You can discuss this report in
DEMOCR@CY FORUM
Hansard Society sponsored meeting, House of Commons, 17th June 2008
Referendums: What are they good
for (1)
For list of speakers and introduction see Announcement below
COMMENTS BY Dr. Michael Macpherson
I&R ~ GB
Some reported remarks are taken from Lord Norton’s blog (2) at the
House of Lords
Clare Short made two very important points, firstly favouring
“the idea of popular initiative, allowing citizens to trigger
referendums and secondly “that referendums are an essential tool to be
used to help reinvigorate an alienated public dissatisfied with current
political arrangements that they often feel are damaging British
democracy.”
By pointing to initiative and referendum (I and R) Ms. Short clarifies
and corrects this Hansard Society debate about referendum in a most
helpful manner. The other speakers, except perhaps C. Huhne, appear to
have given little consideration to the essential difference between
plebiscite imposed by an authority on the one hand, and proposal plus
referendum demanded and pushed through by a large number of citizens on
the other. As well as allowing correction of government in the periods
between elections (with the “brake” of veto referendum), I and R allow
creative proposals to be filtered and then pushed onto the public
agenda for information and debate.
For Dr David Butler “referendums had a part to play on issues of
ethical importance and boarder disputes, but could not deal with the
often complicated nature of political debate”.
In his opinion that electorates cannot deal with “complicated” public
affairs he ignores much contrary evidence. Research with randomly
selected groups of citizens has shown that if supplied with information
and opportunity to debate then most people can grasp political issues.
More importantly here, “real life” experience of referenda has shown
that citizens with access to direct democracy learn to grapple with
complexity and that on featured issues they may become better informed
than members of parliament (e.g. Denmark at the time of the referendum
about the Maastricht treaty). Presumably, amusingly you misreport Dr.
Butler in the matter of “boarder disputes” – was this about
democracy in his prep-school?
Steve Richards (The Independent Newspaper) said that parties have
promised (referenda) as a way of avoiding debate, especially within
their own ranks. We can add that governments have promised referenda as
a way to win votes, only to later refuse for reasons of their own,
recently about our electoral system, the Euro currency and the EU
constitution. Referenda in which the government of the day writes the
questions, makes the rules and sets the timing can often serve to harm
democracy. For these reasons we propose that referenda should usually
be initiated by an agreed large number of voters, citizen-initiated
referenda, rather than by a ruling authority.
We welcome support for Swiss-style citizens’ democracy expressed by the
senior Lib-Dem politician Chris Huhne. Presumably in his Party he is in
a minority. In 2001 the Lib-Dem manifesto contained a promise to
introduce citizens’ initiative referendum. Perhaps sniffing some
electoral success, the Party dropped this promise from their 2005
manifesto and subsequently did little to promote this vital and
publicly desired reform. Huhne expresses concern about inconsistent
ballot results in the USA. Recent research has shown that this sort of
problem is very rare and that criticism of the majority decision on
Proposition 13 (about property taxes in California) was wildly
exaggerated. In any event, with the more deliberative democratic
methods to be found in Europe, ill-considered plebiscite decisions are
even less likely. (Compare the broad proposal of I&R ~GB and
several recent proposals of other groups based in UK (3)).
References, background
Citizens’ direct democracy:
Background
http://www.iniref.org/learn.html
Debate and News
http://www.iniref.org/latest.html
1. Referendums: What are they good for
http://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/blogs/recent_events/archive/2008/06/18/referendum.aspx
2. http://lordsoftheblog.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/referendum-debate/
3. Preliminary Proposals for the
introduction of Elements of Direct Democracy in Great Britain and
Northern Ireland http://www.iniref.org/gb-debate-dd.html
ANNOUNCEMENT
Referendums: What are they good for?
Tuesday 17 June, 6.45 - 7.45pm, House of Commons
Speakers:
Dr David Butler, Oxford University, David Curry MP, Chris Huhne MP,
Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, Steve Richards, The Independent,
Rt Hon Clare Short MP.
Chair - Virginia Gibbons, Hansard Society
This meeting will discuss the highly topical issue of the role of
referendums in the British political system. Can they be used in a
representative Parliamentary democracy without usurping the power of
our elected representatives? What issues are appropriate to be put to a
referendum? How can we ensure that referendum outcomes are not skewed
by political or financial resources?
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Background materials suggested by I&R ~GB:
Butler, David & Ranney, Austin (eds.), Referendums around the
world: the growing use of direct democracy. (Macmillan, 1994)
Macpherson, Michael J., Citizens’
initiative and referendum in Britain and Northern Ireland 2007:
Prospects for reform
http://europa-magazin.ch/zone/.3bb51286/cmd.14/cert.201.A0J0awU8Zxh.2
Qvortrup, Mads Supply-side
politics. Centre for Policy Studies 2007.
http://www.cps.org.uk/newsarchive/news/?pressreleaseid=27
House of Commons Library: Citizens’
Initiatives Standard Note: SN/PC/04483 Last updated: 1 May 2008
Author: Lucinda Maer, Parliament and Constitution Centre.
----------------------
With compliments from
I&R ~ GB Citizens' Initiative and Referendum
Campaign for direct democracy in Britain
http://www.iniref.org/
