There are plenty of reasons to be suspicious of referenda. There is little evidence that referendums make a vote fair. Nor are they necessarily a means of forming good policies.
Germany has wisely vetoed the use of plebiscites, having seen how the Nazis made such a creative use of them.
Here's why referendums are a bad way if making policy:
- We often don’t want either of the options we’re being asked to adopt, preferring one that isn’t on the ballot. Governments decide what the question is going to be anyway, and if they don’t like the answer that they get back, they can ignore the result.
- Referendums are often used to deal with the difficult questions that political parties dare not address during elections. They allow politicians to park awkward or divisive questions when they’d be better offering joined-up answers. They provide a way of letting the political class off the hook, suggesting that a complex issue like Europe is a simple yes/no, when it's far more complicated than that. It polarises the arguments instead of promoting a rich debate and useful complex legislative responses.
- They drive out the deliberative element in policymaking. The referendum question is an appeal to reflexes rather than an attempt to get a thoughtful response from the public.
- They hand enormous powers to newspaper proprietors and people with the finances to take one side of the argument. It also hands the reins of government over to unelected and well-heeled pressure groups.
Time and time again, the public don’t answer the question they’ve been asked. They use one question to send an unrelated message to an unpopular government (like many have said they want to do by voting UKIP)
Referendums privilege the weight of opinion (in numbers) over the weight of arguments.
People who don’t have the capacity to engage in the debate on a given issue are effectively disenfranchised – especially when the referendum makes decisions that could be taken by elected representatives who would deliberate on everyone’s behalf and defend their decisions at subsequent elections. The low-paid, people who work long hours, people with enough problems of their own, people who don’t have the confidence to express their views or the opportunity to discuss them become unrepresented
In referendums, power is exercised without responsibility. No-one is under any pressure to ensure that a policy is actually in the long-term public interest.
Doubt and equivocation are a good thing. Instinctive certainty often isn’t. As Darwin put it, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.“
Doubters and equivocators are more likely to abstain in referenda. Fanatics will always vote. People who have doubts or equivocation on a subject are more likely to abstain. A smaller-number of people who feel strongly one way can effectively oppress a larger number of people who generally lean in another direction but don’t feel that strongly on the subject.
All of which means referendums are more likely to lead to cretinous, self-defeating decision making led by a small number of noisy single-issue fanatics, than deliberative decision-making using the system we've spent a thousand years refining.
Also, this: www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/miliband-denies-your-right-to-make-massively-ill-informed-decision-2014031284529