Politicians sometimes need to feed us medicine which tastes bad. More often than not this medicine is designed to benefit the doctor rather than the patient. The Australian public were forced to swallow a goods and services tax it didn’t agree with, and now it looks like nuclear power is being forced down our collective throat.
There is no doubt that renewables are more cost effective than nuclear. Where nuclear generation is slow to put in place, capital intensive, and centralised, renewables and cogeneration can be quickly installed and because it’s decentralised it suits the “wide brown land.” Recent protests over the siting of a waste dump have made it clear that the nuclear industry enjoys little popular support. The issue has been raised from time to time, and quickly shelved as the focus groups and opinion polls reported in.
But no matter how unpopular, how misguided, how just plain wrong: policies like this are zombies and they just won’t die no matter how many times you kill them. The reason this happens says something about the true nature of our democracy. Votes are important, and public opinion is a way to get votes, but that doesn’t mean politicians are interested in doing what the public wants. It rather means that politicians take a keen interest in manipulating public opinion.
In a modern western democracy a politician has a natural constituency, from which he or she gathers support, and which he or she works hard to please. These constituencies are the driving force of the west: the power elites, the vested interests, the big corporations. Through lobbists, thinktanks, funding, media influence, and outright bribery in the form of directorships and favours, politicians and policy are made to directly benefit these groups. Where an individual politician might resist out of principle or stubbornness, a political party is amenable to pressure over the long term, and eventually becomes thoroughly corrupted. The party can then wield influence over the politician by promises, procedural means, preselection, and appeals to loyalty.
Manipulation of politics by the power elites cannot be done too openly. The most important function of politicians and the media is to “sell†policies to the voters which are partly or wholly against their best interest. It’s important to keep in place the fiction that things are done for the people and according to the will of the people.
Political parties create a narrative, a consistent world view, which is called compassionate conservatism or New Labour. Economic theory is brought in to support these policy frameworks. These constructions are designed as frameworks for the mix of policies required by the party’s true constituencies, and systems which allow these policies to be advocated in a convincing way.
None of this should be taken to mean that politicians are totally insincere. There are layers to it all. The methods which convince the public also convince the politicians themselves, and it’s natural to identify with the ideas one advocates. It’s also much easier on the conscience to believe in the policies which it’s in one’s interest to sell. Beyond this politicians are themselves part of the power elite; their policies make a lot more sense when seen from that perspective. Finally, two more layers. Although they are beholden to other masters, politicians must not travel too far from a position they can get voters to accept, so they will do their best for their electorate whenever they are not otherwise constrained. Also, the interests of the powerful are not entirely divorced from the interests of the majority, especially in the west. There is a trickle down effect: concentrating and magnifying the wealth and power of the corporations and vested interests can be beneficial also those closest to them and those they need.
It can take time to sell an unpopular policy like nuclear power. Politicians are willing to take the time, because they’re aware of the idea of political capital, and they prefer not to spend it unless they have to ram through something against strong grassroots opposition. So there is a system, and it goes something like this:
- A backbencher or other minor politician floats the idea. This allows the party to deny any intention of making it policy.
- Various experts and think tanks start pushing the policy, giving it currency in the media.
- More senior politicians start saying that although no decision has been made, all possibilities should be explored.
- At this point a strong enough protest will send the idea back to step one, after a short pause.
- More experts, especially from groups opposing the policy, are now recruited to speak in its favour. The media begin “balanced” coverage, meaning that they report all protests as violent and repeat the views of the tame experts without investigation into their veracity. This is a slightly unjustified cynicism on my part; there are parts even of the mainstream media which tell the real story. The majority of the media, whether liberal or right wing, has no interest in looking below the surface.
- From here on only an election defeat can derail the policy, and even then it’s very likely to come back from the dead. The GST in Australia was defeated twice at the polls, then implemented by a government which had not used it as an election policy.
Perhaps my negativity comes from having rather different priorities than the cultural mainstream. Perhaps I’m wrong about the influence of the power elites on the political process, and politicians really are acting in what they believe are our best interests. I don’t believe it’s a conspiracy, I simply think it natural that the concentration of wealth and power in a few hands will cause a distortion of democracy. A corporation is an inherently political creature; it’s built to act in certain ways and it will do so. But if I’m wrong I’ll know within five or ten years, because there will be no nuclear power in Australia and we will have made a concerted effort to promote renewables.