Why pluralism matters

As I have remarked before, I was keen to be a civil servant when I was younger and I was fortunate enough to make it my career for nearly two decades. One of the best texts I read as a teenager, one that helped my understanding and shaped my views of how Government works, was Peter Hennessey’s The Hidden Wiring. In this book, Professer Hennessey (since 2010 also Baron Hennessey of Nympsfield) describes the conventions that govern the workings of the British government, helping us to pick our way through the uncodified British constitutional arrangements, setting out the ways of working that have for many decades created expectations between Ministers, Parliament, the civil service, the Monarchy, and the courts. A remarkable feature is that, despite a certain amount of natural evolution in the intervening years, the fundamentals described by Hennessey would be recognisable to his great predecessor of constitutional understanding, Walter Bagehot, not least in the seminal text The English Constitution published in 1867. Bagehot was famously a strong supporter of the British way of doing things, in particular in contrast to the US model* of a formal constitutional document setting out the proper order of the affairs of government.

In drawing the contrast, Bagehot states:

“The English constitution, in a word, is framed on the principle of choosing a single sovereign authority [i.e. the crown in Parliament], and making it good: the American, upon the principle of having many sovereign authorities [i.e. Congress, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court], and hoping their multitude may atone for their inferiority.”

Choosing a single sovereign authority, and making it good. That is the key element of the British constitutional arrangements as set out and Bagehot spends some time explaining how the informal workings of government (what Bagehot calls the ‘undignified’ parts, in contrast to the ‘dignified’ elements such as the formal role of the Monarch in signing Bills into Acts of Parliament) ensure good governance, not least through the primacy of Parliament and the inability of a narrow-minded Prime Minister or Cabinet to maintain the broad support of a fractious party in Parliament.

There are many, not least Hennessy, who have shown how the last 150 years have seen the growth of party discipline, the increase of the reach of the state, and the concentration of power in №10. These have altered the balance of power within the British constitutional arrangements, giving more sway to the Prime Minister and key Cabinet members, largely at the expense of Parliament. What have been less affected over that period are the operational norms, the customs that make up the uncodified constitution, the expectations around how things are done that have ensured — even in times of significant political disagreement and societal challenge — the smooth working of Government.

Which is why it was so distressing to hear Hennessy recently describing his concerns that these constitutional norms have been perhaps irrevocably eroded. Amongst other things, he says:

[The 12 April 2022] will be forever remembered as a dark, bleak day for British public and political life. It is the day that Boris Johnson became the great debaser in modern times of public and political life and of our constitutional conventions, our very system of Government… the great weakness of the system is that the Prime Minister, the [indistinguishable] in chief, is the guardian of the [Ministerial] code, and with it the supposed protector of accountability and decency… I cannot remember a day when I have been more fearful for the constitution.”

Hennessy is of course referring to the announcement that the Prime Minister has received a fixed penalty notice for breaking the rules governing lockdown, sharing his view that this amounts to a breach of the Ministerial Code and the misleading of Parliament.

Now there are many views on the current political situation, and I don’t want to get drawn into making any judgements myself here. But I have noted a lack of discourse around the key concept of pluralism, how it links to the above, and why it matters in the British body politic.

What is pluralism?

At its most basic, pluralism means little more than the acceptance of more than one perspective. In practical, political terms it means an understanding that there are many and diverse views in society and all of those views deserve to be acknowledged and respected to some extent. It is at the very heart of a democracy that seeks to create a society based on a shared endeavour, rather than one driving to a model of ‘democratic dictatorship’. Let’s consider a practical example:

Five people are sharing a takeaway. There are four options nearby: fish and chips, pizza, curry, or kebabs. Two people vote for fish and chips, and one each for pizza, curry, and kebabs. So — with a 40% plurality of the vote — fish and chips it is.

Seems fair, right? Well imagine the same situation but assume that one of the people involved is allergic to fish and chips. Would it be fair for the others to vote the same way? Or should they take that allergy into account and remove that option? With a plurality of the votes, the two wanting fish and chips can impose them on the rest. But should they? How far does the authority conferred by winning 40% of the vote extend?

This example reflects a fundamental truth about the legitimacy of the democratic mandate underpinning Parliament. No party wins a majority of the vote, even when they take a majority of the seats in Parliament. The highest share of the vote for the Conservatives was 49.7% in 1955, for Labour 48.8% in 1951 (when they still didn’t win the most seats!). In both these cases, these are the proportion of votes cast, so it ignores those who didn’t vote.

In 2019, the Conservatives under Boris Johnson won a majority of 80 seats with 43.6% of the votes cast. But with a turnout of just 67.3%, that equates to roughly one third of eligible voters supporting the Conservatives in 2019. Still the biggest single party in terms of support, but nowhere near a majority. This pattern plays out at an individual constituency level as well. Out of 650 parliamentary constituencies, only 37 were won with a majority of the votes. That means 613 won with a plurality rather than a majority — 94% of all constituencies.

And why does that matter?

In a pluralistic democracy, those who achieve power recognise the limited nature of their mandate and act accordingly. That does not mean eternal indecision and compromise — there have been plenty of Governments that have pursued radical and contested ideas in their determination of the national interest. But it does mean that they recognise the divergence of views and go someway to either accommodating them or justifying why they are not. If we think about one of the more divisive Governments of modern times, the Thatcher administration, there is no doubt that Thatcher was forthright and direct in getting her views across.

Underpinning the operation of pluralism in Britain has been the set of constitutional conventions that have dictated how the business of government is undertaken, including a clear set of expectations around treating Parliament (for example, thou shall not lie) and the official opposition (not least through the workings of the Privy Council). These conventions are not mere politeness — they ensure that proper scrutiny can be given to Government plans and that alternative ideas can be aired and considered. They are meant to lead to proper debate and detailed consideration of policy ideas, even when the rough and tumble of politics is evident.

So when Hennessy sets out his concerns that constitutional norms are being ignored, it has a direct impact on the ability of pluralistic democracy to function effectively. If the only way to overrule a Government — even when egregious breaches of constitutional norms occur — is to wait it out until the next election, then we are firmly in the territory of an elected dictatorship rather than a functioning pluralistic democracy.

In How Democracies Die, Levitsky and Ziblatt discuss constitutional norms:

“Norms are more than personal dispositions. They do not simply rely on political leaders’ good character, but rather are shared codes of conduct that become common knowledge with a particular community or society — accepted, respected, and enforced by its members. Because they are unwritten, they are often hard to see, especially when they are functioning well. This can fool us into thinking they are unnecessary. But nothing could be further from the truth. Like oxygen or clean water, a norm’s importance is quickly revealed by its absence.”

This view provides a more pragmatic view than that espoused by Bagehot — that we can essentially rely on British politicians being good as the antidote to the formal constitutional arrangements of the US. In fact, Levitsky and Ziblatt are expressly enforcing the importance of norms even within the framework of a political system underpinned by a formal, codified constitution.

Levitsky and Ziblatt also deal with another feature of pluralistic democracies — mutual toleration:

“Mutual toleration refers to the idea that as long as our rivals play by constitutional rules, we accept that they have an equal right to exist, compete for power, and govern. We may disagree with, and even strongly dislike, our rivals, but we nevertheless accept them as legitimate… Put another way, mutual toleration is politicians’ collective willingness to agree to disagree.”

So mutual toleration adheres to the key plurastic principle of accepting more than one idea, and of accepting that political opponents are rivals, not enemies. More than that, mutual tolerance has historically driven the major parties to seek to represent a range of views, to be ‘big tents’ that appeal to a range of people. It has led them to ‘compete for the centre ground’ which, although some may see as an unhealthy compromise too far, watering down ideologically pure positions, does have the advantage that the major political forces seeking power have to try to appeal to the same group of people — the infamous swing voters.

The alternative is of course an approach that seeks to create division, appeal to extremes, and focus on the voters needed merely to get a plurality of the votes. Given that, as noted above, no party and very few MPs achieve a majority, this is a sound tactic from the short-term political perspective, but a disaster for the longer term perspective of creating a shared endevaour across society (and dare I say it for effective policy making, as alluded to here by Sam Freedman in his (paid for) substack).

More worryingly, if a democracy confuses a plurality of votes to win an election with a majority of support for any action, even if outside expected norms of behaviour, then a large proportion of the populace — in fact by definition a majority — will feel increasingly disenfranchised. History is littered with examples of disenfranchised people, especially when suffering from economic hardships with little prospect of remedy, seeking to work outside democratic norms themselves in order to get their grievances heard. Economic distress, an increasing gap between rich and poor, a lack of trust in political leaders — these are the ingredients of revolution more than functioning democracy.

So pluralism really matters. The final word goes to Josh Lyman, Deputy Chief of Staff in the fictional White House world of The West Wing. In a special episode created at pace in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack, Josh and other senior aides are talking to a group of school children during a lockdown at the White House caused by a suspected terrorist incident:

“In the meantime remember pluralism: you want to get these people [terrorists]? I mean, you really want to reach in and kill them where they live? Keep accepting more than one idea. Makes them absolutely crazy.”

*It is worth remembering that at the time of writing The English Constitution Bagehot would have been looking across the Atlantic at the US Civil War and it would be hard not to draw the conclusion that the US constitutional model was failing.