Public ideas
Adrian Pabst on liberalism, social democracy and conservatism
Political philosopher Adrian Pabst of the University of Kent, UK, has written a paper Bonds of belonging – renewing democracy in an atomised age, published on the Centre for Independent Studies website.
In its introduction he writes:
Western liberal democracies lack resilience: across the West, economic models are in disarray while social models engender cultural fragmentation and politics breeds polarisation.
One who skims his paper may have the impression that this is just another conservative’s rage against secularism and multiculturalism, in defence of a passing “western” order. That would be a severe injustice to his work. It is actually a carefully reasoned criticism of both “left” and “right” ideologies as they have developed, an exposure of the barrenness of individualism and identity politics, and a call for a richer and more fulfilling collective life.
It would be hard for anyone to disagree with his observation of electoral politics:
The tragedy of contemporary liberal democracy is that it tends to equate democratic rule largely with elections, even if the substance of democratic debate and norms is being hollowed out. As a result, elections – while offering some choice between different parties and policies – often revolve around personalities, dominated by spin and public relations.
He has also given an interview on the ABC’s Religion and Ethics Report – Are we building a virtuous society(19-minutes) – where Andrew West’s questioning draws out his views on a number of themes, in a less structured form than is presented in his paper.
He believes that liberalism, social democracy and conservatism have become detached from their ethical roots: all they have left are utilitarianism and individualism, which provide too weak a philosophical base for a resilient society.
He is critical of unrestrained and concentrated power – be it the personal power of a Putin or Bolsonaro or the impersonal amoral power of the unrestrained market. He observes the grievances that have nurtured populists and demagogues like Trump: if we don’t want such people to have a pulpit we must nurture a political and social order that recognizes and attends to these grievances.
Our contradictory demands on government
The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago has published survey data confirming a paradox in politics. The paradox is well-known to political scientists but is only occasionally revealed in survey data: people generally feel that their governents are spending too much, but when asked to nominate any specific areas where they are overspending, people struggle to name any.
The NORC survey – Many dissatisfied with the government’s spending priorities – confirms the strength of this paradox. They find that 60 percent of respondents in the US believe their government is overspending, but when presented with a list of 16 areas of government spending, only for one – “assistance to other countries” – do people think the government is spending too much. In fact for four areas – education, health care, social security and infrastructure – more than 60 percent of respondents believe the government is spending too little.
There are predictable differences in the spending priorities of Democrat and Republican supporters. These are mainly around spending on military and border security and there is a huge gap (80 percent to 38 percent) on the need for spending on “assistance to the poor”.
The implicit message for reformist governments, seeking to raise more revenue to rebuild the public sector, is that programs that boost the social wage, such as health and education, command more electoral appeal than those that are directly concerned with alleviating poverty. The other, an age-old truism, is that people are more accepting of taxes that are presented as levies for services (“hypothecated taxes”) rather than as contributions to public revenue.