The Referendum and Contemporary European Politics
Barry Gilheany ©
This paper
compares the use of referendums in contemporary European politics. It asks do referendums diminish the quality
of democracy in European societies or do they encourage greater participation
and better deliberation in the political process? Arguments in democratic theory for and against
referendums will be investigated and typologies of referendums reviewed. It takes as case studies, what I consider one
good and one bad example of the use of referendum: the 1983 anti-abortion
referendum in the Republic of Ireland (to be referred throughout as “Ireland”)
as a “bad” example and the “good” example of the referendums in
Switzerland. It further examines the
referendums on European integration that took place in 2005 in France and the Netherlands. It concludes by discussing voter competency
in referendums.
In a referendum the people decide directly on some
issue, rather than electing representatives to make decisions on their behalf
(Gallagher et al, 2013). Between 1945 and 2010, over 660 referendums took place
in the 30 countries in Europe surveyed by Gallagher et al with one country –
Switzerland – accounting for two-thirds of them. . The
use of referendums increased steadily in the second half of the 20th
century (Gallagher et al, 2013) due partly to the expansion of the European
Union and its integration imperatives and the increased salience of
post-materialist issues such as environmentalism (Bjorklund, 2009).
The concept of referendum refers to a wide range of
institutions that generate a variety of political interactions. Within the political system, it is useful to
make the distinction between decision-controlling
and decision-promoting referendums. In decision-promoting referendums, the initiative
to hold a referendum is made by the political actor who has formulated the
policy proposal to be voted upon. These
can either be parliamentary majorities or popular or citizen-initiated
referendum procedures. Popular
initiatives, most hosted in Switzerland, can be interpreted as
decision-promoting since the organisation or popular movement that promotes a
referendum also draws up the policy proposal that is to be the subject of the
referendum (Setala, 2009).
Decision-controlling referendums can be categorised as
abrogative or rejective; they are deployed as a check on a policy proposal
already passed by a legislative body.
Abrogative referendums are held on enacted laws, while rejective
referendums are held on laws passed but not yet in force. Both types of decision-controlling referendums
may be demanded by signatories to a popular petition (e.g. Italy and
Switzerland) or by other actors such as parliamentary minorities or regional
governments (Setala, 2009).
The ideological debate on the referendum also feeds
into wider debates within democratic theory.
The proposal engages with a theoretical model of four normative models
of democracy: the representative mode,
the associative model, the deliberative model and the participatory model. It also examines
the nature of citizen participation within each model (Michels, 2009)
Arguments for and against the use of referendums of
democracies are largely based on the potentially beneficial or detrimental
effects of such polls on the operation of representative government The case for referendums can be summarised
as ‘maximising legitimacy, maximising the human potential of citizens and the
ending of alienation and apathy.’ The arguments against amount to the lack of
analytical skills on the part of ordinary citizens to make wise decisions; when
elected officials make decisions they weigh preferences and weld legitimate
group interests into fair and equitable policies for all; rights of minorities
are more likely to be guaranteed by the decisions of representatives and the
referral of divisive issues to the public through use of the referendum
device will weaken the functioning and
esteem of representatives and representative government ( Uleri, 1995). These arguments are heard most frequently in
Great Britain where belief in the sovereignty of parliament and its concomitant
right and duty to make decisions for the people has been almost sacrosanct
(Crepaz and Steiner, 2011).
.
To test the validity of these competing arguments on
the desirability of referendums, I now examine some case studies. The first concerns Switzerland which provides
a relative success story for the referendum.
Switzerland is a federalist country with 26 autonomous units of
government or cantons. It has four official languages which cut
across the Protestant-Catholic religious divide, no dominant capital and
ancient democratic traditions around pastures form which the founders of the
modern Swiss constitution in 1848 were able to draw upon. The people (not judges)have the ultimate
right to determine the constitutionality of a particular law through referendum
for which the only requirement is that 50,000 signatures be collected; the
voters are also final arbiters on constitutional amendments and a minimum of
100,000 voters can also submit a constitutional amendment of their own (Crepaz
and Steiner, 2011).
The greatest strength of the referendum is the
legitimacy it gives to political decision.
Although, notoriously, female suffrage was not granted by referendum
until 1971, women’s participation in politics became rapidly accepted by male
voters, and since 2007 women have occupied three of the seven seats in the
Federal Council, the Swiss cabinet.
Innovative ideas have passed by referendum such as the Alp Initiative concerning
heavy trucks passing through Switzerland (Crepaz and Steiner, 2011
Swiss voters
displayed a maturity in not displaying xenophobia when rejecting constitutional
initiatives in the 1970s proposed by an anti-aliens movement which would have
forced hundreds of thousands of foreigners to leave (Crepaz and Steiner, 2011)
Arguably such maturity was not in evidence in 2009 when an initiative to
prevent the future building of minarets was endorsed in a referendum despite
the opposition of Muslims and the major parties (Gallagher et al, 2011).
The effectiveness of referendum initiatives in
Switzerland in providing checks is borne out by an analysis of Swiss national
elections and national votes from 1971 to 2005 which found a clear gap between
the citizenry’s policy preferences expressed in elections and those expressed
in popular votes (Sager and Buhlman, 2009).
By contrast to Switzerland, Ireland is one of the most
centralized countries in Europe and was until recently a fervently Catholic and
monocultural society. . It was in just such an environment that
Ireland’s political elites acceded in 1981 to a demand by the conservative
Catholic coalition, the Pro-Life Amendment Campaign (PLAC), for an amendment to
outlaw abortion to be inserted into the Constitution. The Eighth Amendment proposal was eventually
voted upon in September 1983 and passed by a majority of two-to-one of those
who voted. The debate was conducted in
an atmosphere of considerable rancor and judicial interpretation of the
amendment led to student unions and women’s health centres being prohibited from giving information to women
about the availability of abortion services outside Irish jurisdiction. In the infamous X-case in 1992, judges
prevented a suicidal 14 year old pregnant rape victim of a serial sex offender
from going to Britain for an abortion.
This judgment was later reversed by Ireland’s Supreme Court and three
referendums later that year granted rights to travel and information for
pregnant women but rejected legalisation of abortion in very restricted
circumstances. An attempt to reinstate
an absolute ban into the constitution failed narrowly in another
referendum in 2002 and actual abortion
legislation in line with the X-case
judgment of the 1983 amendment was not
put onto the statute books until 2013 after another appalling legacy of the
Eighth Amendment; the death in October 2012 of an Indian national in childbirth
after the hospital where she was staying refused to give her life-saving drugs
to counteract her septicemia in order to save the life of the foetus which also
died. This brief history of Ireland’s
abortion imbroglio illustrates how the referendum can act as a conservative
device in Irish politics (Gallagher, 1995).
Referendums on European integration are often in
effect “second-order national elections; they are second-order because they are low salience, and first-order issues
of national politics tend to dominate the campaigns. Consequently, the electorate uses their votes
to demonstrate their feelings towards their government, (Hobalt and Brouard,
2011).
This phenomenon looks to have been borne out in the
two referendums held to ratify the European Constitution Treaty (ECT) in France
and the Netherlands held within days of each other on 29th May and 1st
June 2005 respectively. In both
countries ratification of the ECT was backed by centre-right governments and
centre-left oppositions and high levels of public support. In both countries though, the ECT was
rejected after differing campaigns in terms of length (Hobart and Brouard,
2011).
Analysis of the voting choices in both referendums do
not convey a uniform Euro-skepticism.
For European attitudes became intertwined with domestic concerns. In
France voters wished to convey their desire for a social Europe to evolve and
fears of the evolution of neo-liberal European economy plus their discontent
with the incumbent centre-right administration.
Party cues were more salient in the Netherlands where the campaign was
shorter and voters displayed more concern about loss of Dutch economy and
greater enthusiasm for postmaterialist issues such as environmental protection
(Hobart and Brouard, 2011).
In conclusion, no institution in modern democracies
brings us closer to the ideal of ‘self-governance’ by the mass public than
referendums (Hobolt, 2009). Any
assessment of the impact of the referendum on the quality of representative
government, I would argue, hinges on the competence of voters to make
collective decisions. In the case of the
Irish anti-abortion referendums the historic moral monopoly exercised by the
Catholic Church on Irish discourse and practice did not equip the electorate to
fully understand the potential repercussions of inserting a ‘pro-life’
amendment into the Constitution although the referendum did open up space for
minority ‘pro-choice’ viewpoints. By
contrast the high levels of civic awareness in Switzerland made electors more
‘competent’ arbiters in referendums. In
the case of European integration referendums, the political competence of the
electorates was not to be doubted but the mixture of issue preferences conveyed
in the ‘No’ votes makes workable compromise solutions difficult for
politicians. A possible solution may be
the holding of simultaneous referendums across Europe in the future (Hobolt,
2009)
Bibliography
Bjorklund, T (2009) The Surge of Referendums and the New Politics Approach in Setala,
M. and Schiller, T (Eds.) Referendums and
Representative Democracy.
Responsiveness, Accountability and Deliberation. Routledge/ECPR
studies in European Political Science Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge
Crepaz, M.L. and Steiner, J. (2011) European Democracies. Seventh Edition
London: Longman
Gallagher, M., Laver, M. and Mair, P. (2011) Representative Government in Modern Europe.
Fifth Edition Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill
Gallagher, M. (1996) Ireland: The Referendum as a Conservative Device? in Gallagher, M.
and Uleri, P. (Ed.) The Referendum Experience
in Europe London: Macmillan
Hobolt, S. (2009) Europe
in Question. Referendums on European Integration. Oxford: Oxford University
Press
Hobolt, S. and Board, S (2011). Contesting the
European Union? Why the Dutch and the French Rejected the European Constitution.
Political Research Quarterly, 64(2), 309-322
Michels, A. (2009) Ideological
Positions and the Referendum in the Netherlands in Setala, M. and Schiller,
T. (Eds.)
Sagar, F. and Buhlman, M. (2009) Checks and Balances in Swiss Direct Democracy in Setala, M. and
Schiller, T. (Eds.)
Setala, M. (2009) Introduction
in Setala, M. and Schiller, T. (Eds.)
Uleri, P. (1996) Introduction
in Gallagher and Uleri (Eds.)
No comments:
Post a Comment