How Electoral Democracy Really Works

 

Three-term London mayor Sadiq Khan

Conventional wisdom is that in a democracy, being a minority means being oppressed. What could be more obvious? Democracy means majority rule. And so we institute all manner of preferences and handouts for minorities. In the name of “equity.”

But this is not how an electoral democracy actually works. In order to achieve public office at any level, you need an army of committed volunteers; you have to belong to a committed, close-knit, well-organized group with a shared agenda. For generations, every mayor of Toronto was a member of the Orange Order. A Greek alderman explained how it worked to a political newbie: you need to belong to some minority to get volunteers.

Of course, this describes a political party. But it also describes a minority ethnicity. And within the political parties, the way to get the local nomination is with your army of ethnic volunteers and people who will bus in to vote for one of their own. Even if there is no nomination contest, the political party will want a candidate with some strong local ethnic ties, because they want these volunteers in the election proper.

Accordingly, members of minority ethnicities have a built-in advantage. They automatically have an army of volunteers who will support and work for them on the basis of their religion, skin colour, or cultural affiliations. The average majority Canadian does not have that. They must build it from scratch, if they can. And this is still without considering the benefits of an ethnic block vote—as Quebec, for example, has used effectively in Canadian federal politics.

In power, these special interest groups are then able to vote themselves special privileges. So we have the edifice of multiculturalism, affirmative action, special handouts based on race, and the like.

To be fair, there is as well a second factor: if some group of people has extra time on their hands, they have the time to organize and agitate for their special interests. This is why retirees have always had an outsize voice in our political life. They have the time to engage in politics.

This is also the key advantage of farmers and teachers, who also always get priority for their interests in our political life. They will insist that they work hard, and they do, but their work is seasonal. They have an off-season for organizing and agitating. 

The free time available to suburban women has always been behind feminism’s success. They will insist that women have been traditionally oppressed and overworked; the opposite is the truth. Publishers of books and magazines, TV networks and film distributors, have known for generations that the vast majority of their audience is female—only women have enough leisure time. Freidan’s essential complaint, that launched the feminist revolution, was boredom. Women have time to organize to get what they want.

And it is why homosexuals have an outsize influence. Because they do not have kids and families, gays have fewer responsibilities; and so more time to devote to political action. 

We may not be able to fix this problem of minority rule. It may not even, overall, be a bad thing; at best, it can counterbalance possible discrimination against a minority. Multiculturalism, on the other hand, certainly makes it worse.

But at the very least, we should be aware of what is going on.  The special interest groups are not being given preferential treatment because they are or were oppressed, but because they hold power. They can take what they want, and so they do.