Wedge issue
|
|
Wedge issue is a term describing a social or political issue that is used by politicians as a ploy to "split" an opposing political party's support base and thereby entice voters to shift their support from one party to another.
The wedge issue is typically a point of internal dissent within the opposing party (often a cultural or populist issue, such as crime, race, or national security), with one faction of that party in the minority. The party using the 'wedge issue' (for the purposes of this discussion the 'exploiting' party) will make a public stand aligning itself with the minority faction of the opposing party. This is intended to cause up to three effects:
- An (often vitriolic) debate within the opposing party, giving the public a perception of disarray.
- The defection of supporters of the opposing party's minority faction to the exploiting party, should they lose the debate.
To prevent these two consequences from occurring, the opposing party may attempt to take a 'pragmatic' stand and officially endorse the views of its minority faction. However, this can lead to the third outcome:
- The defection of supporters of the opposing party's majority faction to a third party, should they lose the debate.
Wedge politics in Australia
A case study of the use of wedge issues in practice comes from the Australian federal election campaign of 2001. The federal opposition, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) was perceived to be internally split over the question of Australia's detention and deportation of refugees. Although community sentiment at large was in favour of quite harsh treatment of unauthorised arrivals in the country, a slim majority of the support base of the ALP was strongly in favour of sympathetic treatment of refugees.
The governing party, the Liberal Party of Australia took the opportunity presented by the rescue of refugees at sea by the cargo ship MV Tampa to side with the minority faction of the ALP and refuse the refugees entry to the country. This provoked a fierce debate within the ALP on the relative merits of siding with national opinion (in favour of the Government's actions) or standing on party principle (opposing). In the event, the ALP leadership under Kim Beazley sided with the Government, but opposed certain legislative matters related to the case. This resulted in both the defection of ALP supporters to the Government from the party's right wing, and further defections of ALP supporters to third parties from the party's left wing.