Thanks for the article—very informative and exactly the kind of content I enjoy!
In 2017 Australia held a public survey on whether same-sex marriage should be allowed, the results of which were pledged informally to be enacted by the government. Public votes on specific issues are relatively rare in Australia, so the debate around the procedural merits of voting on this particular issue were quite active.
I recall the main arguments against conducting a survey were mostly procedural criticisms, that it is wastefully expensive to hold a postal survey when public polling had revealed consistent majority support for same sex marriage for a number of years already. Wikipedia tells me the survey cost $80m AUD, so I wonder how much this Swiss system costs over the long haul?
The arguments in favour were mostly that it would break political and procedural gridlock over the issue and settle things once and for all with the legitimising stamp of direct democracy.
In the aftermath I found myself thinking ‘we should do this more often’ - so it’s nice to see that somewhere in fact does do it more often!
PS: It’s interesting to see the high rejection rate for referendums in Switzerland. The same-sex marriage survey was in fact suggested by the centre-right party who were historically opposed to same-sex marriage, and it’s generally accepted that they viewed the direct (voluntary) vote as the best chance to get a ‘no’ or ambiguous result on this matter and introduce a long-term mandate against legalising same-sex marriage.
The thing about the cost is that it’s already paid. Voting happens four times a year in any case and adding one more initiative doesn’t change much. There’s certainly a cost associated with government and parliament processing the initiative, but again, that’s what they are expected to do, it can’t be really thought of as an extra cost.
The the high rejection rate for referendums is explained by a few factors, among which:
If a referendum appears to be popular, the legislatures will pass it into a law before the referendum vote, and the initiators of the referendum will remove their initiative. Therefore the only initiatives that go into referendum are the ones that are either obviously unpopular among the majority of citizens, or the ones that the majority in the parliament strongly opposes.
Because citizens can initiate a referendum, the legislature is compelled into passing laws on the topics that could be brought through a referendum, therefore what is left for initiatives is more divisive topics.
There’s yet one more dynamic: Initiative proposes X. Government is, like, this is just crazy. The initiators: Do change the law to include Y (a watered down version of X) and we’ll retract the initiative.
Looking at it from that point of view, the referendum can be thought of not as a way for “the people” to decide, but rather a lever, a credible threat, to change the law without having to go via the standard representative system (joining a party, becoming an MP, etc.)
Let’s go even further. Assuming the above model, the system can be improved by treating each successful referendum as a system failure. A postmortem should be written a submitted for public discussion:
If majority was in favour, why wasn’t the law changed before in the first place?
Why haven’t the counterproposal succeeded?
Why haven’t the initiants retracted the initiative?
What should be done so that a similar failure doesn’t happen again?
The latter “credible threat” seems to work similarly in Denmark, where 30% of the parliament can initiate a referendum. I think this only happened once in 174 years, because the 30% parliament minority uses this institution to force a compromise or even a “deal” (I assume that it’s most of the time a secret deal) with the parties in majority, not for “the people” to decide.
Thanks for the article—very informative and exactly the kind of content I enjoy!
In 2017 Australia held a public survey on whether same-sex marriage should be allowed, the results of which were pledged informally to be enacted by the government. Public votes on specific issues are relatively rare in Australia, so the debate around the procedural merits of voting on this particular issue were quite active.
I recall the main arguments against conducting a survey were mostly procedural criticisms, that it is wastefully expensive to hold a postal survey when public polling had revealed consistent majority support for same sex marriage for a number of years already. Wikipedia tells me the survey cost $80m AUD, so I wonder how much this Swiss system costs over the long haul?
The arguments in favour were mostly that it would break political and procedural gridlock over the issue and settle things once and for all with the legitimising stamp of direct democracy.
In the aftermath I found myself thinking ‘we should do this more often’ - so it’s nice to see that somewhere in fact does do it more often!
PS: It’s interesting to see the high rejection rate for referendums in Switzerland. The same-sex marriage survey was in fact suggested by the centre-right party who were historically opposed to same-sex marriage, and it’s generally accepted that they viewed the direct (voluntary) vote as the best chance to get a ‘no’ or ambiguous result on this matter and introduce a long-term mandate against legalising same-sex marriage.
The thing about the cost is that it’s already paid. Voting happens four times a year in any case and adding one more initiative doesn’t change much. There’s certainly a cost associated with government and parliament processing the initiative, but again, that’s what they are expected to do, it can’t be really thought of as an extra cost.
The the high rejection rate for referendums is explained by a few factors, among which:
If a referendum appears to be popular, the legislatures will pass it into a law before the referendum vote, and the initiators of the referendum will remove their initiative. Therefore the only initiatives that go into referendum are the ones that are either obviously unpopular among the majority of citizens, or the ones that the majority in the parliament strongly opposes.
Because citizens can initiate a referendum, the legislature is compelled into passing laws on the topics that could be brought through a referendum, therefore what is left for initiatives is more divisive topics.
There’s yet one more dynamic: Initiative proposes X. Government is, like, this is just crazy. The initiators: Do change the law to include Y (a watered down version of X) and we’ll retract the initiative.
Looking at it from that point of view, the referendum can be thought of not as a way for “the people” to decide, but rather a lever, a credible threat, to change the law without having to go via the standard representative system (joining a party, becoming an MP, etc.)
Let’s go even further. Assuming the above model, the system can be improved by treating each successful referendum as a system failure. A postmortem should be written a submitted for public discussion:
If majority was in favour, why wasn’t the law changed before in the first place?
Why haven’t the counterproposal succeeded?
Why haven’t the initiants retracted the initiative?
What should be done so that a similar failure doesn’t happen again?
The latter “credible threat” seems to work similarly in Denmark, where 30% of the parliament can initiate a referendum. I think this only happened once in 174 years, because the 30% parliament minority uses this institution to force a compromise or even a “deal” (I assume that it’s most of the time a secret deal) with the parties in majority, not for “the people” to decide.
Interesting. I’ve never heard about that. Any tips about where to read some more about that?