In a provocative piece, The Toronto Star's Susan Delacourt recently asked whether political parties still have a useful role to play in our democratic future. I think they do, but she puts her finger on an issue we would all be wise to consider.Delacourt (who is also my spouse) thinks parties served us well in the past because they brokered diverse interests across the country or a province. This helped unite the community, but it also helped parties win elections. The parties' interests thus complimented the community's.This is changing. Pollsters now recognize that elections are usually won or lost by a small group of voters who can be shifted one way or another with small rewards, such as a tax break. Targeting this “middle 10%” is far more efficient than trying to manage messy debates over big issues.The BC election is a case in point. Four days before the election, Liberal pollster Dimitri Pantazopoulos confidently announced to the campaign team that they were poised to win a majority. At the time, everyone else in the province thought an NDP majority was all but certain.Pantazopoulos attributes the Liberal victory to careful polling, which allowed him to identify key ridings where small but decisive vote-gains were possible. The Liberals isolated the issues that mattered and then surgically targeted voters. This was enough to reverse the NDP tide and win a majority.This "micro-targeting" is part of a major trend that is transforming politics. Parties across the country (and around the world) are now building the tools and skills for a far more sophisticated version, using huge databases and new analytical tools to track voters and their preferences. Let's call this the New Politics.Over the next decade, the New Politics will become the norm. It is also likely to have a negative impact on political participation, which, as everyone knows, has been falling for some time. Organized religion is undergoing a similar trend that sheds light on this issue.Over the last two generations participation in church services has tumbled, to the point where many experts now believe churches are in permanent decline. Yet, while only half of Canadians still attend services, two-thirds of us continue to describe ourselves as “spiritual.”Churches, we find, are not essential to the religious impulse. People went to church because it helped fulfill these aspirations. But as historians will note, organizations like churches come and go. If they lose touch with their members, the members move on—and the institution withers. There is a timely lesson here for political parties.In an age when politics looks increasingly transactional, it is easy to forget how aspirational it really is. Like religion, democracy calls on people to rise to a higher standard—to govern themselves, rather than be governed, say, by a king or dictator. They must learn to exchange views, listen to one another, compromise, build bridges and form coalitions.The “big tent” metaphor neatly captures this aspect of our politics and, like churches, parties flourished when they saw it as their primary business. Not that there was ever a “Golden Age” when everyone was a model citizen, any more than everyone was once a model Christian. The point is rather that there is a deep connection between political participation and people's democratic aspirations—and political parties are part of that.The New Politics threatens to sever the link with organized politics. Micro-targeting is essentially a business transaction that has no place for dialogue or debate. Voters are simply offered a product they already want. And they pay for it with their vote, which, in this model of politics, has no other real value.While it may please people to get something they want, there is little to distinguish this from shopping. And it does about as much to fulfill their aspirations. So, far from stopping the decline in public participation, a huge shift toward the New Politics will only accelerate it.Nevertheless, the genie is out of the bottle. Parties are going to build these tools and they are going to use them. The best line of defense therefore is not to oppose the trend but to find ways to put the tools to work in the service of democracy.Simply, parties should ensure that investments in “micro-targeting” are matched by equally well-resourced efforts to promote new forms of public dialogue and engagement. Much useful work is already being done on this, especially through initiatives in public engagement and open government. (Some parties and governments are already active here, but I'll save that for another day.)Finally, in case anyone doubts it, citizens want to be engaged. As we saw in the Ontario election, Tim Hudak's views on smaller government and Kathleen Wynne's on public pensions caught people's attention. Whatever one's ideological persuasion, ideas were at play, they were being discussed, and people felt engaged.Now that the election is over, however, the Conservatives in particular will be asking what went wrong. New Politics advocates will say that campaigns can no longer be fought on big ideas. Politics is about numbers, they will insist, and that is how elections are won.I think this goes to the heart of Delacourt's concern over the future of political parties. Traditionally, “big tent” politics forced them to strike a balance between the ideas they stood for and the goal of winning power. This is now being called into question.A myth is emerging that the New Politics creates almost magical powers to win elections. But to command these powers, a party's commitment to ideas must be thrown overboard. Winning is all about tools and methodology.This is an illusion. No doubt, the New Politics greatly enhances a party's ability to run a campaign. And as a result, those on the cutting-edge can look like miracle workers, as the BC election shows. But for the most part, this is the result of learnable technical skills. Someone may have the edge for a while, but others will soon catch up.This myth around the New Politics therefore needs to be exploded before it starts an arms race to acquire ever bigger and better data bases, algorithms, communications networks and marketing tools. This is a kind of madness that will benefit no one. Democratic politics is not a science. First and foremost, it is about our aspirations—as individuals and communities.The new tools and skills are a means to an end, nothing more and nothing less. Victory will go to the party that learns to use them to bring the public more fully into the policy process, rather than to shut them out.Dr. Don Lenihan is an internationally recognized expert on democracy, public engagement, accountability and service delivery. Since 2009, he has been Senior Associate at Canada's Public Policy Forum in Ottawa. From October 2013 to April 2014, Don served as Chair of the Ontario Open Government Engagement Team. The views expressed here are those of the columnist alone. Don can be reached at: [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at: @DonLenihan