Stuff: Democracy may be in trouble, but the answer is more of it, not less

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There’s a middle-class fantasy of authoritarianism that I hear more and more these days, and which needs to be stopped in its tracks.

One premise of this fantasy is that democracy has failed us: people are stupid, politicians short-sighted, and between them they’re ruining the planet. Climate change is out of control, nuclear war looms.

Another premise, separate but related, is that democracy is fine as an ideal but has been catastrophically captured by elites – principally, at the local level, by old white home-owners who swamp consultation meetings and block anything vaguely progressive, be it cycleways or denser housing.

But whether the economic elites or the masses are to blame, either way the answer is, apparently, to make our democracy less democratic: to have, as much as possible, the “experts” in charge. This is why I call it a middle-class fantasy: the “meritocratic authoritarian” sought in this scenario is not an abrasive populist, a Mussolini or a Trump, but a coterie of well-educated, sensible, far-sighted people who – just by chance! – have identical social backgrounds and views to the people articulating this dream.

According to the 2020 World Values Survey, nearly four in 10 Kiwis (38.5%) think it would be good to have “experts, not governments, make decisions”. And you can see this impulse play out everywhere.

Earlier this year, Wellington city councillors, apparently afraid that well-off locals would delay progress through the courts, tried to slash public input into their next District Plan, empowering unelected commissioners and leaving residents largely powerless over key calls on infrastructure, hazardous substances disposal and significant natural area (SNA) designations. Most of this Government’s centralising reforms take some power from local communities and hand it to technocrats.

On environmental issues, some greenies bizarrely argue that the Climate Change Commission should be empowered not just to recommend low-carbon policies but to mandate them. Since climate change will require us to rethink the way we eat, move around, build houses and pay taxes, this would hand control over almost every aspect of our lives to eight unelected technocrats.

Let me say at this point that I understand the concerns underlying this middle-class authoritarianism. Not all is well with democracy; some of the above-mentioned dangers are real. Increased economic inequality has left certain people much better resourced than others to participate in public processes – and more confident in doing so. But the answer must be to improve democracy, not scrap it.

As the legendary American political scientist Robert Dahl pointed out decades ago, expert rule would work only if those experts knew what was good for the public, wanted to implement it, and were able to do so. But the textbook rule-by-expert examples are the vast tower blocks built in postwar America and Britain, which planners had decided were where ordinary people “wanted” to live.

Destructive of pre-existing communities, unfriendly and often fundamentally unliveable, many of these tower blocks had to be torn down within years. The knowledge of experts is always constrained by their discipline and indeed their background, invariably an elite one.

Climate-change activists indulging in a little light authoritarianism should also consider that the evidence is not on their side. In the Intergenerational Solidarity Index, a measure of how well governments consider the interests of future citizens, nearly all the top performers – 21 out of 25 – are democracies. On the flipside, autocrats fill 21 of the 25 bottom spots.

Of course, democracies could work better. The rest of the world could emulate the Welsh Assembly, whose future generations commissioner speaks up on behalf of those not yet born, and whose advocacy helped halt a sweeping road-construction programme that would have turbo-charged emissions.

We can surely find ways to engage the public early and well, so that infrastructure is built quickly but also democratically. We can prevent elite capture, too. For all around us are the green shoots of a new, bottom-up democracy.

In Auckland, Watercare and the Koi Tū Centre have just run a citizens’ assembly in which 37 residents, picked to be demographically representative of the city, spent time deeply discussing future water source options, landing eventually on recycling wastewater for drinking. This process used experts the right way: as guides for the residents, not as their masters.

In Porirua, Ngāti Toa is working with others on a talanoa and wānanga-based system that would likewise empower residents to lead local decision-making. And the Future of Local Government Review, which reported last week, contained countless ideas for reinvigorating democracy and ending the participation imbalance.

Letting communities allocate some council funds directly, lowering the voting age, a greater role for iwi: we already have the ideas we need to make democracy work better. And we should get on with implementing them, rather than indulging in fantasies.