people is important.
But what of the cost? Don’t we already spend way too much on politicians already?
Well for MPs, not really.
Real problem
The real problem with government spending is not how much we spend on MPs or even ministers. Ordinary MPs earn about R1.1 million a year in total renumeration, including salary, free flights to Cape Town, medical aid, and pension fund payments. Ministers and committee chairs can earn double or triple that. By contrast, there are around 50 000 government employees earning over R1 million a year, compared to 400 MPs.
Parliament’s budget is around R2 billion a year. Less than half of that is spent on politicians’ salaries. Government’s national budget is around R1.6 trillion a year, so even the whole cost of Parliament is relatively modest in the grand scheme of things.
No, the real costs to the South African taxpayer are to be found in procurement budgets inflated by BEE, corruption and waste, and the enormous expenditure on civil servants. More than 13% of South Africa’s GDP is spent on paying government employees!
Adding another 200, or even 400 MPs would not overly strain the fiscus, and if more MPs resulted in better decision-making in Parliament, they could in theory even pay for themselves.
I am however, not naïve. If tomorrow we just doubled the number of MPs, all that would happen is that political parties would have more patronage to give out to their followers. Rather, growing the size of Parliament is one reform, or a package of reforms, which South Africa should adopt for a more effective parliament.
These would include growing the power of individual MPs to hold officials to account and make decisions, and introducing a mixed constituency/list system like at municipal level, where we have both political party lists and constituencies. And of course, this would all have to be accompanied by voters holding our MPs to a higher standard and punishing them for poor behaviour.
There are of course no perfect solutions. Unfortunately no matter the reforms one makes, we will still have to live in a world with politicians, as most people have had to since the invention of agriculture. The better we understand our political leaders, and the better they understand us, the better our government will work.
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend.