#533 The Enshitification of Municipal Politics

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Civic Commentary & Municipal Governance

The Enshitification of Municipal Politics: Low Turnout, Incumbent Protection, and the Low-Tax Illusion

How local governance decays under the exact same mechanics as corporate platform decline—and why deferred infrastructure maintenance is paying for political survival.

If you feel like everything around you is slowly getting worse—from smaller, more expensive groceries to glitchy digital services—you aren’t imagining it. Tech writer Cory Doctorow popularized a term for this systemic decline: "enshitification." It describes the process where platforms first attract users with great service, then degrade quality to extract maximum profit once those users have nowhere else to go.

While the term originated in digital tech and consumer products, the exact same structural decay has quietly taken hold of municipal politics. When citizens are treated as captive consumers, local governance stops optimizing for core infrastructure and begins optimizing for political self-preservation.

1. The Low-Turnout Feedback Loop (The Captive Audience)

At the heart of municipal decay is voter turnout—or the distinct lack of it. In many cities, local election turnout regularly hovers between 25% and 40%.

When 60% to 75% of the electorate stays home, local government becomes a closed loop. The small slice of people who do vote skew heavily toward older, wealthier homeowners and organized special interest groups. This creates an echo chamber where councilors operate with a tiny mandate, leaving the majority of residents functionally unrepresented and disengaged.

2. Structurally Favored Incumbents

Incumbency in municipal politics carries massive structural advantages. Without the partisan party labels that exist at higher levels of government, municipal voters rely almost entirely on name recognition and local exposure.

• Resource Asymmetry: Incumbents leverage municipal staff, constituent newsletters, and official events funded by taxpayers to maintain year-round visibility.
• Network Effects: Campaign donations and donor networks naturally flow toward sitting councilors who control zoning decisions, procurement contracts, and localized funding.

The result is a political monopoly where accountability vanishes because real electoral competition is virtually impossible.

3. The Low-Tax Illusion and the Hidden Deficit

Nothing illustrates municipal enshitification better than the classic mayoral campaign slogan: "I kept your property taxes capped at 3%."

On paper, a modest tax cap looks like fiscal discipline. In reality, when inflation, labor, and material costs rise faster than 3%, that tax cap is a delusion. To pay for it, cities quietly defer ongoing maintenance on roads, water mains, transit tracks, and culverts. They run down the city’s asset reserves to fund current operating costs, building up a massive, invisible infrastructure deficit.

The incumbent gets the short-term political win—winning re-election by bragging about low taxes—while kicking a catastrophic, multi-million dollar repair bill down the road for future generations to pay.

4. Performative Governance Over Core Execution

As core infrastructure crumbles and transit systems experience service cuts or reliability failures, municipal councils frequently pivot to performative politics.

Symbolic resolutions, photo-op announcements, and lengthy debates over non-binding declarations take center stage because they cost nothing and signal virtue to active activist bases. Meanwhile, the unglamorous work of running a city—paving roads, maintaining transit, and upgrading stormwater management—is neglected.

Breaking the Cycle

Reversing municipal enshitification requires changing the structural incentives that protect bad habits:

1. Mandatory Asset Depreciation Reporting: Forcing municipal budgets to account for infrastructure wear-and-tear in real time, making deferred maintenance impossible to hide behind a tax cap.
2. Electoral Reform: Aligning local election timing or adopting rank-choice voting to break incumbent monopolies and drive higher voter turnout.
3. Focusing on Core Execution: Demand that local representatives prioritize operational delivery and asset stewardship over symbolic politics.

Published in Municipal Affairs Reading time: ~4 min

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Peter Karwacki is running for Ward 13 (Rideau–Rockcliffe) in Ottawa's October 2026 municipal election.

This time around, inform yourselves, vote differently, vote wisely. 

Vote for Peter Karwacki for Rideau Rockcliffe.