Political Culture More Important Than Formal Structures

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian       

Rio de Janeiro and Charlottetown both have traffic lights at major intersections. However, in Rio there are often police officers at the intersections as well, something Charlottetown manages without.

Why? Because otherwise - as I noticed when I was in Brazil years ago -- many drivers in Rio would, after looking to see no oncoming traffic on the cross street, continue driving right through the intersection.

In Charlottetown, not many people would do that, even in the dead of night and with no traffic on either the cross street or on the one on which they were travelling.

It all boils down to culture, and driving habits are a part of culture, of course.

People's attitudes and values regarding their political system are what we term political culture.

It's often the most volatile countries, ones with little sense of overarching national consciousness or a democratic political culture, that have the most stringent rules and regulations on the books.

Their political structures usually include intricate power-sharing arrangements between identifiable ethnic, linguistic, and religious communities or rival regions, including broad governing coalitions.

Their electoral procedures are designed to be as ‘fair' and ‘inclusive' as possible, through the crafting of complex formulas, such as the alternative vote, single-transferable vote, two-round runoff, proportional representation, and mixed-member-proportional systems.

This ensures that most political parties on the ballot - and there are always many -- gain seats in their legislatures, allowing disparate groups a voice in governance.

Some countries also reserve places or implement quotas for women, minorities, and even occupational and social groups in their parliaments.

They may also allow communities a large measure of control over culture and education.

On the other hand, some countries that are troubled by very deep political divisions only sanction parties that have a ‘national' character.

Such parties must demonstrate support in more than a few regions in order to run in national elections. Groups that are overtly the vehicles of particular sub-national entities are banned as being "divisive" and a danger to the unity of the state.

Yet despite their elaborate constitutional architecture and political safeguards, many of these countries still dissolve into civil strife or end up governed by brutal authoritarian regimes.

This happens because they are, typically, artificial states within whose borders live peoples who may be historic enemies or, at the least, have no interest in inhabiting the same polity with their fellow citizens. Patriotism and loyalty towards the nation, in such places, is clearly in short supply.

These unstable countries sometimes implode altogether and become failed states. And all their fancy structural designs do not save them.

In old and consolidated democracies such as Canada, we manage to muddle along with a patently ‘unfair' first-past-the-post winner-take-all system for electing MPs.

This usually allows a party to win a majority in the House of Commons with only a plurality of the vote. Even when a party fails to do so, we frown upon coalition government.

We also permit an openly separatist party like the Bloc Québécois to run in federal elections. And we tolerate an unelected senate.

Why are we not more incensed about this? Because we have a democratic political culture and don't think the country is in danger of falling apart or becoming a dictatorship.

Does this make us less ‘democratic'? Of course not. How many Canadians would prefer to live in some of the countries I've described, entities such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lebanon, Nepal or Uganda?

What counts is the underlying political culture, something that can't simply be constructed through clever political engineering.

Canada is not as polarized, nor suffers from the same kind of political violence, as do many of these other countries.

We trust our politicians not to cross certain lines, such as fixing elections, bribing voters, jailing opponents, revoking civil liberties, or using the military to suppress dissent.

Our governments don't have the same level of control over our day-to-day lives. An independent judiciary serves as a check on their actions. So elections, for us, are not a matter of life and death, as is - literally - the case in other places. We can therefore afford to be more nonchalant about our democratic shortcomings.

It's like legislation concerning alcohol: the strict regulation of liquor (or its outright prohibition) is a society's response to rampant alcoholism. In places where this is not a major issue, laws regulating the sale and consumption of spirits are less stringent, because less necessary.

The same holds true for a country's political system. Where democracy already exists, there's less zeal to create a "perfect" version of it among the citizenry.