Mandates, assets and popular opinion

National's plan to sell 49 percent of its stake in five state-owned companies (commonly called the "asset sales policy") was a major platform for their campaign, yet polls consistently showed asset sales to be unpopular among the broader New Zealand public. Due to this lack of public support, some commentators are questioning whether or not National has a "mandate" to follow through with the policy.

Mandate theory basically says that through voting, we authorise our MPs to behave or act according to what they promised. Whichever party forms government is then justified in carrying out its work and should carry out what voters wanted them to do. Voices from the opposition are insisting that the low public support for asset sales despite high support for the National Party means that the policy itself was not authorised by the electorate, and thus National should not implement it. National says they do have a mandate to follow through with the policy because they received the higher share of the vote, and the electorate had full knowledge that if they won the policy would be implemented.

Mandate theory becomes pretty messy under MMP because it isn't until after elections, when negotiations between parties take place, that the government's policy programme is confirmed. In fact, under most electoral systems the idea of "mandates" has its limits, because the government's duty isn't just to carry out a pre-established checklist, but to respond to the needs of the time—some of which can't even be known at an election. Also, voters might support some of a party's policies but not all of them (as seems to have been the case at this election), making it impossible to determine what has and hasn't been "authorised" or endorsed.

We need to think about our elections as times when we elect MPs and parties who govern on our behalf, not just a set of policy prescriptions. Their policies are important, and give a crucial indication of the direction the party may head in, but to think narrowly of their authority as simply enacting whatever they campaigned on creates problems. The authority and responsibility for final decision-making fundamentally rests with the government, not with the outcomes of opinion polls. It is rare that any decision will be popular with all constituents; however, regardless of popularity, decisions must be made. National has decided that asset sales are in New Zealand's best interest and based on how many people have voted for National, they have the authority to implement their policy.

• Read National's partial privatisation policy
• Read Labour's opposition to the "asset sales" policy

The MMP box of chocolates

Parliament has changed a lot in the last couple of decades. Government and opposition are no longer formed simply by two major parties opposing one another; instead groups of parties support or oppose each other, sometimes opposing each other even while both being in government. This is the result of MMP, where no single party wins, so parties have to come up with ways to work together in order to have a stable government that can get things done. Support agreements are the mechanism New Zealand has developed to make government work, and they have some real benefits. The trouble is that for the electorate it makes life (as Forrest Gump would say) like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get.

The agreements act a bit like a pressure valve. They mean that the minor parties can choose the degree to which they support the major governing party, while maintaining their distinctiveness to their voters and their capacity to challenge the government. Having flexible governing arrangements with multiple parties also means that it is more likely a government will last its term, because tensions and differences can be managed without blowing the lid on the whole arrangement. Yet there is a major downside in that voters do not get to have a say on which particular policies are dropped, changed or adopted during the negotiations and therefore can find it difficult to know exactly what they are voting for at an election. For example, after the recent election some members of the public are seeing red about the government's surprise commitment to trial charter schools, which has come from the National-ACT agreement. But, as John Key stated, "That's MMP for you, isn't it."

Another interesting point to note is the changes these support agreements have created for how we understand the responsibility of Ministers. One of the principles that our parliament ticks on is that Cabinet (made up of all the Ministers) is "collectively responsible" for the decisions that are made. This means that members of Cabinet aren't allowed to publicly disagree on anything the Cabinet decides on. However, under MMP, in order to keep their point of difference, Ministers from minor parties are allowed to only agree with Cabinet on issues that affect their specific portfolio.

Support agreements are part and parcel of MMP politics these days—compromise and policy trading are the outcomes, not policy purity. The benefit of these agreements is that they are an effective way to provide for stable government under MMP, and can allow many different voices to play a part in determining the policy programme. However they have certainly changed how we understand the Cabinet and they can lead to some suprising policies that weren't put forward during the election campaign.

• Read the National-ACT confidence and supply agreement
• Read the National-United Future confidence and supply agreement
• Read the National-Maori Party relationship accord and confidence and supply agreement

The need for virtue

"Democracy and the market are not machines that can run themselves," according to public intellectual, George Weigel, from the Ethics and Public Policy Centre in Washington DC. "It takes a certain kind of people, who are living a certain set of virtues, to make democracy work. As we have seen in Europe recently, a deficit of democratic culture can be as dangerous to the future of societies as fiscal deficits."

At recent guest lectures for Maxim Institute, Weigel spoke about the three interlocking elements of a flourishing democracy, namely a democratic political community, a free economy, and a vibrant moral culture. The last of these "is the key to the success of the former." This is because freedom (both political and economic) "sets loose" a lot of energy that can be directed in many different ways. It can lead to human flourishing or it can equally lead to decadence and degradation. Weigel says we should never speak only of the "free society" but always of the "free and virtuous society."

For Weigel, one of the threats to a vibrant moral culture is our understanding of freedom. As freedom has become detached from a concept of tenable truths that are publicly identifiable and available, freedom has become a matter of individual choice—something we can choose to attach to anything we want, as long as nobody else gets hurt. But contrary to this view, Weigel suggests that freedom is actually not just about letting one's will rule, rather in the history of western democratic politics, "freedom was always understood to have a deep connection to moral truth."

He describes freedom as being like learning to play the piano. For a long time we practice our scales, developing our habits, so that we can then improvise "freely," but in a way that leads to good results. Similarly, Weigel says, "freedom needs to be undergirded by the habits of virtue" and it "must be tethered to moral truth if freedom is not to be self-cannibalising."

As we look at the flailing democracies across the globe, Weigel's arguments become highly pertinent. He offered no easy solutions, but a compelling refocusing of our efforts, not to simply tinker with the "machinery" of democracy and the market, but to remember that the "habits of heart and mind of the citizenry" are fundamental to the entire democratic project.

• Listen to Weigel's guest lecture for Maxim Institute, People of Virtue