Recently, I have been reading a series involving a lot of politics of the Roman Republic and being the history and politics buff that I am, I started playing some games comparing the two political systems and, in particular, thinking about what would happen if we adopted a one year electoral cycle in New Zealand.
Roman elections operated on one year cycles. Each year two Consuls were elected to act as pseudo presidents for the year for the unelected Senate. A whole range of other positions were also elected on one year terms to conduct courts, reflect the will of the plebeians, reflect the military, manage infrastructure and so forth.
One final quirk for context, in the later part of the republic, term limits we established to prohibit people from being Consul more than once every ten years (with varying levels of success given the predilection for people in control of armies to attempt to vary these rules).
There were other factors, rules and traditions here but the key factors I’m interested in are the annual term limits and the prohibition on standing again for ten years.
So I thought what would happen if we had a one year term? Assuming everything else stays the same except the term limit.
Almost certainly government would get less done.
There would be a number of necessary actions that would need parliaments time including, annual reviews of government agencies, reactive or urgent changes to laws responding to events, and the annual Budget and estimates process.
This would leave limited time to get things done.
The longer term work of government would suddenly develop a short term calculus. Government would need to find ways to sell the work they are doing to voters knowing that voters get to decide between parties in 365 days.
I assume this would immediately force a government to establish quick priorities that are electorally viable.
Hundreds of working groups would become even more difficult to sell to the electorate, especially if it means that the public service and ministers got bogged down. Time becomes more valuable.
This probably looks like an immediate implementation of key election promises over a longer process of trying to beef them in.
It also likely means a bit more push back from ministers on the public services processes and timelines. There’s risk here (you could do something damaging, but this also happens under the status quo).
I imagine it would mean we are more likely to see governments acting like the Ardern Government did at the end of 2017, quickly pushing through major budget promises in a mini-budget immediate after the election.
Parliament would do less but focus on different items
While I presume you could be elected on managerial credentials, I doubt that any government would be keen to risk an election on some of the Bills the NZ parliament is currently considering like the Fair Trading Amendment Act or a Bill to make large financial companies declare their emissions (despite being covered by the ETS).
Similarly, I would assume that issues like the recently announced local government review or previous health review would either need to be built as a bi-partisan work-streams to try and build consensus, or would be sold to voters in a more targeted way to convince voters to renew a mandate.
Finally, there could be concerning impacts on how the processes of Parliament and Government are used. Focusing short term means more likelihood of bypassing consultation and due process in order to achieve something. But these things are important and make changes better and more enduring (even if there is initial opposition). It may also imbue a sense of need to use executive powers more permissively over deferring to Parliament (a part of me wonders if this is something similar to what happens in the USA as well with an expansion of the power of the executive).
The major change would likely be around a sense of urgency from politicians who know that they could lose their ministerial job if they don’t find ways to deliver on the perceptions and expectations the public have.
Coalitions could be trickier
Knowing you have months to make a point to voters, you could see the New Zealand Firsts of this work being even more cantankerous in pushing an agenda.
But, I’d imagine you would also be likely to see a more aggressive counter balance as well from any other coalition partner in response.
The last term saw NZ First kill the idea of light rail and a capital gains tax through the term under the status quo.
With less time available, I’d argue this raises the stakes for the other partners to respond either in kind or by making clear bottom lines heading into an election.
Arguably this creates less stability.
The job of opposition may be easier or it might just be more random.
The counterpoint of governments building electoral policy early on is that it provides options to make a point of difference over a set number of issues in a shorter space of time.
I’d argue that one problem opposition has currently is trying to build a head of steam across three years.
One year cycles would make the presence of an election a constant pressure.
Of course, another option here could be that random events have more sway. The advent of COVID-19 had an effect on the 2020 election in NZ. The government performed well in an unforeseen crisis and was rewarded. This is not uncommon around the world in such crises.
One year terms would probably see more of these influence elections, but would also see more incidents of governments being punished for failure to respond well or an inability to deliver meaningful governance.
Voter fatigue
I’m not certain about this one. Voters turn out when they feel motivated to do so. Across the western world there has been ongoing discussion about rising levels of voter apathy.
One year terms may create a fatigue for voters and result in less turnout as voters get tired of having to engage in politics they find unappealing annually.
On the other hand, changing incentives for parties may force them to focus on issues that engage people more. If political parties are always in election mode, they’ll always be trying to find ways to connect with voters and convince them that good things can come to them if only that party was in power.
I wouldn’t be that surprised if turnout decreased, but it also argue you’d likely get different combinations of voters each year depending on issues and that may very well result in more people voting across a comparable three year cycle than under the status quo.
Summary
There will be many more impacts that could be identified, these are a handful I’ve thought through but I think they outline some themes for discussion.
Values
An annual term would have a major impact on the way political parties operate in and out of government.
Elections would always be right around the corner, so parties would constantly close to or in a campaign.
This isn’t that different from comparable systems overseas. The US is regularly having elections federally (every two years) and a host of local elections regularly as well. The UK, despite having five year national terms, seems to be constantly in and out of headline grabbing by-elections, local elections and until recently, European elections.
New Zealand has traditionally been much more conservative. We have one election every three years, not all that many by-elections, and very poorly attended local government elections with little party political representation.
It doesn’t seem to be that parties becoming more political in this sense is a bad thing. In many cases, it will mean making sure you are constantly seeing to build a coalition of voters. It makes internal party politics riskier (in the immediate term). People could very well hear more of what they want to hear from people meant to represent them.
Secondly, parliament would probably become more accessible for the same reason. Parties have to explain what they are doing and this would be focused on the electorate. Less tinkering, more targeting of voters.
Similarly, governments and political parties would need to be much more responsive to current events. Scandals within the public service or government in general become even riskier when there is less time to replace these issues in voters minds. There’s potential problems here in that it makes politics potentially more influenced by events, but also drives responses to those events over a more cyclical attempt to wait for those events to be overtaken. It also provides the same risk for everyone in politics, so I tend to see this as part of a potentially positive theme of making parties more responsive to real people.
Problems
Long term issues would remain uncertain. Governments will seek “wins” rather than more careful long term consideration of issues. This will probably look more like throwing money at issues to deliver that “win” for voters rather than addressing underlying structures.
Similarly, it means that governments won’t have time to properly bed in long term changes. If they prove unpopular, we would see more examples of Ardern ruling out the Capital Gains Tax, Key ruling out increasing the age of superannuation and so forth.
This, for proponents of these policies, pushes the issue down the road rather than actually addressing it. While this does happen under the status quo, I do wonder whether we would see more of this.
Second, while the focus on what gets done would change and this could have value, we would also lose focus on a number of smaller but still important changes. On a legislative level, we would probably see more use of powers like urgency and less time While this is a problem, I’m hesitant to put too much weight on it because it also happens under the status quo.
Perhaps one of the bigger problems would be a Government feeling more pressure to act and deciding to bypass important processes, like Select Committees and wide ranging consultation on major changes. The drive to have deliverables perhaps undermines the value of having a good manager in charge (who doesn’t necessarily need to be acting all the time).
Conclusion
I did this mainly as a way to idle away the day, but am aware that there is a latent political discussion in New Zealand about term length. I am not convinced that a one year term would work well here, largely because I think magnifying the incentive to campaign has the potential to put more weight on the expectation on Government’s to get things done which will likely be done poorly.
Already I think we see a situation where Government’s feel like they need to legislate or had over money too often at the expense of letting communities and markets find their own solutions to problems (often actual solutions rather than solutions seeking problems or press releases as can come from Wellington).
However, that issue does charactarise for me a concern I would also have with expanding the amount of time a Government has to act. I tend to mistrust executive authority because I think, as indicated above, it is often mistargeted and usurps better options for making our community better.
