Why is Council Voting Dropping?

This post starts with local commentary on voting patterns, summarises in depth research (Nordic and US experience), and concludes that Council voting decline anticipates a steady decline in economic activity reliant upon a thriving local democracy.

There's a very good piece in the NBR on voting entitled: who's to blame for a record low voter turnout? It doesn't really have a thesis, part perhaps from suggesting that youth don't vote because they don't see themselves among the candidates, and which offers suggestions including that there should be more prty politics in local government. It is a good read and has some great links to blogs which contain photos of billboard displays across the country, including this one which is highly recommended.

As the NBR article notes, the problem of declining voting/participation has been occurring for a while across the western world - at both national and local levels, and there is a lot of useful and informative analysis about why, in other countries, that we could look at and consider in New Zealand. I look at two pieces of research in this posting.

One of these countries is Iceland. You might recall that Iceland was hit particularly hard by the GFC. Various banks took a major hit in 2008, leading to economic collapse, and in turn to a huge drop in public confidence in its parliament. In 2010 there was a sharp drop in local government voting numbers, which led to internal soul-searching which is reported in various research papers. In one of these (Explaining the low voter turnout in Iceland’s 2010 local government elections; By Grétar Þór Eyþórsson, Marcin Kowalczyk), dated 2013, the introduction comments:

One hypothesis is that a major factor, especially in the 2010 elections, was disillusionment in the wake of Iceland’s economic collapse in 2008 and the subsequent crisis of public confidence in parliament. Another hypothesis is that the size of municipalities has to be taken into account. As elsewhere, political participation in Iceland is stronger in smaller municipalities. It is only in the bigger municipalities in Iceland that nationwide political parties in Iceland are active, and it is also there that voter turnout has dropped the most and voters have given the most support to newly formed political parties.

The paper draws on research conducted in Iceland and in Norway to show that in the past decade or so, there has been increasing involvement of political parties (or partisan groupings) in local government elections, and that this factor is a contributor to declining voter participation and interest. The research oberves that local government election turnout in small communities (eg less than 2000), where candidates are "non-partisan" (ie not affiliated with any particular persuasion or party), routinely get turnouts above 80%. The article also notes that the emergence of new political parties (as happened in Iceland after the 2008 crash) has led to those new parties seeking profile and representation at local government level - presumably as part of a build up toward national elections.

Here's an extract from the paper about Icelandic voter turnout which is a bit of an eye-opener:

Looking as far back as data has been collected, voter participation in Icelandic local government elections always fluctuated between a maximum of 87.8 percent and a minimum of 81.9 percent – until the 2006 elections, when it dropped below 80 percent for the very first time, to 78.7 percent. In the 2010 local elections voter turnout reached a new record low of 73.4 percent.

In its examination of possible reasons for the decline in voting, the paper notes that after 1993, the number of local government municipalities in Iceland has been reduced, so that the population or size of munipalities has increased....

Here it is important to mention that, since 1993, many municipalities in Iceland have amalgamated. Two general local referenda on amalgamations were held in 1993 and 2005, and other amalgamations have taken place separately. The number of municipalities has fallen from 196 (in 1993) to 105 (in 2002) to 76 (in 2010).

The writers consider, and reject, two factors for the change in voter turnout. The first is the increasing role of political parties, the second is the reduction in voter age to 18 (NB: dropping the voting age to 18 brings a whole new demographic into the voting population - one argument that is used here is that young people may not be interested in, or aware of, what local government does.) In any case, while these arguments might be applicable in considering what's happening here in NZ, they were discounted in the Iceland study.

The rationale for declining voter participation in Iceland, post 2008, is summarised like this: "...results show us that the events of autumn 2008 and their aftermath had not only a strong economic impact on the people of Iceland, but also an effect on the way they think about politics, which has manifested itself in sharply declining trust in politicians and political institutions...."

The researchers then turned their attention to the role of population in voter turnout. They argue: "...More recent findings also support the hypothesis that democracy weakens with increasing population size...". They cite a number of studies about this, and summarise these findings: "a number of other studies have concluded that there is a clear correlation between municipal population size and voter participation – the bigger the municipality, the lower the rate of participation (Morlan, 1984; Goldsmith and Rose, 2000; Sundberg, 2000; Frandsen, 2002; Frandsen, 2003)...."

The second piece of research was done in the USA nd is dated 2003. MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS AND VOTER TURNOUT IN LOCAL ELECTIONS; ZOLTAN L. HAJNAL University of California, San Diego, PAUL G. LEWIS; Public Policy Institute of California. The summary of this research states: "...Specifically, less outsourcing of city services, the use of direct democracy, and more control in the hands of elected rather than appointed officials all tend to increase turnout...."

This research summarises other findings which consider the imnplications of low voter turnout. This explores the issue of low turnout among minority groupings, and examines problematic outcomes associated with low voter turnout which resonate in Auckland....

In an arena in which the actions of local government can affect citizens in profound ways (for example, in public safety, infrastructure, and land-use decisions), there is a very real possibility that elected officials and the policies they enact will tend to serve only a small segment of the population (Hajnal and Hills 2002).

The focus of this research is the nature of institutional arrangements, and their effect on voter turnout and participation. The research explores these areas: (1) election timing, (2) service delivery arrangements, (3) direct democracy, (4) term limits, and (5) mayoral authority. I won't go into all of these here - you can find the paper yourself. For example, in terms of timing, various researchers believe that local voter turnout would increase if elections were held at the same time as national elections. In terms of service delivery, the research summarises its own literature search:

One of the more recent and pronounced trends in local governance is a move toward contracting out and other “outsourcing” of city services. In an effort to provide more efficient services, many cities have contracted with private firms to carry out services. Others have turned to special district governments or have contracted with nearby governments, particularly the county, to deliver services (Miller 1981; Foster 1997). Whether such service delivery alternatives ultimately reduce costs and improve city services can be debated. There is little doubt, however, that such service arrangements reduce the influence of municipal officials to some degree; at the very least, they have fewer jobs to control. The reduced role for local bureaucrats and elected officials may have the unintended consequences of reducing interest in local politics and depressing turnout.

The research paper goes on to describe its own methodology and investigation - the main results of which are summarised above.

Communities in New Zealand in general, and in Auckland in particular, appear to be experiencing similar issues with their local government arrangements and institutions as have been investigated in Europe and the USA, with similar consequences - ie low and reducing voter turnout.

Any analysis of why Auckland's local government vote is low needs to go further than what has been offered so far in the mainstream media. In my opinion, well functioning local government institutions are critical in urban environments that are experiencing high growth rates and development pressures. Auckland in particular can expect increasing resistance from communities to intensification programs which do not provide for mutual benefit outcomes that can only be achieved by effective - and trusted - local government institutional arrangements. Perhaps the existing arrangements deliver GDP growth benefits to some stakeholders now, but long term programs and mutual benefit will require institutional change.

(NB: The level of public confidence in Auckland Council decision-making is dropping. Only 17% of respondents to its Quality of Life survey trust Council to make the right decisions. This measure has been steadily falling since amalgamation (see this posting about other quality of life survey measures last year). Predictor of voter turnout: low confidence+low trust=low turnout+low participation=poorly performing urban political economies.)