Power Shift: From Party Elites to Informed Citizens (review)

In Power Shift, Vaughan Lyon provides a searing indictment of the extent to which political party leaders have come to dominate parliamentary democracy in Canada. So far has this gone that the word that best describes our political system today, he contends, is “partyocracy.”

Lyon insists that this illness in the Canadian system of government can be cured only by some very strong medicine. That medicine is the election of citizens’ parliaments in every federal constituency. Through deliberation these local parliaments will form positions on policy issues and identify the person best able to represent them in Parliament.

The strength of Lyon’s book lies mostly in its diagnosis of what ails Canadian democracy today rather than in the reform he prescribes. His reform proposal is set out in the book’s opening chapter. The ten chapters that follow are devoted to critiquing the existing system and the inadequacy of incremental approaches to democratic reform. Like the author, let me start with his panacea—constituency parliaments.

These mini local parliaments are to be elected in each of Canada’s 338 federal constituencies. Members of these constituency parliaments (CPs) are to be elected by 1,000-person wards—so that a constituency of 100,000 will support a local parliament of 100. Members of these local assemblies would meet full time for one month a year and be paid one-twelfth of a federal MP’s remuneration. The CPs would select a few significant policy issues to discuss—free of partisan considerations. The majority position they reach on these issue would be conveyed to the person they select to be their MP. Their MP would not be bound by the CP but would be expected to keep in close touch with the CP and explain any departures from positions favoured by the CP.

At the beginning, the existing political parties would carry on and compete in elections. Lyon realizes that abolishing them would be unconstitutional. But he is convinced the Conservatives, New Democrats, Liberals, Bloc Québécois, and Greens would simply “fade away,” so popular would the CPs and their candidates quickly become. But before they fade away they would somehow be persuaded to use the parliamentary power they now have to establish the CP machinery that—according to Lyon—will soon wipe them out.

I hesitate to state the obvious—but still I must say it—this is not going to happen. It is not just that the “party elites” will not be persuaded to pass the legislation needed to establish constituency parliaments, but that this solution will not have the support of many others—political scientists, journalists, and citizens—who are dissatisfied with the way Canada’s parliamentary system is operating today.

For me, Lyon’s model has two fatal weaknesses. The first is that most citizens are too busy with the problems and pleasures of everyday life to support or serve in local parliaments. This is the fundamental truth on which a century ago Gaetano Mosca and Robert Michels based their explanation of how in mass democracies an iron law of oligarchy pushes power to the top of even the most egalitarian political parties.

My second reason for questioning Lyon’s model is the inescapable differences of opinion and outlook that crop up in even a very small group of citizens. The small wards of Lyon’s constituency parliaments will harbour strong believers in unbridled capitalism as well as strong social democrats—not to mention neighbours with conflicting views on everything from global warming to Canada’s relations with the United States. No amount of deliberation in the local assemblies will eliminate these competing views of the public good and the urge to advance them through party-like organizations.

Lyon believes that a national parliament made up of MPs who represent grassroots opinion in every constituency would be much more able to deal with national unity issues than a parliament dominated by national political parties. This belief flies in...