My worries about DD are threefold.
1. With an uncodified constitution,
already in a state of flux with the botched reform of the House of
Lords, I would be very worried about radical change. This is not
because I am particularly afraid of listening to people – the
experience of Switzerland and the US shows that citizen initiatives are
as often sensible as not, and more to the point as often sensible as
anything that emanates from Parliament. It is more a small-c
conservative point that changing a delicately balanced system should be
done incrementally and carefully, rather than wholesale. The benefits
of DD are potential and theoretical only, and I worry about the effects
on our representative political culture as a whole. The system works
very well in Switzerland and the US, but they have very different
political cultures. The Swiss cantonal system demands some sort of
independent decision-making, and of course the US’s liberal political
culture almost demands such a system. But so many other parts of the
culture are different there as well, e.g. almost all public officials
are elected in the States. The democracy of the citizen’s initiative is
all of a piece with the democracy of public life, but DD in the UK
would not chime so well with our representative/establishment setup.
2. Agreed that the political
culture at Westminster is not in a happy state. But I think that the
culture of spin etc, which so many people rightly find off-putting, is
only partly down to politicians. I think that the media and voters
themselves are also partly responsible. So I am wary (a) of making
politicians clean up their act without also improving the behaviour of
the media and voters, and (b) of simply transferring powers from one
unsatisfactory part of the polity to another.
3. Referendums seem to me to
undermine the spirit of politics a la Bernard Crick, In Defence of
Politics, that it is the art of discussion and compromise. There is an
assumption of a binary structure to debate which is not realistic.
Furthermore, there are questions of inconsistency with other government
policy.
That said, the question is how best
to begin to introduce DD into the UK. I think it can only be
incrementally, and there are obvious ideas here. So one first step
would be perhaps to try initiatives to generate inquiries. Second step
would be to look at local referendums. Third step – and this is deeply
important – is evaluation. Only then should we move on to any national
scheme. I think the Swiss guy said something more or less to this
effect, but evaluation is extremely important. The tricky question, of
course, is how directly democratic this evaluation process should be!!
More specific comments.
On Our Say
1. Don’t like referendum day
coinciding with local elections, necessarily, at least not initially.
Taking powers from representatives will affect the political system in
ways we know not, and there will be interference between referendum
campaigns and election campaigns. That interference might well be
constructive, but equally might not. Would much prefer to see a less
aggressive scheduling at least in the first instance.
2. Do we need the Electoral
Commission involved? Why not simply propose a question (say) as part of
the petitioning process? If we trust the good sense of the people, then
we also ought to trust their sense in working out which questions are
biased and which not. If we are to allow direct democracy, then surely
we should allow citizen control over the process where possible or
sensible. The 1975 referendum was neutered to a large extent by the
political elite’s control over the processes.
3. Money. A key question, and again
a problem that wrecked the 1975 experiment. How many organisations
would be allowed to take part in the referendum? There seems to be a
tacit assumption that there will be an official Yes campaign and an
official No campaign. This did happen in 1975, but only fairly
fortuitously. Also, one of the real problems in the No campaign was
that two groups were forced to work together within the No campaign,
and they never got on or cooperated fully. It is an unwarranted
assumption that there will be effective coalitions around each
potential response to the referendum question. Quality of campaign
management will matter much more than quality of argument, if 1975 is
any guide.
4. Media. A point made years ago by
Bob Worcester is that politicians’ voices will always dominate media
debate, and that non-politicians will have highly rationed access to
the media. Furthermore, the media will make little distinction between
flaky views and serious ones, if they are required to be balanced. So
if, say, 99 serious economists thought X, and 1 dodgy economist thought
Y, any balanced report would have to interview one of the serious
economists to put the point X, and then the loony to put the point Y.
The balance of the debate is not reflected because of the need to keep
a balance between X and Y.
On Power commission.
1. I really don’t see how such
involvement of citizens could possibly enhance the standing of elected
representatives. Someone who opposed a motion for good and/or
principled reasons, and then lost the referendum, would surely be
undermined. Tony Benn, Barbara Castle and in particular Enoch Powell
cut lesser figures after 1975 than they did before, although Benn rose
from the grave after a while. It will be important for sensible policy
thinking to trump populism where possible under such a system (I’m
thinking here of painful but important long-term measures such as road
pricing or combating climate change). That is not to say that
politicians will automatically be less inclined to populism than voters
– far from it! But if there was seen to be a risk for serious
politicians to argue against referendum proposals, then it’s not clear
to me that debate will be enhanced.
2. I really am not sure that the
evidence produced by the Power Commission for a continuing political
engagement by voters is convincing. So, e.g., the growth of single
issue campaigning says to me not that people are politically engaged,
but that they are not prepared to compromise with others who reject
their position. That is inherently unpolitical energy, not political
energy. The PC tells us that people are put off by the current method
of voting, which says to me that they can’t be that politically engaged
in that case, as the current method of voting isn’t that hard. So I am
*very* wary about their idea that focusing on specific policy areas,
which “is increasingly popular with citizens”, is a good thing. It
seems to me that this specific focus, to the neglect of other (even
quite related) issues, is a bad thing, and the Power Commission will
just be encouraging what is an unfortunate tendency. As I noted above,
I do think any method of changing politicians’ bad behaviour that does
not address bad behaviour by voters and the media is doomed to fail.
3. I don’t think I have any
in-principle objection to the use of the Internet, but maybe
paper-based systems should also be trialled first. As noted somewhere
(maybe by the Power commission) the Internet does increase cycles of
debate and lowers the barriers to entry, which may mean greater
participation (good!) but also less careful consideration of the issues
and a shriller argument (bad!). I don’t think security/privacy concerns
are really sufficient to derail the use of the Internet.
4. We need to think what the qualifications for voting would be? Would all EU citizens get a vote? Expatriates? Who else?
On Miroslav Kolar, I’m a bit wary
about his comments. I’d be wary of not having minimal turnouts, and –
for the reasons of incremental change noted above – very very wary of
defining the powers of the courts narrowly. In particular, all sorts of
very minor things could be voted on that affect my life in ways I
wouldn’t anticipate, or – given the lamentable state of media reporting
of local events in particular – I might not even be aware that a vote
was taking place. In 1975, there was a debate on precisely this issue.
No Parliament, at that point, could bind a future one. So just as there
was nothing to stop there being a referendum if Parliament willed it,
there was equally nothing to stop Parliament from ignoring the result
if it chose. The result couldn’t, strictly, be binding. On the other
hand, Wilson committed the Government to abide by the result, which I
think was sensible. Raising the possibility in advance that you might
ignore the result would be bound to skew turnout, legitimacy and
possibly even the balance of the result itself, in unpredictable ways.
The Yes campaign often tried to do this, but Wilson’s instincts were
sound here. Also a threshold was given in the Scottish referendum in
1979 which screwed the whole thing up.
The interventions in 1975 and 79
about minimal turnouts were specifically to ensure a particular
outcome; this was possible as there were no general rules for
referendums. But I don’t see that the same objections apply to general
rules for referendums – the 75 experience shows that politicians have
good reasons to honour referendum results if they are suitably clear
cut when they happen. So a clear cut referendum that did not meet a
minimal turnout threshold would still be an important intervention into
the political debate, and would be something politicians would have to
take (some) notice of. Again, for reasons of incrementality, I would
advocate setting the threshold high initially, evaluating and then
lowering the barrier if appropriate.
Anyway, I hope these comments are
sufficiently constructive and useful, though I realise they go against
the grain of the thinking you are trying to foster. Please do keep me
informed about developments, if you have mailing lists etc.
Best wishes,
Kieron O’Hara
From: Dr. M J Macpherson
[mailto:mjm@iniref.org]
Sent: 28 March 2007 22:33
To: Kieron O'Hara
Subject: Re: DDgb-Debate
Dear Kieron,
Having looked at your referendum book I thought that you might be
sympathetic (should I have read it more carefully? -;)
Certainly I would be interested in your comments on the recent proposals for DD
in Britain
(somewhat abridged version is attached),
Michael.
p.s. Do you know where Graham Smith, formerly at Southampton,
may be contacted?
Kieron O'Hara wrote:
Dear
Michael,
Thanks for this – I’m sorry
I’ve been a while getting back to you. I just want to clarify –
I’m not the world’s biggest fan of direct democracy, but I’m
happy to comment on your texts if you would still like me to and it’s not
too late. But you should probably know I’m not likely to be entirely
sympathetic.
Best
Kieron O’Hara