Reposting a comment from the Guardian. Hopefully an interesting insight into construction of a robust democratic process built around referenda (many) - in stark contrast to our pre-criminal Brexit shambles.
Continentalcyclist 5h ago
I am Swiss, and I have participated in some 1,500 referendums over the last fifty-odd years.
And it is difficult for me to make sense of British democracy, and in particular the June 2016 referendum, for a number of reasons.
For one I have never understood why a parliamentary democracy with virtually no experience in referendum campaigns would conduct this referendum on a matter of vital national importance on untested ground.
For one the Swiss system would never have allowed a simple in-out question without any specifications of what the electorate was charging the legislative with.
For a second, in a matter of such national importance, we would have had a tier of votes, by the people, by both houses of parliament, and by the people again.
The first vote would have been a question about the constitution. It would have required a so-called double majority of the voters and the cantons. It would eg have mandated the government to negotiate exit terms with the EU. The negotiations would have been accompanied by parliamentary procedure, at every important stage of the negotiations. The exit terms would have gone to parliament for approbation by Act of Parliament. A second vote of the people could then have been called by 50,000 citizens (out of an electorate of approximately five million), and it certainly would have been called in a matter of such grave weight. The second referendum would have ratified the exit terms or rejected them.
Let me give an example. We had a proposal for a constitutional article (called initiative) on so-called mass immigration (MEI). It was carried by a majority of some 20,000 votes. The legislative then worked out an Act of Parliament. It said the new constitutional article contradicted a number of other constitutional norms and international treaties which had also been ratified by referendums. It declined to implement those parts of the new conssitutional article. The resulting Act of Parliament could have been voted about, but interestingly the proponents of MEI did not call for one. Instead, populists that they are, they screamed themselves blue in their faces about how the will of the people had been disregarded and the Constitution trashed.
Like the Brexiteers they had never expected to carry the day and were obviously rather glad that "the will of the people" had been foiled, without admitting it, of course. They preferred to have cause to gripe and whine.
Now the Swiss system would obviously be somewhat cumbersome to apply to negotiations with twenty-seven partners in the EU. And in my modest view it was certainly reckless of David Cameron to call the referendum in the first place. But if people are called to the polls on a simple leave-remain question, they must certainly have another say about whether their will has been implemented. In the light of the Brexit negotiations, they have a right to another referendum, all the more because the first referendum was advisory.
The Swiss voters have changed their minds over a vast number of issues over time and reversed earlier decisions. And in the cascades of votes, first on general constitutional principles, then on their implementation, they have often come to see an earlier decision as rather foolish and revised it.
In the case of Britain and the Mother of Parliaments, I share Clement Attlee's reservations on referendums. But if you wish to resort to the referendum system, you should give the electorate a minimal practice run on the communal and county level before jumping headlong into the first and only vote on the most important question confronting the UK since 1945.
And at the very least the electorate must get a second vote, at the conclusion of the process.