IRPP-514 PO INT June 2001

VIRTUAL POLITICAL PARTIES AND THE DECLINE OF DEMOCRACY Focused on the surface events of politics, many of us have failed to notice the replacement of traditional political parties by “virtual parties” brought together around would-be party leaders. The winning leader’s virtual party then takes over the party “brand.” Like the body-snatchers of the Hollywood horror movie, it appropriates the shell of the old party but fills it with something quite different: a direct, unmediated connection between leader and voters that destroys one of the Reg Whitaker traditional bulwarks of civil society. We are worse off for it. En restant à la surface des événements, beaucoup d’entre nous n’avons pas remarqué le remplacement des partis politiques traditionnels par des « partis virtuels », réunis autour de soi-disant leaders qui s’arrogent la « marque » d’un parti une fois leur victoire acquise. Comme dans les films d’horreur hollywoodiens où des extra-terrestres déterrent les cadavres pour emprunter leur enveloppe charnelle, ces leaders s’approprient l’image des vieux partis mais lui donne corps d’une manière fort différente : ils imposent entre les électeurs et eux-mêmes une relation directe qui, en éliminant l’intermédiaire des formations politiques, vient détruire l’un des remparts de la société civile. Nous ne pouvons qu’en sortir perdants. quick quiz on the major events of the political year mer federal Progressive Conservative official, early in 2000 2000 might elicit the following list: the emergence wrote an open letter to PC supporters urging them to aban- A out of the old Reform party of the new Canadian don their federal party for the Canadian Alliance. He com- Alliance under Stockwell Day; the re-election of Jean plained about his own “wasted investment” in this “brand”: Chrétien’s Liberals to a third successive majority; the appar- “it was time to invest elsewhere.” He went on: “If the feder- ent stagnation of the Bloc Québécois; the continued mar- al PC party in which you have invested so much was a ginalization of the federal Progressive Conservative and mutual fund you would have dumped it years ago.” New Democratic parties. Two of Campbell’s words are particularly significant: Appearances can sometimes be misleading, however. investment and brand. Parties are no longer about commit- Surface events and personalities mask deeper, structural ment, in the sense of principles, loyalty and tradition. Long changes taking place beneath the veneer. Distracted by the ago, partisans rallied to Sir John A. Macdonald’s Tories rise and fall of party labels and leaders, it has been easy to under the slogan “the Old Man, the Old Flag, the Old miss the subterranean transformation of political parties Policy.” No more. A party is not a collective project. It is a into different sorts of creatures than in the past. In an age of “mutual fund.” Commitment has become investment, and relentless change imposed by markets and technology, investment demands appropriate returns. If “wasted,” it political parties have had to adapt to the challenges of glob- should be pulled out and put “elsewhere.” The party’s name alization, the information revolution and the new media, or and symbols are no longer marks of allegiance, but are fade into irrelevance. merely a “brand.” Brands are corporate marketing devices The flavour of these changes can be caught in the lan- for products. Brand identification is intended to promote guage used by party insiders to describe their business. sales. If sales falter, re-branding may be required. In Alister Campbell, one of the leading architects of Ontario Campbell’s worst-case scenario, the wise investor pulls out premier Mike Harris’ Common Sense Revolution, and a for- altogether and invests in a new product line with a more 16 OPTIONS POLITIQUES JUIN 2001 Virtual political parties marketable brand. Hence, like a good investment Like “virtual” corporations in the networked analyst, Campbell is advising his clients to sell PC information economy, virtual parties form and and buy CA. reform for specific purposes. With more tasks According to political scientists, political par- “outsourced” and less done in-house, the virtual ties are crucial linkages between civil society and party networks across traditional organizational Virtual parties the state: a noble calling. But in capitalist democ- boundaries, drawing in specialists who perform racies, parties are poor cousins to their private specific functions to meet specific, market-driv- form around sector counterparts, the corporations. Corpor- en needs. Virtual parties form around politicians politicians ations sell goods and services and make profits. seeking the leadership of parties, as relatively Parties sell promises of policy and patronage. At small entourages or coteries of political strate- seeking the best, they offer insurance that profits in the pri- gists, marketing and communications experts, vate sector will not be impeded by policies pur- “spin doctors,” PR flacks and policy “wonks.” If leadership of sued in the public sector, a kind of respectable successful, the same coterie then in effect colo- protection racket. But in a competitive political nizes the party and runs its subsequent election parties, as market, few parties can bank promises contin- campaign. The party, as such, serves as little gent upon victory at the polls. Not surprisingly, it more than a convenient franchise with brand relatively small is the corporate sector where research and inno- recognition, marketing “location,” and ready vation in the technology of marketing and com- sources of campaign funding. Sometimes, it is entourages or munications take place. Parties have to catch up more convenient to “re-brand” the old party for coteries of with trends in the private sector, and struggle to better location. The real campaign dynamic cope with new techniques and tools of marketing derives from the virtual party within the shell of political as best they can, with limited resources. the traditional party. If the electoral campaign is successful, the virtual party then colonizes the strategists, ne of the organizational forms pioneered strategic heights of government, around the O in the new economy is the “virtual corpo- office of the prime minister or premier, setting marketing and ration,” a form adapted to the flexibility policy priorities, interfacing with the permanent required of a networked world. Old corporations bureaucracy and managing the government’s communications were heavy, stand-alone entities, with high fixed image and media presentation. Many of the real investment in plant and product, centralized high flyers in the team, however, will choose to experts, “spin and hierarchical in structure, slow to react to return to the more lucrative private sector, only doctors,” PR changes in their environment, commanding coming out again for a brief burst of activity dur- market share by sheer weight and inertia. ing a re-election campaign. All this is dependent flacks, policy Exemplars of old corporate culture were the big upon the leader, and the policy package he or three North American automakers before the she represents. These are the products being “wonks.” challenge of Japanese and European competition marketed. hit home. New corporations are somewhat less There are some spectacular examples of the If successful, hierarchical, more decentralized, more flexible virtual party in operation. One of the most and adaptive, with less fixed investment. New remarkable is the transformation of the British the same corporations are leaner, which does not mean Labour party under Tony Blair. Blair’s communi- that they necessarily employ fewer people. cations and publicity entourage, led by Peter coterie then Rather, they employ fewer people directly, but Mandelson, the former Northern Ireland secre- in effect many more indirectly, through outsourcing. tary, remade the party from the top down. They Here is where the idea of the virtual corporation even re-branded it as New Labour, to distinguish colonizes comes in. For specific purposes or projects, net- it from the electorally unsuccessful and media- works are formed that flow around and over the unfriendly “Old” Labour. Helped by a decaying the party. old organizational boundaries. They may Tory ancien régime, New Labour swept to office in involve temporary partnerships or alliances with 1997. Millbank, the permanent party headquar- other corporations, or at least components of ters where its publicity directors and spin doctors other corporations. These networks are function- reside, has become a kind of rival power centre to alist in design, strictly goal-oriented, and evanes- Whitehall. In office, Blair and company have cent, forming and reforming around particular been assailed by both critics and supporters as projects, and disappearing when the goals are lacking in any clear or distinctive policy direc- achieved. These commando units may be con- tion, yet at the same time as control freaks sidered, during their transitory lives, as “virtual” obsessed with spin doctoring their image at the corporations expense of substance. This is a trap that virtual POLICY OPTIONS 17 JUNE 2001 Reg Whitaker parties can fall into, given that they are con- The Harris party has been successful because structed in the first instance for the immediate it has tightly integrated marketing with policy. It purpose of getting elected, rather than for gov- was re-branded the “Harris” party not because erning. Yet some Canadian experience suggests Mike Harris is the product, but because it is a The Common that virtual parties may be quite well prepared useful way of distinguishing its new policy ori- not only to get elected, but also to govern pro- entation from the soft, centrist conservatism Sense grammatically with distinctive policy agendas that characterized the old Tory party. The real Revolution product is the Common Sense Revolution, an remarkable case study of a programmatic, ideological program that reflects the goals and was a product A even ideological, “virtual” party is the preferences of its architects, the core of the vir- “Mike Harris party,” as the Progressive tual party.

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