Want a sensible democracy? Look down under

The United States used to offer the world an attractive model for a free and prosperous society dedicated to the rule of law, civic inclusion and popular self-government. Now, when others look to America, they see democratic dysfunction, epitomized by paralyzing partisanship, national disunity and a defeated president’s attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021.

That the man found to be the architect of that plot, former President Donald Trump, has the gall to again seek the office he betrayed, is another disconcerting sign. It shows that the antibodies that traditionally have protected our country against demagogues and extremism aren’t working.   

But instead of dwelling on the dismal prospect that Republican voters may for a third time award Trump their party’s nomination, let’s imagine for a moment what living in a healthy democracy would be like.

It would probably be a lot like Australia, which several colleagues and I visited last week to check out the center-left revival engineered by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australia Labor Party.

Political parties down under compete fiercely but don’t regard each other as mortal enemies from whom their country must be “saved.” Aussie voters have little patience with polarizing ideologues who want to draft them into culture wars or cancel them for speaking their minds.

In fact, theirs is one of the few democracies that has not been convulsed by the tremors of cultural resentment and illiberal nationalism that have rolled across the United States and Europe over the past decade. 

Anti-immigration and anti-globalization attitudes are confined mostly to the political fringes. Although still predominantly white and European, Australia is fast becoming a multiethnic society with a strong Asian, and especially Chinese, cast. Public opinion favors free trade because Aussies recognize that their remote and lightly populated (25 million) island continent can’t thrive without access to international markets.

When asked the secret of their country’s immunity from U.S.-style negative partisanship and identity-group tribalism, Australians invariably gave the same answer: The moderating impact of mandatory voting.

The requirement that everyone register and vote produces a turnout of over 90 percent in federal elections. Voters in federal House elections also are required to express their voting preferences for all candidates. If their first choice fails to win a majority, their second, third and other preferences are counted until another candidate gets past 50 percent of the vote.

In contrast to first-past-the-post systems like ours, this means no votes are wasted. It also buttresses the majoritarian logic of Aussie politics by diluting the appeal of radical parties with intense but narrow support.  

A prominent U.S. fan is former President Barack Obama, who has said mandatory voting would have a “transformative” effect on America’s political system.

It would mean that U.S. candidates and parties wouldn’t need to hoover up campaign contributions to finance expensive get-out-the-vote drives. Nor would they have to push emotional hot buttons to motivate their most zealous partisans, since they’d be coming to the polls anyway.

A word that comes up a lot when Australians talk about their political system is “sensible.” Mandatory voting pushes national debates onto the political center ground, where common sense compromises can be struck.

Take immigration, an issue that roils many Western democracies. Australians are fairly relaxed about the issue. Albanese has announced plans to increase permanent immigration to 195,000 a year and to fast-track work visas to clear a backlog of 1 million applicants.

Of course, comparisons with America’s ugly nativism aren’t quite fair, since Australia has no land borders with other countries. Migrants who reach its shores by boat are turned back. Nonetheless, there’s a broad political consensus that the country needs an orderly process for importing more young workers and matching them to the country’s economic needs.

Climate change is another example. The ruling conservative coalition won the 2019 elections largely on the strength of claims that Labor’s push for big carbon reductions would cost fossil-rich Australia lots of jobs and money. Since then, however, wildfires, severe flooding and droughts have combined with falling prices for renewable energy to erode public support for the conservatives’ “go-slow” climate policy.

In last year’s election, Labor moderated their demands for emissions reductions and dropped calls for restoring taxes on mining. This may have helped the left-wing Greens pick up some seats in urban centers. But Labor got a big boost from the defection from the Liberals (as conservatives are called) of 10 “Teal Independents” who won House seats in upscale suburbs around the country. They were mostly professional women fed up with the conservative coalition’s turn to the right and weak climate policies.

Labor’s climate pragmatism is part of the “small target” strategy Albanese adopted to reassure voters that Labor would focus on a manageable set of achievable goals rather than the sprawling agenda it offered three years earlier.

This disciplined approach, however, doesn’t preclude policy ambition. Calling Labor “proudly and resolutely pro-growth,” Albanese links its low-carbon goals to new investments aimed at sparking clean energy jobs and revitalizing Australian manufacturing.

And in a major shift for Labor, Albanese has endorsed AUKUS, a defense pact between Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom that will lead to building and basing nuclear-powered (but not armed) submarines in Australia. This has drawn fire from both anti-nuclear activists and former Labor leader Paul Keating, who sees it as provoking China.

To Australians across the political spectrum, however, it reflects a realistic response to China’s growing belligerence, as well as a strong desire to maintain historic security ties to Washington.

Labor’s return to power for the first time since 2013 underscores Australians’ preference for radical pragmatism over zero-sum ideological conflict. The country has its share of knotty problems, but its leaders haven’t lost the ability to hold extremes in check, frame persuasive arguments to the public at large and forge solutions that command wide assent.

That’s sensible — and a model for fixing what ails U.S. democracy.

Will Marshall is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI).