How Do Referendums Affect Representative Democracy

Book Review The book Referendums and Representative Democracy: Responsivness, accountability and deliberation by Maija Setälä and Theo Schiller analyses how referendums affect representative democracies and their institutions. The book is broken into the three parts: referendums and models of democracy, the demand for referendums: strategies and ideologies, and referendum campaigns and voter behavior. The book attempts to take a nonbiased approach to analyzing the role of referendums in representative democracy and important they are to defining direct-democracy. Setälä points out that while all representative democracies are by definition direct-democracies in some manner, the presence and characteristic of referendums define how direct it …show more content…
In particular, in a number of cases a referendum can be seen as a tool of the political elite in order to create the illusion of public participation in government. Caution must also be taken concerning the frequency of referendums and the more frequent they are the less important they are to the public opinion. The idea is that referendums should only be utilized when the representatives cannot make a decision on behalf of their constituents and must ask their opinion. Civic values also play an important role in the effectiveness of referendums because poor civic values based on ignorance or prejudice may cause public opinion to pick the wrong choice. This is particularly addressed in the section on voter behavior and raises the question, do voters really know what is best for their state? Perhaps Aristotle’s idea that rule should be left to the best suited or professionals is better than direct democracy. The authors take a predominantly empirical approach to referendums and in general finds that referendums can be effective tools but often are at risk for abuse. Abuse of referendums can actually lead to democratic disengagement because the public can become weary or disillusioned with their