The following is the viewpoint of the writer, director of the Saskatchewan office of the Frontier Centre.
We need governments, the argument has long run, to protect the weak and restrain the nasty.
Meanwhile, the just-finished spring session of the legislature suggests it is the very people meant to curb the excess of human imperfection who need the help and restraint. In any Saskatchewan workplace, staff who abuse each other on topics unrelated to the business at hand are the rare exception, not the norm. So why is politics different?
This latest legislature session played no new tune but just a more intense recital of a long established one. To blame the melee on this or that personality for the strategies or mannerisms they bring to the political arena doesn't explain the ingrained history of this he-said, she-said bovine manure that has infested our body politic.
Sure, democracy is a method that reconciles competing interests. Also, Westminster-style legislatures are deliberately designed to divide state power between a government and an opposition. Better that than a monarch or dictator. To some extent, the adversarial design of our political institutions makes conflict inevitable.
Nevertheless it should be possible for MLAs to accept that structure as a given and remain civil. It would simply be a matter of saying: "Obviously I disagree with the other side, that's how our legislature is set up, but still, I don't need to be rude."
A more useful explanation of this behaviour requires a slight diversion into the tragedy of the commons. This theory doesn't refer to the House of Commons -- although that also can be tragic -- but rather to the common areas of farmland used by peasants in pre-industrial England.
Farmers on the commons faced a choice of either putting one more animal on the commons or voluntarily restricting their herd.
The first option meant less pasture for everybody's animals including your own but still one more animal for you.
The second meant sitting back for the common good, while others took advantage. The only rational thing to do was to keep grazing more animals and get as much as you could until the commons were overgrazed to destruction, hence the tragedy part.
When it comes to voting, every person faces a choice of spending time on work, family or leisure or using that time getting informed about politics. Just like putting an extra cow on the commons, the first option is the rational one for individuals but the worst outcome collectively.
Casting a truly informed vote in a party-dominated system would mean laboriously tracking the behaviour of each MLA and weighing the total results of each policy. It might improve the policy environment, but that benefit would be spread across a million people.
The cost of giving up other beneficial activities is borne entirely by the voter.
The resulting logic is that you're a chump to invest time understanding day-to-day politics. This logic is built into our system and goes some way to explaining the acrimony in the legislature.
Why would MLAs behave with civility when they know the incentives of sensible voters lead those voters to largely ignore politicians anyway?
None of this should make anyone want to abandon democracy. Our peaceful way of removing unpopular governments is probably the greatest single reason for Canada's success.
The alternative is the Fijian way where every few years a new military strongman comes to power by coup d'état and claims that, behold, the last guy who did the same thing was an illegitimate usurper. It would be funny if it didn't set an entire country and economy back years every time.
Democracy is the best way to remove bad governments. That doesn't make it the best way -- or even a good way -- to make the greatest range of economic and social decisions.
The actual tragedy of the commons was solved by privatizing the commons into what we now call farms. In what now seems obvious, farmers have every incentive to plan their activities and strike a balance between maximizing their output and preserving their land.
Similarly, the solution to the tragedy of the legislature may be to return as many of their numerous decisions as possible to the control of individuals where the incentives for informed and rational decision making are back in balance. If MLAs can't play nicely, who'd want to give them more toys?
If you're frustrated with the legislature, the quickest fix is to vote for them to do less.
Saskatoon Star Phoenix 05-28-10 per David Seymour
