Labor needs to connect with the voters, not with party members

THE ALP's crushing defeat in Queensland has renewed calls for Labor to expand and empower its shrinking membership.

But the reform proposals may only worsen the underlying difficulties. For Labor's real challenge is not to revitalise its membership; it is to reconnect with voters.

Giving greater power to members who are even further from the electorate's aspirations than the party's leadership, and who have far less at stake in the electoral contest, may merely make that goal more unachievable.

That is especially so since gimmicks such as primaries could strengthen the unions and factions that so undermine the party's effectiveness.

This is not to deny that Labor's membership base is a threatened species. But declining memberships are a feature common to major political parties, both of the left and of the right, in all the established democracies. In the 1950s, major parties in those democracies claimed enrolments well in excess of 10 per cent of the party vote. By the start of this century, that was down to less than 5 per cent in most countries, and below 2 per cent in many.

Moreover, since political parties have done an even worse job of attracting new members than of retaining existing ones, party members are not only fewer but much older. In Western Europe, for example, a member of a political party in 1990 was twice as likely to be over 61 as under 30; now, the odds of a party member being in the older group are three to one.

In short, the (mass) party's over. Like mainstream churches, political parties once offered a product that was uniquely attractive as a means to social integration and personal satisfaction; now, in the ever more crowded market for people's time, their offering is an increasingly tired competitor.

In itself, that may not be quite as grim for parties as it seems. For just as people no longer feel the need to join parties, so shrinking membership no longer need imply a party's disappearance as an effective political force.

After all, members were historically a source of funding, of foot soldiers and of future candidates.

Increasingly, however, parties are shifting the funding burden on to the state, whose share of party finances has risen from insignificance in the early 60s to 40 per cent of party revenues in many democracies today. As for foot soldiers, with politics increasingly capital- and media-intensive, canvassing has gone the way of the cloth cap.

Membership is therefore increasingly a channel for elite recruitment and it alone. And that is tilting party organisation away from "true believers" to aspiring functionaries, who unlike traditional members have a managerial, rather than emotional or ideological, attachment to the party.

As gifted at means as they are barren of ends, these careerists are hardly the most prepossessing of God's creatures. But however great their defects, they certainly want to win elections.

Yet doing so is increasingly difficult in virtually all established democracies. For while party identification remains strong it no longer translates into a pledge of electoral support.

Some 86 per cent of Australian voters, for example, say they identify with a political party, only marginally fewer than in 1967.

In 1967, however, 72 per cent of voters had voted for the same party in every federal election; by 2007, the proportion who had never changed their vote was down to 45 per cent and dropping by 2 per cent in each succeeding election. And as well as being more fickle, voters are deciding how to vote ever later.

It is common now for 30 per cent of Australian voters to make up their mind only during the campaign, and as many as 10 per cent don't do so until polling day.

Political parties have therefore been hit with a double whammy: greater competition in the market both for members and votes. From a societal perspective, that is plainly desirable; but much like long-established firms, parties have struggled to cope with rivalry's chill winds.

In many countries they have reacted by seeking protection, both through greater public funding and through electoral rules that entrench their role, as the 1983 shift to ticket voting (which increased parties' control over the ranking of Senate candidates) did in Australia.

At the same time parties have desperately sought new ways of engaging voters. While some options, such as expanding online, have proven modestly effective, others have been positively counter-productive.

The growing use of primaries to choose parliamentary candidates is a case in point.

For primaries increase the value of the resources internal party factions can bring to bear in mobilising potential voters. As a result, they strengthen internal factionalism and weaken party coherence. And to make matters worse, those most likely to vote in primaries are typically more extreme in their views than the party's supporters overall, and even more so relative to the community as a whole.

Primaries have therefore shifted parties further from the median voter while exacerbating intra-party divisions.

Similar issues arise with direct election by members of party leaders. Here, too, the effect is to skew the "selectorate" that determines the party's direction away from the electorate that ultimately seals its fate. And with that electorate increasingly footloose, the costs of deviating from community preferences can be high and enduring.

Those costs are especially great for parties of the left, for they have suffered the greatest loss in loyalty. At our 2010 election, for example, one-third of Labor voters, the highest proportion on record, considered switching their vote, compared to only 20 per cent of Coalition supporters.

That partly reflects the role of the Greens as a "safe" option for Labor voters. But the fundamental source of increased volatility in the Labor vote, like that of the European social democrats, is the steep decline in class voting. In 1967 voters who considered themselves working class were 35 per cent more likely to vote Labor. By 2010 that had declined to 13 per cent. And with the gap even smaller for younger voters than for their parents, the Queensland vote shows just how large the resulting swings can be.

Adjusting to that change requires a decisive shift from the rhetoric of envy and of class conflict towards the political centre. Yet the touted reforms could readily move the party further to the extremes.

Many in the ALP know that, even if they are unable to articulate a coherent alternative.

Until they do, Labor will remain paralysed between a pretense of democratic participation and a practice that reeks of its opposite.