Brexit. A peace agreement following 52 years of civil war. Immigration and terrorism.Constitutional reform. Issues of such gravity surely need to be brought infront of the general electorate.
Or do they?
2016 has already seen its fair share of highly controversial referendums that opened more questions than they settled. The governments of Great Britain, Colombia and Hungary have all made fools of themselves while their opponents hardly won great victories, either. Soon, the Italian cabinet may very well join this sorry club of losers with its desperate gamble, the 4 December constitutional referendum.
A favorite of both dictators and radical democrats, the referendum’s rationale inrepresentative democracies has been hotly debated since the 18th century. Yet, used in the right way, the poster boy of direct democracy might play a vital role even in the most conservative representative systems.
Either by giving the public’s ultimate veto or approval in the most critical issues,plebiscites and referendums may promote peace and national unity, help break political trench warfare and evade very real civil wars. That is, if the system is designed and applied properly. Alas, this is not the year of such well absolved referendums.
A referendum can boost social stability only if its mechanisms guarantee that adecision is only reached if the winning side is supported by a socially and geographically inclusive, strong and uncontested majority. In achieving these the British, Colombian and Hungarian elites failed just as spectacularly as their Italian peers are destined to, if the latest surveys are anything to go by.
Ironically, the invalid Hungarian referendum was theonly one to produce fairly inclusive and uncontested results. The winning side, however, still failed to gain absolute majority. In contrast, the ‘successful’ British and Colombian referendums spectacularly failed in each of these three dimensions.
Brexit, for example, was decided by a plurality of 37.4% of the electorate, with a less than stellar margin of 2.7% over the Remainers. In Colombia the government-sanctioned option fared even worse. Its peace deal with guerrilla group FARC was thrown out of the window by just 18.4% of the eligible voters, with a meager margin of just 0.2%.
Even more worryingly, both in the British and the Colombian cases the results rekindled stark geographic differences. Entire regions finding themselves in opposition or on the political periphery does not bode well for national unity, as anyone in the Scottish National Party can tell.
Unless unexpected developments radically transform the Italian political landscape,the December referendum will lead to a similarly disheartening outcome. The Italian voters would reject the proposed constitutional reforms with a very simple majority of 25% - against an expected23% for the plan’s proponents, according to the latest surveys. Precedence of the country’s traditional North-South divergence does not suggest the majority to be inclusive, either. A post-referendum political breakdown may very well be followed by an overall national crisis.
It should be no surprise to anyone that improper use of badly designed referendums led to such dispiriting results. Few present day political systems were created with a mind to organically incorporate referendums. Unjustified use of such alast-ditch instrument is nothing but proof of strategic ineptitude and severe short-sightedness on behalf of the political elites.
On the one hand, if a question can be decided by plurality, there is no reason to holding a plebiscite. Parliaments are designed to deal with such issues. Referendums are not. Holding one is not just a waste of material and political resources but may even lead to disappointment among the winners and to the alienation of a potentially very sizeable losing block.
On the other hand, if the decision in question does seem to require a special mandate, it is perverse to hand it down to a referendum that is to be decided by simple majority.
Of course,designing a better system would be fairly easy. A combination of tying decisions to a 50%-plus-one support of all eligible voters and a 66% turnout requirement could ensure that the winning majority is both strong and inclusive. Within such a system governments and elites would loose the incentive to try to come up with creative ways to carefully limit voter mobilization to their guaranteed supporters. Adding a further requisite of a minimum margin of 5% would make sure that the decision is also reasonably uncontested.
Federal or strongly regional systems could require these criteria to be met in at least two thirds of the states or regions, to guarantee a broad, geographically and culturally inclusive base for decisions of such magnitude.
Regrettably, while designing a better system might be easy, its implementation would be much less straightforward in any typical status quo-oriented polity. Thus, in place of a better system, politicians will need to show more restraint in bringing issues to the public.
Chances are that any question they would ask will turn out to be redundant or straight out meaningless in a representative system - and thus just a waste of resources. If not, then the question is probably far too important to be decided by plurality.
The institution of simple majority referendum in a representative political system is not a feature. It is a bug.
（By Endre Halasi）
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