In June 2005 I went to Iran, just a week before the presidential elections that saw Ahmadinejad defeat Rafsanjani (and the rest, as they say, is history...) On one internal flight I recall meeting a young man who was training to become an Islamic leader, following in his father's footsteps. He lamented that his peers were disillusioned with Islam because when the religious leaders had come to power in 1979 they had promised 'heaven on earth' but since then had distinctly failed to deliver.

What, you might wonder, has this to do with the current debate over electoral reform in the UK and present disillusionment with the British political establishment? Well, Tom Wright observes in 'God and Government' (co-edited by former Jubilee Centre researcher Nick Spencer):

'The political systems that evolved in the wake of the Enlightenment combined the ancient logic of imperial role with modern ideas of progress and made a potent story. Once the divine right of kings had been rejected as an obvious power-play, 'vox populi, vox Dei' provided an inexorable alternative, and with atheism on the increase the 'vox Dei' bit was set aside, leaving 'vox populi' as a law unto itself. If only people's voice could be heard and harnessed, then the world would attain its long-denied utopia.'

'Many of today's political puzzlements arise, at least in part, from the failure of this expectation to materialize. We have all been voting for a long time now and utopia has failed to arrive on schedule. Modernist rhetoric kept up the pretence for a while, suggesting that a little more reform, better housing and healthcare, more appropriate foreign aid, the export of democratic freedoms to other countries, and so on, would enable us to turn the corner and bring about utopia at last. Yet this hasn't happened and isn't going to happen, a fact highlighted dramatically and tragically for us by events of recent years.'

So, now that many Christians are joining the chorus of voices calling for electoral reform, could their hopes be misplaced and their energies poorly focused? The Bishop of Durham continues:

'Here, I think, we in the Western world have been too in love with our own modernist democratic processes, and have imagined that the only really important thing about power is how people attain it, since 'vox populi' will give them the absolute right to do what they want after being elected. Part of our difficulty today is precisely that this implicit belief is held so strongly that the idea of a democratic 'mandate' is, for many, part of an unchallengeable worldview, and far too much weight then attaches to all the expensive fuss and bother about elections.'

'The early Christians, like the Jews of the same period, were not particularly interested in how someone, or some system, came to power. They were much more interested in what people did with that power once they had it, and in holding up a mirror to power, like Daniel with Nebuchadnezzar or Darius, so that those in power might be reminded that they are responsible to the Creator God and that, ultimately, they are called to bow the knee to Jesus as Lord.'

'Holding up a mirror to power' perhaps captures something of the Jubilee Centre's role, as we research areas such as the economy, environment and education.

If reform of the voting system still appeals to you, why not see what politics professor Dale Kuehne says we can learn from the system of government in the USA: Proportional Representation: A Lesson from America

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