Almost living in the real world: The thoughts of a graduate: Direct Democracy, Friend or Foe?

Direct democracy as a concept is as old as the idea of democracy itself and was first introduced by the ancient Greeks in their town meetings; it has been largely usurped by the use of representative democracy but direct democracy has enjoyed an increasing salience in recent years, experts attribute this to “the revolution in communications technology that has given ordinary citizens unprecedented access to information and heightened the desire to participate directly in policy decisions.”[1]

So what is direct democracy? “Direct Democracy is an umbrella term that covers a variety of political processes, all of which allow ordinary citizens to vote directly on laws rather than on candidates for office”[2]. These political processes include, Ballot measures, how the measures get onto the ballot varies and concerns both the adoption and repealing of laws, Initiatives, which are brought to the ballot by citizens to vote on the introduction of a new law, this has seen a rise in popularity in the USA particularly since the 1970s, Referenda, a vote on a law which has already been passed by the legislature. Legislative measures, which are placed on the ballot paper by the legislators to gauge public opinion and are not legally binding. These institutional measures are representative of modern direct democracy.

Direct democracy is problematic; critics argue that it undermines the idea of representative democracy. What is the point of electing officials to legislate on your behalf when you are simply going to vote on individual policy initiatives anyway? Also, are the public really equipped to deal with the complexity of policy making? Can they make an informed decision about what benefits the public good without having the time or in many cases, inclination to learn about the intricacies of the policy? The answer is yes, in some cases. “Information models in general suggest that some issues, such as detailed standards governing water quality, are best left to experts, while others, such as whether to allow capital punishment, are best decided by citizens directly because experts have no obvious information advantage.” [3] This argument however, does not simply apply to direct democracy but to democracy in general. Studies have shown that the public are usually just as under-informed about the candidates they vote for in elections as they are about the policies they vote on in direct democracy votes. Lupia found that “uniformed voters could emulate the voting patterns of informed voters simply by knowing the interest groups such as Ralph Nader and the insurance industry had taken on the measures”[4]. Given this point this criticism is not a fair way of assessing the effectiveness of direct democracy.

One argument about the positives of direct democracy is that it allows for the public to articulate their needs to the politicians who they have elected. Politicians do not always fulfil their manifesto promises and direct democracy allows the public to bring to the forefront of the debate their issues. Interestingly this seems to generally benefit the majority, the median voter. Direct democracy tends to compliment the median voter theory; “both the direct and indirect effects of direct democracy generally push policy closer to the position of the median voter. Since ballot propositions are filtered through the electorate, only policies that make the median voter better off can gain approval through the legislature.”[5] This is one example how direct democracy hurts the minorities.

Gamble’s paper “Putting Civil Rights to a Popular Vote”, argues that minorities are inherently harmed by the system of direct democracy, she also argues that direct democracy is in opposition to the concept of representative democracy that James Madison had in mind when he drew up the US constitution. James Madison was one of the framers of the American Constitution and his beliefs on the importance of representative democracy were a major factor behind the formation of the Electoral College, the indirect election of senators and the lack of a national initiative process. It is essential in democracy that we protect the rights if minority; especially in a political system where the interests of the majority could well be promoted against the best interests of the minority. It is thus important for politics to not be run on a doctrine of majority rule but of representative democracy where elected representatives of the people are responsible for making sure that all interests are represented. It is not just the tyranny of the majority that Madison was worried about, he took provisions in US constitution to prevent the tyranny of government this led to the separation of powers, bi-cameralism, judicial review, and the executive power of veto. Madison’s vision of representative democracy was that the majority should use their power to protect the interests of minorities; Gamble argues that direct democracy takes the power out of the official’s hands and limits their ability to protect the minority.

Civil rights tends to deal with the empowerment of the minority at the expense of the power of the majority, Gillette wrote, “if individuals have substantial incentives to vote that do not emanate from concern for the welfare of others, they likely will turn out to record their narrowly self interested preferences. If that is the case, minorities are vulnerable to repressive measures proposed through the plebiscitary process”[6] Gamble argues that when direct democracy concerns civil rights the scope for tyranny opens up considerably. Civil rights is often the divisive issue that it is because it is a divisive issue, one that is easily reducible and has long term consequences for the public. As such the public are likely to come out and address their concerns at the ballot box, civil rights is one of those issues that the public has no obvious information advantage over the experts.

Gamble also argues that when the issue opens up to direct democracy it can open the possibilities for issue expansion. Regardless of the outcome, the opponents to the expansion of civil rights can access the media and form an organised means of opposition and therefore broadens the scope for their opposition in the future. Direct democracy allows the opposition the opportunity to put their views forward; where they may not have been widely discussed they will become part of the daily discourse of the public. This is not necessarily a bad thing, in a free and open society the people should have the right to discuss whatever they like freely and one of the important positives about direct democracy is that it allows for the raising of an issue and discussion around it. However, who sets the parameters of the debate? In the UK, for example, the tabloid press will always argue that immigration is a negative. There are positives to immigration but the public are not necessarily as widely aware of them. If there were to be a referendum tomorrow in the UK about the future of immigrants the decision would almost certainly be against the minority. Derrick Bell (1978, 15) worried that “direct democracy, carried out in the privacy of the voting booth, has diminished the ability of minority groups to participate in the democratic process. Ironically, because it enables voters’ racial beliefs and fears to be recorded and tabulated in their pure form, the referendum has been a most effective facilitator of that bias, discrimination and prejudice which has marred American democracy from its earliest day”[7] Gamble’s study shows that the rights of the minorities are in fact heavily damaged by the majority at the ballot box. The public do not look to protect the minorities through the referenda system; that is why it is essential that we protect them through representative democracy.

Gamble outlines two aspects to civil rights laws, which she bases her study around. Here we will examine these and assess her conclusions. The first questions who bring the civil rights issue to the ballot. If the majority use the ballot box to deprive the minority of their rights to block elected representatives from exercising their right to make laws that look after the interest of the minority then it is dangerous to minority rights. “Of the 43 gay rights initiatives that have reached the ballot, 88% have sought to restrict the rights of gay men and lesbians by repealing existing gay rights laws or forbidding legislators to pass new ones. Voters approved 79% of these restrictive measures.”[8] This statistic is simply one example of how direct democracy weakens the role of elected officials to legislate.

The second question asks, what is relationship with the referenda and legislation? If the minorities secure their rights through the representatives and then have it taken away by the ballot; that is an example of the tyranny of the majority. She cites the example of the Supreme Court case Hunter V Erikson. The residents of Akron Ohio, voted to repeal a piece of fair housing legislation. The Supreme Court overturned this decision, because it was unconstitutional. Despite the fact that the Supreme Court overturned the decision the very fact it was passed in the first place in

These questions and the examples she gives to explain her conclusions are compelling, however, her study is not without its problems. By her own admission, she tries to look at as many cases of civil rights issues as possible put to a referenda but she cannot. She limits her study to cases by the date, where it appeared, the issue it addressed, and whether it was passed or failed or not. This means that she looks only at the cases that confirm her hypothesis. She also makes a conscious decision to ignore women’s rights. She declares that women are a large group that have the potential to make an electoral majority therefore it gives them a distinct advantage over the other minority groups she has chosen to examine. Women’s rights are a large issue area to exclude, had she included them into her study there may well had been outcome to her research.

There have been counter papers published that dispute Gamble’s claims. One such paper was published by Bowler and Donovan. They argue that “minority rights are protected by extending the size of an area governed so that “society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.”[9] They argue that ”[10] Direct Democracy is only really dangerous when it is practiced in smaller countries, when it takes place in larger countries there is enough diversity for interests to be diverse and dispersed enough to limit the risk of limiting civil rights. “Direct democracy need not produce policies that are uniformly hostile to minorities. Indeed well educated populations and large jurisdictions can lead to the adoption of direct legislation sympathetic to homosexuals”[11] They contend that more data is required in order to assess how dangerous direct democracy is to minorities compared to representative democracy.

Another study carried out that disputes Gamble’s claims is one by Frey and Goette, they compare Gamble’s study to direct democracy in Sweden, where direct democracy is very common to determining policy and they arrive at completely different conclusions. They identified 20 civil rights issues that have been the subject of popular referenda according to their definition of civil rights taken from the UN charter for human rights. Their study shows that “At the federal level only 20 percent of the issues were decided by the Swiss electorate in a direction suppressing minority civil rights. This result clearly speaks against the proposition that the voters in a direct democracy tend to abolish civil rights.”[12] They argue that in some cases an anti civil rights outcome will occur for reasons that have little to do with civil rights. They show an example of a piece of housing legislation (which is one of the areas of civil rights policy that Gamble looks at in detail) where the outcome was determined because of the distribution of funds from the rural to urban areas. “Three initiatives undertaken in 1974, 1982 and 1993 involved in a strong redistribution of cantonal funds from rural to urban areas. Accordingly, in all three cases, the initiatives enjoyed a 55 percent approval in urban areas, but 60 percent of the rural voters rejected them. While the subject clearly touched on civil rights issues, the three votes focused on the distribution between urban and rural areas.”[13] They conclude that there is nothing inherently wrong with direct democracy in limiting civil rights when comparing Switzerland to the USA the Swiss actively promote civil rights when given the opportunity to do so in a popular vote. Their argument is thus, there is nothing wrong with direct democracy per se but simply there may be a problem with direct democracy in the USA.

Why does the USA have a problem with promoting the rights of minorities through Direct Democracy when Sweden does not? The answer must be down to cultural differences. The USA is a country that until only forty years ago had segregation of public services between African Americans and White Americans. Could it simply be that the public of the USA is more discriminatory than their Swedish counterparts?

To conclude, direct democracy is by its nature promotes the will of the majority. This may well be to the detriment of minorities, that is why one of the central tenets of representative democracy is to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority. However, direct democracy is increasing in its popularity, as the trust in elected officials declines the public compulsion to take part in the political process increases. The problems of information can not be ignored. Direct Democracy needs to be limited to those issues where the public can make informed choices; however, these issues tend to be more divisive. Given this fact, direct democracy is dangerous only when the public that is voting is simply voting for their own narrow interests as opposed to making an altruistic choice for the benefit of the whole of society.

Word Count – 2458

References

Frey, Bruno S and Goette, Lorentz, Does the popular vote destroy civil rights? American Journal of Political Science, 1998, Midwest Political Science Association, pp 1343-1348

[12] Frey, Bruno S and Goette, Lorentz, Does the popular vote destroy civil rights? American Journal of Political Science, 1998, Midwest Political Science Association, p 1344

[13] Frey, Bruno S and Goette, Lorentz, Does the popular vote destroy civil rights? American Journal of Political Science, 1998, Midwest Political Science Association, p 1345

Wednesday, 16 July 2008

Direct Democracy, Friend or Foe?

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Almost living in the real world: The thoughts of a graduate

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