I strongly disagree. That’s how it’s supposed to work, not how it does. Firstly, vast amounts of policy is set at a level below the attention of the public, either formally, through the use of regulatory instruments or informally via policy networks. For example, in the UK the penalties for possession of cannabis were slowly reduced long before the government officially reclassified it a couple of years back. This happened because of informal decisions by police officers to favour warnings over prosecutions for small amounts of the drug.

Secondly, the voters may simply not have a viable option that reflects their wishes. This has been the case in the UK for at least the last couple of decades, where the public have generally been far more Euro-sceptic than any of the political parties. So the political will for significant involvement in the EU has been there in spite of the complete absence of much public support. The barriers to entry prevent new parties from successfully forming around single issues like this. Another example is the war in Iraq, where both the government and the opposition were in favour of the war in the face of vast public opposition. You can’t effectively vote against a policy when there are only two realistic prospects that could form the next government and both of them want the same thing.

Thirdly, political parties don’t run on single policies. While some voters will vote on single issues, many voters vote for the entire platform. This means that unpopular policies can be pushed forward in the absence of any desire by the wider population to see them enacted. Other voters do not vote rationally and their own interests may not be well served by the party they vote for.

So yeah, governments can’t just do anything, but there’s a very wide latitude in which they can work to further the policies they choose, even when thse policies are unpopular.

It’s interesting… there was an announcement today that the Canadian government and the EU had just released a study into negotiating possibly much deeper economic and political ties.

“I’d disagree with the idea that democracy is about limiting change…”

Democracy limits change in two ways: 1. there’s always another election so the population can reverse course, and 2. if a party ever wants to get into power again it can’t change policies the population don’t want changed.

“…things can certainly change quickly when there’s political will to do so.”

Political will only comes from the voters. Either a party has to convince them beforehand or afterwards the policy change was a good idea. Thatcher had the majority on her side before and during those changes, but weirdly not after the economy had recovered.

I think, fundamentally, we disagree on the definition of fundamental. First world nations, economically, are linked together and any change big or small effects the others in the chain. In this sense management would be a good term to use in describing the role of Prime Ministers and Presidents. And even then only in terms of national bank rates and economic policy. They’ve pretty much ignored the day to day stuff over the past few years.

But within the borders there is still the potential for a great range of policies among the political parties. There are similarities of course. During the 1990’s the ruling centre-left Liberal party “borrowed” many policies from the opposition right-wing Reform/Alliance parties with no outcry from voters.

But, again, the differences between right and left here are fairly large. At least within the context of being a Canadian or living in Canada.

It would have been nice to have had a debate on Canada’s involvement in the Iraq war like you guys had, but our Prime Minister at the time, a Liberal, decided on his own that we weren’t going to be involved in any way. At least that’s what he told everyone at the time.

Ended up, however, that three months before the invasion the American government called our PM and said they didn’t want us involved because our military was in such horrible shape. We would’ve been in their way. Our PM still claims his non-decision decision as one of his legacy moments.

Our military is in much better shape now.

I’d disagree with the idea that democracy is about limiting change – that’s a small-c conservative concept. Certainly in the UK, opposition parties generally have little effect on policy. Only rarely is there a situation where one party or the other isn’t in complete control. The government usually only has problems enacting policy when their own MP’s rebel, which is not a common occurence. The checks and balances of other systems are almost non-existant here, which is also a consequence of there being no separation between the legislative and the executive.

And things can certainly change quickly when there’s political will to do so. Here, in essentially a single term of office, Thatcher vastly reduced the power of the unions and privatised many of the utilities, both of which were fundamental changes. Note that Canada followed a similar course, commercialising many state assets around the same time. Canada has been less turbulent than the UK in this respect and there haven’t been many equivalent changes, but that has more to do with Canada than with democracies in general.

Obviously you know much more about the specific goals of the political parties in Canada than I do (I’ve skimmed a few Wikipedia articles on the topic). As an outsider, I do think the issues at stake are rather less fundamental than you do. I think a lot of the Conservative policies are policies of the gaps. But I don’t think these are things I can debate at all usefully, so I should probably bow out of the discussion at this point. I do find this stuff really interesting though.