Richard
Shaw, Te
Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa – Massey
University
Most of us use an
imaginary two-dimensional spectrum to chart the positions of
political parties, generally based on the fundamental issue
of the relationship between the state and private
enterprise.
Parties of the left tip towards a
greater role for government, while those on the right favour
free markets and lower taxes.
The centre – that
fabled land where political
kingmakers and queenmakers
roam – captures the moderate edges of both, at least in
theory.
But what that means in practice can be
unclear. “Centrism” is often defined as the
non-ideological position, or as the pragmatic, moderate
approach to politics – a bit of this and a bit of that.
Either way, the centre is always proposed as an
alternative to the more ideologically recognisable positions
taken up on the right and left – as if it is the
Goldilocks part of the spectrum where the policy is just
right.
In short, centrism
is an ambiguous term which merits closer attention than
it usually gets.
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Ideology and ‘common
sense’
Politicians who characterise themselves
or their parties as centrist often describe themselves as
being non-ideological.
In the early 2000s, former
United Future leader Peter Dunne was fond of claiming he was
the voice of “common
sense”, the suggestion being that whatever his view on
a given policy issue, it was the sensible one to hold.
Ideology, from this view, is the enemy of sensible
politics.
But what is value-free common sense to
one person may well be politically loaded to another.
The rhetoric of common sense is usually deployed
to throw the political equivalent of an invisibility cloak
over a preference for a particular way of doing things that
suits some interests but not others. It is how political
judgements get to masquerade as
“necessities”.
The tendency to speak of the
centre as if it is non-political stems, too, from a
misunderstanding (or deliberate misuse) of the word
“ideology”. These days, taking an explicit ideological
stance is often conflated with political zealotry.
It is certainly possible to be ideologically
doctrinaire. But the root term simply refers to a political
worldview containing three things: an analysis of the
existing state of social and economic affairs, a sense of a
better way of doing things, and a political strategy for
getting from one to the other.
By this definition,
all parties have ideological positions, self-proclaimed
centrist ones no less than those on the left and right.
Dunne’s party, in its various iterations, was
socially and fiscally conservative. NZ First, another
sometime self-described centrist party, wants to statutorily
define what it means to be a man or a woman. The
Opportunity Party has clear positions on land taxes
and guaranteed minimum incomes.
Each of these
examples reflects an ideologically grounded view of the way
things are and should be. It is not possible to do politics
without being political: on the ocean of ideas, there are no
doldrums where the politics goes quiet.
The centre
does ideology as much as the left and right. As it should,
for without an ideology – or, put another way, without
political principles – a party could stand for all things
or none.
Moderation and
pragmatism
Centrist politicians also tend to
describe themselves as policy moderates. Moderation in
politics may be preferable
to immoderation, but what does it mean?
What,
for instance, is a moderate position on climate change? A
little more heat but not too much? Moderation is a
disposition, not a policy position, and centrists do not
have a monopoly over it.
Centrism is also often
coupled with pragmatism, which is really just another way of
saying “we’re keeping our options open”. But that has
to do with tactics, not policy.
For instance, the
Opportunity Party’s position on post-election coalition
negotiations – that it will speak with the largest party
after the election (standard
practice in the rest of the proportional representation
world) – signals the first step the party will take if it
holds the balance of power.
It doesn’t speak to
its position on “who
gets what, when and how”, as the political scientist
Harold Lasswell described politics. Moderation and
pragmatism are about political behaviour, not political
substance.
There is nothing wrong with this. In
politics, both process and substance are necessary. But we
should be clear about what we are talking about.
When centrist politicians speak about being
non-ideological they are often engaging in a rhetorical
strategy known as “thirding”. As one
political observer put it, this means “a huge array of
ideological positions” can be represented as offering a
new way between the old left and right.
But an
imaginary line should not be confused with reality. The
claim that it is possible to straddle – or rise above –
contrasting positions on what counts as a better world and
how to get there will always fall back to
earth.
Not because people are ideologically fixed.
Not because parties of the left and right are irremediably
doctrinaire. And not because ideology does not matter. But
precisely because it does matter.
In
politics, it is impossible to avoid making choices that have
material consequences for people’s lives. Saying you are a
centrist may tell voters how you will behave, but it does
not tell them what you stand for.
Richard
Shaw, Professor of Politics, Te
Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa – Massey
University
This article is
republished from The
Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the
original
article.
