Culture and Institutions in Canadian Politics: The Greens and the Absence of “There”

Yesterday, I posted something to Facebook that had the shit shared out of it. Based on the ideas I was wrestling with when I dashed this post off in the space of about 90 second and the responses it has provoked in various parts of the interwebs, I thought that maybe it is time for me to do some writing about the ways in which we underestimate and under-think a basic rule of political analysis articulated by York University political scientist Denis Pilon.

Pilon, a long-time colleague in the electoral reform movement, has posited that the effects of any reform to the voting system will be strongly conditioned by three things: (1) the mathematical and legal language of the legislation (2) the culture(s) of the people interacting with the voting system and (3) the institutional structures prevalent in society and the specific structures and cultures of the institutions interacting with the system.

All too often, when we think about what is going on in Canadian politics, we do not pay enough attention to these things. As a result, we often blame a bad turn of events or a disturbing political development on individual bad actors or the regulations that affect people directly through the state’s apparatus, rather than the regulations (both state-created and self-created) of voluntary associations like political parties and social movement groups. We similarly discount culture as both a cause and effect of political events.

So, to kick off this series of articles, which will begin later today, I will reprint the original offending Facebook post:

“As the Green Party’s scheme of focusing on only NDP-held ridings for pickups this year and passing over prime turf like Vancouver Centre, heats up, many people are saying that the Greens are ‘really conservatives’ or ‘really Liberals’ or ‘really regressive.’

Let me speak from experience: the Greens are not “really” anything. They are the first political formation in North America to come of age in the neoliberal era. As such, they do not function like a political party in the traditional, institutional sense. They are a leader-centric brand, with low membership participation, high turnover and no continuous policy agenda.

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‘Green’ is a signifier that functions at a primarily aesthetic, brand-based level. Those trying to understand ‘who’ the Green Party membership is, what the party’s ideology is, etc. is on a wild goose chase. There is nothing to find. A Green Party is, from one moment to the next, an unstable fusion of its leader’s personality, alliances and beliefs and an aesthetically-driven voter base whose theory of political causation is most similar to James Frazier’s original theorization of sympathetic magic.

As for why Greens give the Liberals a free pass and seem hell-bent on taking out a series of NDP incumbents, while there may be some behind-the-scenes agreements with the Liberal Party, I would suggest that such agreements, even if they exist, are post-facto irrelevances. The current leadership of the Greens feel personally betrayed by the NDP for the party’s failure to BE the Green Party. And they are exacting revenge.”

Also, there is some past writing of mine that might also help to inform the series and provide some needed background:

In 2008, I made some comments about the prorogation crisis that are directly germane when examining the way that the law, political party governance and culture have functioned synergistically to condition Canadians’ ideas of legitimacy. They were printed by rabble.ca.

On my own site, I’ve offered some commentary on the different ways voters connect cause and effect when they cast votes and the prevalence of sympathetic magical views of voting. Relatedly, I have also talked about the ways in which Green parties are as much novel social movements as they are the occupants of a longstanding role in Christian societies.

This afternoon/evening, I will offer some thoughts on candidate vetting processes and how they fit into a larger cultural and institutional matrix. David Ball’s excellent article on this issue may help to frame my argument.