Referendum: A Complement or a Threat to Representative Democracy?

The first modern referendum was held in the state of Massachusetts in 1787; the residents rejected a constitutional proposal. (Sruk 1995: p. 278)

Jacobin constitution provided for the federalization of France and involvement of citizens in general assemblies to participate directly in the decision-making processes, the majority of these assemblies’ decisions would then constitute a majority support to decisions at the national level. It also provided for universal suffrage for men and introduced the concept of popular sovereignty rather than the sovereignty of the nation. Of the seven million voters called to the Constitutional referendum three million abstained, allegedly due to the vote being public.

Although E. J. Sieyes became famous mainly for his revolutionary pamphlet “What Is the Third Estate?,” the most consequential for the conception of modern French democracy was his insistence on citizens as voters only, who can only express themselves through their elected representatives, by which he firmly rejected any form of direct democracy. (Urbinati 2006: p. 163).

The will of the people was not expressed through the ballot – the French had two weeks to visit municipal buildings and publicly express their support of the then still popular ruler.

The distinction between the referendum and the plebiscite is not yet the subject of interpretative consensus. According to some authors, the plebiscite subject is more important than that of a referendum. Such was the case of the Carinthian Plebiscite for example, which in 1920 defined the border between Austria and Yugoslavia. Another distinction may be that the plebiscite is any decision for or against which there is no appeal. Other authors differentiate the plebiscite as having an impact on the initiators of the decision-making process, however, every referendum affects those who call for it to a certain extent. Kaufman (2010) differs plebiscite from the referendum in that the former is a non-mandatory initiative, by which a President (or Prime Minister) seeks to reinforce or save his position. It is therefore not about making decisions as in a referendum, but legitimizing them. “Unfortunately, plebiscitary and direct-democratic popular vote procedures are often confused, as can be illustrated by the fact that the common term “referendum” is used to describe both of these fundamentally different procedures. By doing so, we obscure the concept of direct democracy and in addition to that, perhaps unintentionally, discredit direct democracy by association with the use of plebiscites by all kinds of dictators and authoritarian regimes.”(Kaufman et al. 2010: p. 89) In Slovenian literature and the public opinion, the differentiation between the referendum and plebiscite seems drawn according to the importance of the decision i.e., in conjunction with national borders or major amendments of the political system. In the last twenty years there were many referenda, yet the only plebiscites were the decision on the secession of Slovenia from Yugoslavia (while the vote on the EU accession was considered a referendum) and recently there was an idea launched in public on a plebiscite on the Slovenian-Croatian border. Terminological confusion is intensified by the common use of the word plebiscite to define a referendum decision, brought about by a vast majority of voters and a high turnout.

Once again, the turnout was very high, and pressure on voters ruthless. In order to teach the voters the right way to fill in the ballot, the National Socialist party had “correctly” filled ballots thrown from zeppelins.

The potential of the internet and social networks for mobilization and coordination of millions of citizens for political action has been attested in the Arab Spring in North Africa and the Middle East. Mass civic physical presence and action was still necessary to demolish autocratic regimes, yet the latter quite tellingly rushed to turn off the Internet and block mobile phone service providers.

Even in a small country like Slovenia, a referendum costs over four million Euros. Cost compromise by organizing “super referenda,” perhaps once a year, has not proven successful, since voters often experience difficulties considering each referendum question separately (the separability issue), and vote “flat” instead of differentiating their decisions. Such was the experience of the Slovenian referendum of June 4 2011, when voters decided simultaneously on a pension reform, regulatory measures against illegal employment and the act on the protection of confidential data. All three referenda failed, although only the pension reform was a high-stake and controversial issue, and the result was interpreted as a vote of non-confidence in the government. A similar development took place in Hungary in 2008.

Such as the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland in 2008 and then again in 2009: the voters were quite justified to believe that they were going to be asked the same question until their answer was “right.”

I refer to the hypothesis that the notorious democratic deficit is actually a self-fulfilling prophecy: by engaging in scandals, corruption, non-transparent decision-making, by omitting to present detailed programs and clear ideological distinctions political parties and politicians contribute significantly to the fact that citizens are deterred from politics and are not interested in it. The very same politicians then publicly express concern about low turnout and negative public attitudes towards politics that have been generated by themselves with the assistance of sensationalist media (see Toplak 2011).

In Austria, the President may call for a referendum. Referendum question may concern an already adopted law, and referendum is mandatory on any constitutional amendment or the impeachment of President. In this case the referendum is called for by the Parliament. After World War II there were three referenda in Austria: a referendum on use of nuclear power in 1978, on Austria’s integration in the European Union in 1994 and on use of genetically modified organisms in 1997. The 1978 referendum on nuclear energy is particularly interesting as an argument for the use of the referendum. The left coalition at the time was is not able to find a consensus with the opposition on further use of nuclear energy and it preferred to call for a referendum rather than take responsibility for the decision, which also indicated a crisis of consensual corporatism in Austrian politics and society.

It is important to note that in Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, referendum was a widely used institute at the local level to decide on the construction of local public infrastructure such as schools, but not on political issues. Near the end of the Yugoslav Communist regime, its critics included direct democracy in their demands for political reform (see Balažič 1989).

Since World War II there were 10 referenda in Denmark, six of which were related to the European Union, three concerned amending the age limit for the right to vote and one a constitutional amendment. (Folketinget 2006).