2020 election: with polls showing Labor can rule alone, is New Zealand going back to the days of ‘elected dictatorship’?

COMMENTARY:

In the mid-1990s, New Zealanders adopted electoral rules that the country hoped would end the tyranny of what Lord Hailsham once called the “elected dictatorship” of one-party majority government. And yet, a quarter century later, we are looking down the barrel of it.

In the New Zealand Parliament, which normally has 120 MPs, the threshold for this political grail is 61 seats.

That is significant because in parliamentary democracies, single-party majority governments are powerful beasts, capable of exercising executive and legislative power without resorting to coalition or compromise with other parties.

Furthermore, when constitutional restrictions on the (mis) use of executive authority are quite weak, as is the case here, with our scattered constitution, limited scope of judicial review, and unicameral legislature, such administrations have a propensity to become dishonest.

Governments misbehave

During the 1980s and 1990s, center-left and center-right governments displayed staggering levels of executive arrogance: they routinely ignored pre-election commitments, embarked on mandateless structural reforms, and turned to making “tough” decisions that enriched some and made life miserable for many.

So in 1993 voters changed the rules, abandoning the old First Out of Office (FPP) system, which regularly handed out huge parliamentary majorities to the Labor or National Party, in favor of mixed member proportional representation (MMP).

Under the new system, as long as a party gets at least 5% of the vote or one seat in the constituency (be it Maori or general), its share of parliamentary seats is roughly directly proportional to its support among voters. .

That “more or less” is important. Depending on how many votes go to parties that do not exceed the threshold, a major party may win slightly less than a majority of the votes but still control a parliamentary majority.

For example, in last week’s 1 NEWS Colmar Brunton poll, Labor secured 62 seats on the basis of 48 percent support. That’s because the same poll showed a combined 7 percent support for parties that would not make it to Parliament.

The eight seats represented by that so-called “wasted vote” would effectively be shared pro rata among the elected parties: Labor would win four, giving the party a majority.

Would Labor form a coalition anyway?

There hasn’t been a reputable poll since March that doesn’t put Labor in a position to rule alone. For some, and not just those on the political right, this is cause for concern. New Zealanders have become accustomed to sharing power rather than the power grab that is the hallmark of majority one-party government, winner takes all.

But are we necessarily looking to the future? If Jacinda Ardern wakes up on October 18 (or when the official results are announced on November 6) with a parliamentary majority, what could she do?

The cautious approach (and the Prime Minister is nothing if not cautious) would be to come to terms with another party. On the one hand, it helps to have someone to blame when things go wrong (as they will).

Furthermore, Ardern knows that the support she and her group currently enjoy is unlikely to last the next three (let alone six or nine) years. Voters compete. The last time a party won an election with a majority of the votes was in 1951.

Labor has never won more than 41.5 percent of the vote under the MMP. To become the natural party of government, you will need allies for those times when your vote is less than that required to govern alone.

The temptation to go it alone

The other option is to go completely retro: take the handbrake off current coalition partner New Zealand. First, put the Greens aside (assuming they come back) and go it alone.

That would be tempting: There is no need to share the few executive positions, as well as the ability to legislate unimpeded by the moderate restrictions of the multi-party government.

In the eight MMP elections, the average percentage of votes for the party with the most votes was 42 percent. But that number is going up. In the first four elections it was 39 percent, but in the next four it rose to 46 percent. Under MMP, that’s getting very close to winner-take-all territory.

In that sense, New Zealand has been flirting with a return to elected dictatorships since 2008. The option to go alone might not be the exception it seems.

There is no mandate from the MMP that “you will not have one-party majority governments.” Electoral systems translate votes into seats in the legislature. If a one-party majority government takes office next month, it will do so because a close or clear majority of voters wanted one (as opposed to the last one in 1993, which was elected by 35% of voters).

Beneath this is the question of how executive power is restricted. Having changed the system to end a tradition of an elected dictatorship, New Zealand may have to admit that the question has not yet been adequately answered.

Richard Shaw is professor of politics at Massey University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.