The Routledge Handbook to Referendums and Direct Democracy

Laurence Morel, Matt Qvortrup, Laurence Morel, Matt Qvortrup

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138209930
• eBook ISBN: 9781351360715
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Over the last 30 years referendums have played an increasingly important role in determining government policy. Recent high profile referendums in Scotland, Catalonia and Ukraine have continued the movement towards independence referendums following decolonization and the end of the Cold War. The Greek bailout referendum and Britain's vote on membership of the EU reflect a tradition of European states giving their people a direct say in the transfer of sovereign powers to the European Union seen through the ratification of key treaties such as Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon. This Routledge Handbook covers key aspects and issues of direct democracy and referendums throughout the world including:

•their history;

•when, why, where, how and on which issues referendums are held;

•why some referendums are more democratic than others;

•how referendums are won;

•whether they produce good policies;

•if referendums increase participation and improve the quality of representative democracies;

•do referendums increase trust in democracy and the political actors;

•the impact of new technology on the possibilities, methods and frequency of direct public political participation;

•how they should be regulated.

Covering other related areas such as recall, citizen juries and random selection, this compendium is an indispensable guide to referendums and the workings of modern democracy.

PART I

The history and variety of referendums

1
THE HISTORY OF REFERENDUMS AND DIRECT DEMOCRACY

Matt Qvortrup

Introduction

In this chapter the history of the referendum is charged. After a tour d’horizon of the earlier use of the direct democracy, this chapter presents a historical overview of the use of referendums from the Renaissance through to the First World War. It is pointed out that the referendum – contrary to assertions by Tuck (2016) – can be traced back to the fifteenth century. Despite its earlier use, referendums only began to be used in earnest in the nineteenth century where the Italian Risorgimento and the early years of the Swiss Federation (after 1848) essentially owed their existence to the use of referendums. Having analysed these cases we take a closer look at the discussion about the referendum in the United Kingdom and on the European continent. Drawing on a functionalist inspired model, the chapter ends with reflections and research on why there has been an apparent increase in the use of referendums since the 1980s (see Figure 1.1).

The earlier history of direct democracy

In a recent book the prominent historian of ideas Richard Tuck proposed that the referendum, like so many other things, was the invention of the French revolutionaries. The Girondins – who were in conflict with the more radical Jacobins – proposed that the people should be allowed to veto constitutional changes, and this, according to Tuck “was the first time that the modern notion of a plebiscite or a referendum had been raised “(Tuck, 2016: 143). The eminent historian is not entirely correct. It, perhaps, says a lot about the cavalier fashion in which direct democracy is treated that the otherwise well informed scholar got it wrong. For, as we shall show below, the referendum had already operated for hundreds of years by this time. At the time of the French Revolution, the term referendum had first been used in what was to become present-day Switzerland, where, in 1684, the Bürger (all male citizens over the age of sixteen) were given the right to cast their votes on the policy issues that were submitted to them ad referendum by the elected representatives (Pieth, 1958: 146).

But the Swiss were not the only ones to submit issues to the people, though they were the first ones to use the word referendum. Before returning to the use of direct democracy in modernity (the period starting after ad 1500), it is instructive to go back to the very beginning: to Greece and Rome.

As historians of ancient democracy can testify, direct democracy was the central element of the political system of ancient Greece, where in the fourth century bc decrees “were passed by majority vote of those Athenians attending the meetings of the Assembly (ekklesia), which were held four times per civil month, or forty times per annum “(Cartledge, 2016: 210). This system of direct democratic involvement was also characteristic of the Athenian democracy after the Peloponnesian War, that is, in the period between 400 to 320 bc (Hansen, 1991). It is possible to argue that the Romans employed a certain kind of direct democracy before the fall of the republic in 49 bc. And, there are some suggestions that other peoples used what we today may describe as direct democracy. The Roman historian Tacitus (ad 56–117) thus described the use of proto-referendums among Germanic tribes where “on matters of minor importance only the chiefs debate; [but] on the major matters the whole community “(Tacitus, 1970: 110). Similar stories could be told about the Italian renaissance states. Niccoló Machiavelli eulogised a system of politics that had been brought into being by the consent of a whole people – da uno commune consenseo d’una universalità (Machiavelli III,7). But it was not until the early sixteenth century that the institution was established in anything resembling the present-day referendum.

The referendum, 1527–1789

Historically referendums were about self-determination. The first instances of referendums in anything like the present-day form date back to 1527 when the French King Francis I (1494–1547) held a plebiscite in Burgundy on whether to transfer the area to the Spanish king in 1527 as he had agreed to in the Treaty of Madrid (Vattel, 1758: 263). A contemporary statement by the authorities cited by the prominent jurist and legal philosopher Emer de Vattel (1714–1767) a couple of hundred years later reads:

that, having never been subject but to the crown of France, they would die subject to it; and that, if the king abandoned them, they would take up arms, and endeavour to set themselves at liberty, rather than pass into a new state of subjection.

(Vattel, 1758: 263)

The people rejected the transfer and stayed with France. And scholars have later speculated (Wambaugh, 1919: xxiii) – though without much by way of concrete evidence – that the French king was inspired by Dutch philosopher Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536) who – in 1517 – had made a case for the view “what power and sovereignty so ever you have, you have it by the consent of the people “(Erasmus, 1907: 51). Of course, “the people “in those days was a rather small number. In these votes those so entitled were merely property owning males. Whether a practical man like King Francis devoured texts of renaissance theologians – as suggested by Wambaugh (1933: xxiv) – can be questioned. However, a few years later, Francis’ son, Henry II (1519–1559), organised a plebiscite in 1552 in Verdun, Toul and Metz before their annexation (Solière, 1901: 26).

Before the plebiscite, Bishop de Lénoncourt is reported to have said to the inhabitants of Verdun “that the King of France had come as a liberator who will treat the citizens as good Frenchmen... He appealed to the vote of the people “(Solière, 1901: 26).

It is noteworthy that Bishop Lénoncourt used words such as “bourgeois “and “people “at a time when Jean Bodin (1530–1596) expounded his theory of divinely sanctioned absolutism by the grace of God in Les six livres de la République?in 1579 (Bodin, 1986).

But, we have few contemporary accounts of what motivated the use of referendums at the time. Indeed, it took almost 100 years before these practices were placed on anything like a theoretical footing. Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), the great legal scholar and father of international law, observed in De Jure Belli ac Pacis that “in the alienation of a part of sovereignty, it is required that the part which is alienated consent to the act [ut etiam pars de que alienda agitur consentiat] “(Grotius, 2005: 570). Further, Samuel Pufendorf (1632–1694), another distinguished legal scholar, was even more explicit when he wrote in De jura naturae et gentium (1672) that

in the alienation of a part of the kingdom, there is required not only the consent of the people which continues to be with the old king, but the consent of that part too, especially, whose alienation is at stake [sed maxime consensus illius partis, da qua alienda agitur].

(Pufendorf, 1729: 59)

Grotius and Pufendorf were not the only ones expressing this view. The aforementioned Emer de Vattel, roughly 100 years later, cited the example of a vote held in Burgundy in 1527 in which the citizens had objected to a plan to transfer them to the Spanish king. Though Vattel added – with a dose of realism – “Subjects are seldom able to make resistance on such occasions; and, in general, their wisest plan will be to submit to their new master, and endeavour to obtain the best terms they can “(Vattel, 1758: 264).

In light of these prominent references to the people, and the stated legal position as expressed by some of the foremost legal minds, it is perhaps instructive to note that modern lawyers are less convinced about the people’s right to be consulted. Indeed, as Peter Radan has shown in a careful analysis, “there is no rule in international law that requires a referendum “(Radan, 2014: 12).

The referendum, 1789–1920

The French Revolution heralded a new era of democracy. Rather predictably, therefore, referendums were embraced by the new rulers in Paris. Indeed, no less a theoretician than Baron de Condorcet (1743–1794) had published a pamphlet in 1789 with the telling title, Sur la nécessité de faire ratifier la constitution par les citoyens – roughly “on the necessity of the people ratifying the constitution “(Tuck, 2016: 150).

At this stage this was not mere idle talk. Indeed, France’s annexation of Avignon in 1791 only took effect after a referendum had been held in the area. A contemporary report read:

Considering that the majority of the communes and citizens have expressed freely and solemnly their wish for a union with Avignon and France…the National Assembly declares that in conformity with the freely expressed wish of the majority…of these two countries to be incorporated into France.

(Cited in Martens, 1801: 401)

It is trite to note that the Congress of Vienna dealt a blow to the doctrine of self-determination – and, as a consequence, the use of referendums: “The Congress of Vienna in 1815 did not accept self-determination as a basis for reshaping the map of Europe “(Griffiths, 2003: 38). The victors in the Napoleonic Wars were conservatives who wanted to return to a time when the popular sovereignty was not the gold standard of political legitimacy. This attempt failed. Even the victors were aware that the proverbial genie was out of the bottle. Indeed, they even accepted that a vote was held in France on the re-establishment of the pre-revolutionary monarchy, namely the referendum on the return of the Bourbons in 1815.

Nevertheless, the perception was that the excesses of revolutionary fervour and the horrors of the Napoleonic Wars gave democracy a bad name. This changed after the revolutionary year of 1848 when referendums once again became fashionable, though only for Bonapartists; neither Republicans nor Monarchists liked them, and the Socialists abandoned them in this period. They were especially espoused by Napoleon III who used dubious plebiscites to claim popular legitimacy. And in international affairs, self-determination of the people was accepted once again (Weitz, 2008).

Two areas are of particular interest: Italy (where several referendums were held in the name of self-determination as a part of the process to unify the country) and Schleswig-Holstein (between present-day Denmark and Germany) where a referendum was proposed – but not...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I The history and variety of referendums
• Part II The politics of referendums
• Part III The democratic quality of referendums
• Part IV Voting at referendums
• Part V Policy and political effects of referendums
• Part VI Related direct democratic institutions
• Appendix 1: Types of nationwide referendums provided for in the 195 countries of the world (2016)
• Appendix 2: Practice of nationwide referendums in the 195 countries of the world (1940–2016)
• Index