Arrested Development? The Limits of Parliamentary Development in Chaotic Political Systems

Victoria Hasson and Graeme Ramshaw of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy discuss party-parliament nexus points using the South African Democratic Alliance Party as an empirical case-study.

For all their technical procedures and structures, parliaments are fundamentally political institutions. How particular interests and actors are represented and balanced affects how a parliament functions and the outcomes it generates. Given that political parties are inherently competitive in nature, the institutionalization of rules and norms governing MP conduct within parliaments that prioritise policy debate and compromise are a necessary condition for parliamentary maturity. This suggests that parliamentary development cannot be separated from political party development, aiming for a virtuous circle of conditions in which both can ‘come of age’ as institutions.

Yet, we know that many of the party systems observed around the world are chaotic and driven principally by competitive impulses and that these tendencies spill over into parliamentary practice. Our contention is that these cutthroat party structures, favouring vote-winning over policy development, limit the scope of parliamentary performances and in turn the democratic progress of parliaments on an institutional level. In supporting parliaments to move beyond this stage of arrested development, we believe that political party-parliamentary nexus points are an under-researched but critical factor. How political parties manage their caucuses within parliament influences the content and tone of debate and policymaking, with consequences for the broader democratic system as well.

How do these nexus points develop and evolve over time? What catalyses a political party to invest in its parliamentary structures? How can international democracy assistance support these nascent nexus points to help more parliaments come of age?   In this blog, we explore the experience of the official opposition in South Africa, the actions they took in response to being elected into provincial government, and the impact it had on their parliamentary performance.

 The Democratic Alliance (DA) was elected to govern the Western Cape Province in 2009, and the party’s leader was elected as its Premier. For the first time in its history the DA was in provincial government and national opposition simultaneously. It was also the first time that the leader of the party would not lead the parliamentary caucus as a member of parliament in the National Assembly. In facing this new reality, a set of political and administrative nexus structures between the party and the party-in-parliament were created that sought to both delegate and consolidate party control over the DA’s parliamentary caucus.

Through an immediate constitutional amendment, the DA created the position of Parliamentary Leader, a role tasked with leading the party in parliament, in consultation with the Party Leader and the CEO of the party. Lindiwe Mazibuko’s election as Parliamentary Leader in 2011 precipitated an expansion in the party’s parliamentary support structure from one that was largely limited to providing secretarial support to MPs, to one that aimed to provide policy and procedural support to both MPs and the party at large.

Three key interrelated convictions motivated the timing and form that these macro political and administrative shifts took. First, the campaign to elect Mazibuko was driven by the conviction that the party needed to progressively transform its public profile, from that of a white old man’s party to that of a young party representative of the new South Africa, in advance of the 2013 national election.  Second, there was a firm conviction amongst senior party strategists that the institution of parliament, particularly under the figure of Mazibuko, offered the party a key communications platform from which it could showcase its South Africa-centric, socially democratic policy profile. Third, it was held that effective party-parliamentary nexus structures were needed to strengthen the link between the parliamentary caucus, the Party HQ and those working in the western cape government. These structures were created to be the pivot on which the party could promote a transformed electoral profile and invest in its governance capability.  All of these drivers reflected a subtle yet clear reduction in the weight of respect given to the leadership and autonomy of the DA’s parliamentary caucus, once the leader of the party became Premier and no longer leading the party in parliament.

At the micro level, the nexus structures created emphasized coordination, accountability, and communication. A National Management Committee was established, and a National Management Meeting created to meet weekly to discuss and coordinate key policy and communications campaigns between the parliamentary caucus, party HQ and the Western Cape Government, attended by top party leaders. A Parliamentary Support Office was set up to provide regular training on parliamentary mechanisms and procedures to MPs and staff, as well as track and measure MP’s performance in each session (e.g. number of questions, motions and participation in committee/and the House), which were integrated into party candidate selection processes. Dual reporting lines were developed to ensure that the Parliamentary Operations Director and head of each parliamentary office reported both to the party’s parliamentary caucus and the party HQ.

A daily National Communications Meeting was set up, comprised of the DA’s political support staff, led by the Parliamentary Operations Director and Executive Director of Communications, to determine the day’s national media strategy was set up. This body sought to use the parliamentary program and proceedings to drive issues is the media.   The title of ‘Spokesperson’ was created to designate policy portfolios to relevant individuals within the party. Moreover, sign-off processes were established for all MP statements, motions and media statements to check MPs were speaking to party policy, and to ensure the party was speaking on identified ‘realignment’ issues (issues the DA needed to speak on to transform its public image).

The number of structures established demonstrates the extent of support needed for a party trying to coordinate, control and develop its vote-winning capability alongside its democratic performance. Two additional observations can also be made. First, the underlying ambition of each nexus structure is to promote greater and more effective participation of DA MPs in parliamentary proceedings, as a platform for the party’s national vote-winning communications strategy. As such, most of the nexus structures are consultative forums for the Party and party caucus to discuss the performance of the party in Parliament, in line with the Party’s broader strategy for winning votes and governance capability. Second, collectively the mechanisms formalize a degree of accountability between national public representatives and Party HQ, specifically through the position of Executive Communications Director to which each departmental head reports on equal terms to the caucus leadership.

Several factors are seen to influence the nature of the trade-off between what DA MPs do in parliament, and what the Party wants them to do. Firstly, politics of the day often overrides the focus of nexus forums. This limits the rate at which these mechanisms develop a consolidated understanding of the DA’s policy position across portfolio, and in turn the degree to which MPs hold clear convictions on a range of policy issues, which effects their participation in parliamentary debates and use of mechanisms such as parliamentary questions and motions. However, the development of these structures enables the DA in parliament to respond coherently to current events by providing a stringent support and sign off system that overtime, embeds a general understanding of its policy on relevant issues.

Secondly, the nexus structures do not clarify the division of authority between the Party Leader, the Party’s Executive leadership team, the Parliamentary Leader and MPs, which fuels conflict as well as forces compromise. In the absence of this formal clarity, however, the nexus structures have the positive effect of ensuring DA policy alignment and party coherency through sign off processes that force different branches to overcome internal tensions related to policy and responding to issues of the day. Moreover, the regular swapping of political campaigns between the three leadership structures (Party HQ, Parliamentary Leadership and the Premier’s Office) adds an additional impetus to the work carried out in parliament. Yet, the nexus structures are often sites for proxy battles between different competing interests amongst the political branches in particular. This has an impact on staff morale and results in high rates of staff turnover from stress and burnout, which undermines the rate by which the nexus machinery advances in its support to the Party overall.

The development of a comprehensive set of nexus structures within the DA draws attention to a previously overlooked area of democratic influence. The rationale behind each mechanism evidences a link between the structure and the democratic outcome that primarily seeks to advance the DA’s growth in numbers, parliamentary performance and policy development. Yet, the extent to which these nexus structures act as ‘gatekeepers to democracy’ by curtailing the DA’s authentic participation seems more dependent on politics of the day rather than the nature and form that these parliamentary nexus structures have taken. This is an interesting finding for it asks us, as outside actors seeking to support democratic institutions, to consider what further research is needed for us to strengthen internal party parliamentary structures that support the conditions in which parliaments continuously come of age.