As 23 June nears there has been increasing frustration around the quality of the debate, and the fact that such a complex constitutional issue is being decided by a binary referendum. Harry Farmer considers why referendums are becoming increasingly popular in Western democracies, and why anxieties around votes on single issues reflect deeper worries about the weaknesses of 21st century democratic systems

Farmer, Harry

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By Democratic Audit UK 2016-6-20The real reasons referendums have become so common –and so scarydemocraticaudit.com /2016/06/20/the-real-reasons-referendums-have-become-so-common-and-so-scary/As 23 June nears there has been increasing frustration around the quality of the debate, and the fact that such acomplex constitutional issue is being decided by a binary referendum. Harry Farmer considers why referendumsare becoming increasingly popular in Western democracies, and why anxieties around votes on single issues reflectdeeper worries about the weaknesses of 21st century democratic systems.Credit: Sonali CampionAs the EU referendum looms closer, and the level of anxiety about the potential result mounts, many people’sexasperation has shifted from the debate itself to the very fact we are having it.Taking Brexit as its centerpiece, a recent article in the Economist bemoaned the increasing frequency ofreferendums in Europe, complaining that they make it harder to set transnational agreements, lead to incoherentpolicies, jeopardise the rights of minorities and often fail to make for better engagement with politics.Commenting more directly on the EU referendum, Richard Dawkins recently described as an outrage the fact thatpeople ‘as ignorant as [him]’ are being asked to vote on such a complex and important matter, and pointed out thatwe live in a representative democracy, not a plebiscitary one.Leaving aside some of the more practical grievances, there seem to be two related ideas underpinning these kindsof complaints. One is that governments should have the self-assurance to govern in their country’s best interests,rather than delegating hard questions to the electorate. The other is that there are some questions that are simplytoo important and complex to be left up to the public.While it’s easy to sympathise with these ideas, you don’t have to subject them to too much pressure to see that theyapply more widely than to referendums, and that they take you in a worryingly paternalistic direction. But for exactlythat reason, it’s interesting to consider what it is that tempts (presumably) otherwise committed democrats to1/4espouse them. When you scratch beneath the surface, it becomes clear that these anxieties about referendums arereally expressions of deeper (more implicit) worries about 21st century democracy.It’s similarly interesting to ask why referendums are becoming more common. Rather than blaming the phenomenonon a crisis of weak leadership, considering why governments are finding referendums an increasingly appealingmeans of settling tough questions draws attention to a problem that our political system needs to address.Once we see referendums, and our anxiety about them, as consequence of, rather than a cause of, the flaws in ourpolitical system, we’re in a much better position to do something about it.Referendums and new political narrativesReferendums are on the rise across Europe, with an average of three a year in the 1970s having risen to eighttoday. In the UK, we will have soon had three major referendums since 2010.Considering the changes in the political landscape between now and then hints at the reasons for this. For most ofthe 20th century, the choice presented to voters has been that of left or right wing economic and social policy, withpolitical parties positioning themselves at various points on the spectrum of left to right.  Following the 2008 financialcrisis, however, a new political divide has emerged, this time between cosmopolitan and populist responses toglobalisation – with the former embracing globalisation’s free flows of people, finance and culture, and the latterseeking greater restrictions on these things.Representative democracy is fairly good at allowing voters to choose a position on a single spectrum of relatedissues, but is generally fairly bad at coherently reflecting voters’ preferences on ideas that don’t fit straightforwardlyon such a spectrum.Problematically, because both populism and cosmopolitanism are superficially compatible with both left and rightwing thinking, our current political system is unable to accurately reflect voters’ preferences along this increasinglyimportant political spectrum. Established political parties, whose identities are bound up with questions of left andright, are rarely explicit or consistent in their views on cosmopolitanism versus populism, and the opinions of theirmembers are rarely homogenous.This phenomenon also means that there is a risk of discussions of these kinds of questions going unheard. Just aspolitical parties with geographically dispersed support do worse under first past the post (FPTP), views that arespread across the spectrum of left and right often fail to get attention, as they fail to constitute the majority in anyindividual party.The increasing relevance of the cosmopolitan/populist divide, and the inability of our current political system to dealwith it, is a recipe for both voter disenfranchisement and divided political parties. In these circumstances, it’s easy tosee how a government might reasonably question its own mandate on such issues, and as such, be tempted to putthem to referendums. Equally, it’s easy to see how a government might want to use a referendum to appease its ownrebellious ranks.The Brexit debate is the perfect example of a choice between cosmopolitan and populist visions for a country thathas for years been marginalized by these features of the political system. While both the Conservatives and Labourare split (albeit to differing degrees) on the issue, both have been nominally in favour of continued membership. Addto this the fact that UKIP – the only UK party whose identity is framed around the cosmopolitan/populist dichotomy –is kept artificially small by FPTP, and it’s hard to see how British voters could have had a say on the EU had it notbeen for the referendum. Regardless of the (small ‘p’) political reasons for promising a referendum, EU membershipwas clearly an important issue that lots of voters cared about, that they couldn’t have influenced through the UK’snormal political processes.It may well be that as political parties adapt in response to the growing importance of the cosmopolitan/ populist2/4divide, the temptation to call referendums diminishes.If this does happen, it is unlikely to come about, as some have suggested, as a result of political parties fragmentinginto smaller, more ideologically homogenous groups. As the continental European experience suggests, coalitions ofsmaller, more cohesive parties are struggling to deal with the cosmopolitan/populist divide every bit as much asideologically diverse single party governments.Instead, if a viable solution to the problem is to be found within the context of representative democracy, it will bethrough establishing a connection between left and right wing, and cosmopolitan and populist ideas, such that fouroptions become two. This is a task that the left in particular has been struggling with since the eighties, but that’s notto say that it can’t be done. Late 20th and early 21st century history is an example of how the left right spectrums ofeconomic and social policy was reduced to a single spectrum, with social democracy on one end and conservatismon the other (authoritarian and libertarian positions having been all but abandoned).Another option is to shift towards more participatory democratic structures. Referendums are not the only alternativeto representative democratic structures, and are by no means the most conducive to nuanced reflection of publicopinion and thinking.Still, until our political system can adapt, referendums will continue to offer an imperfect, stopgap solution to itsinability to reflect an increasingly relevant counter-narrative.Deeper worries about democracyCriticisms of referendums also often say more about our anxieties about 21st century democracy than aboutreferendums themselves.Richard Dawkins’ response (echoing many others), that it is irresponsible to give someone as ignorant as him powerover a decision as important as EU membership, is particularly revealing.When you cut through the context, Dawkins worry doesn’t seem to be about referendums at all. Instead, it’sindicative of a deeper seated skepticism about the power of modern democratic processes to produce gooddecisions.This becomes clear when you consider why Dawkins thinks that his political ignorance is problematic in the case ofthe EU referendum, but not in other cases. If Dawkins is not qualified to make a decision about a specific, importantpolicy, then presumably he is equally unqualified to make a decision about the numerous policies at stake whenvoting in a general election. Likewise, in terms of a tendency towards superficial, poorly informed debate, thereferendum campaign is no different to any general election campaign.Given this, the most plausible reason that figures like Dawkins are willing to tolerate poor quality discourse inelections but not in the EU referendum is that, deep down, they don’t believe elections make a serious, irreversibledifference to people’s lives.This prevalence of this thought, that some things are too important to be determined by democratic processes,should be deeply unsettling to those committed to democracy. But it is also a fairly conservative, fatalistic responseto democracy’s failings, premised on the idea that the only options are for public power be severely limited ordangerously out of control.Rather than resigning ourselves to either one of these options, it is possible to take steps to improve the quality ofpublic debate, and the means by which public opinion is translated into policy decisions. Political education, allowingpeople to conceive of the theoretical underpinnings of policies and parties and better understand the workings on thepolitical system, would do a huge amount to improve the quality of public debate. Likewise, more participatoryapproaches to democracy, such as deliberative engagement, offer a means for the public to influence policy in an3/4informed, considered manner.For various practical reasons, referendums are not a good long term solution to the pressures felt by Westernpoliticians. But rather than dismissing them as the products of weak leadership, it is important to see that they areplaying a role in an imperfect system, and will continue to do so until a better mechanism is found. At the same time,instead of seeing them as inherently dangerous, we need to think hard about why the prospect of trusting the publicto decide important questions scares us so much, and what needs to change for it to be less frightening.—Note: this post represents the views of the author and not those of Democratic Audit or the LSE. Please read ourcomments policy before posting. —Harry Farmer is a policy researcher at Involve. He is fascinated by the power of deliberativeprocesses to enable governments to negotiate controversial policy decisions – particularly thosepresented by emerging technologies and demographic change.4/4

The real reasons referendums have become so common – and so scary

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