The voters of the world have had quite a year: They rejected Colombia’s peace deal; split Britain from the European Union; endorsed a Thai Constitution that curtails democracy; and, in Hungary, backed the government’s plan to restrict refugees, but without the necessary turnout for a valid result.
Each of these moves was determined by a national referendum. Though voters upended their governments’ plans, eroded their own rights and ignited political crises, they all accomplished one thing: They demonstrated why many political scientists consider referendums messy and dangerous.
When asked whether referendums were a good idea, Michael Marsh, a political scientist at Trinity College Dublin, said, “The simple answer is almost never.”
“I’ve watched many of these in Ireland, and they really range from the pointless to the dangerous,” he added.
Though such votes are portrayed as popular governance in its purest form, studies have found that they often subvert democracy rather than serve it.
They tend to be volatile, turning not just on the merits of the decision but also on unrelated political swings or even, as may have happened in Colombia, on the weather.
Voters must make their decisions with relatively little information, forcing them to rely on political messaging — which puts power in the hands of political elites rather than those of voters.
‘Short cuts’ to hard answers
“This is a tool that’s risky, but politicians keep using it because they think that they’ll win,” said Alexandra Cirone, a fellow at the London School of Economics. But often they do not win, and instead of resolving political problems, the referendums create new ones. Looking over the research on these votes, it becomes clear why many experts are skeptical.
Voters face a problem in any referendum: They need to distill difficult policy choices down to a simple yes or no, and predict the outcome of decisions so complex that even experts might spend years struggling to understand them.
Voters typically solve this problem by finding what the political scientists Arthur Lupia and Mathew D. McCubbins have termed “short cuts.” The voters follow the guidance of trusted authority figures or fit the choice within a familiar narrative.
When a referendum is put forward by the government, people often vote in support if they like the leadership and vote in opposition if they dislike it, according to research by Lawrence LeDuc, a political scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. “A vote that is supposed to be about an important public issue ends up instead being about the popularity or unpopularity of a particular party or leader, the record of the government, or some set of issues or events that are not related to the subject of the referendum,” Professor LeDuc wrote in a 2015 paper. In Colombia, for example, most regions that voted for President Juan Manuel Santos in 2014 also voted for the peace deal, and vice versa.
Voters may also cope with complex issues by shoehorning them into existing ideological beliefs.
This dynamic plays out in virtually every referendum — especially those with higher stakes.
Imposing a narrative
Politicians or other powerful actors will often reframe the referendum into simplistic, straightforward narratives. The result is that votes become less about the actual policy question than about contests between abstract values, or between which narrative voters find more appealing.
In Britain’s debate over whether to leave the European Union, or “Brexit,” neither side emphasized the specifics of membership in the bloc, instead framing the vote as a choice about which values to emphasize. The “Remain” campaign presented membership as a matter of economic stability. The “Leave” campaign emphasized immigration.
It worked. People who voted to remain expressed great concern about the economy, but not much about immigrants. People who voted to leave said they were very concerned about immigration, and less so about the economy.
In Colombia, Mr. Santos presented the referendum as a vote on peace, but the opposition presented it as a decision on whether the country’s largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, was entitled to leniency. Neither narrative fully portrayed the question of whether the peace deal would be worthwhile. Colombia, Ms. Cirone said, also highlighted that “in contexts where the referendum addresses a historical political issue, it may be hard for voters to separate past experiences with what is best for the country in the future.”
In Thailand, the military-led government held a referendum in August to approve a new Constitution that would entrench its power and curtail elements of democracy. But the military also promised elections only after the Constitution passed, in effect selling an anti-democratic document as the pro-elections choice. The measure passed.
Democracy as a tool for the powerful
Though presented as putting power in the hands of the people, referendums are often intended to put a stamp of popular legitimacy on something leaders have already decided to do.
“It doesn’t have a lot to do with whether this should be decided by the people,” Ms. Cirone said. “It has to do with whether a politician can gain an advantage from putting a question to the people.”
For example, David Cameron, until July the British prime minister, held the vote on whether to depart the European Union expecting that it would bolster his decision to stay in the bloc and would thus silence British politicians who wanted to leave.
The Thai military restricted news coverage of the draft Constitution, ensuring that there was no counternarrative that might portray it as a threat to democracy. By giving the appearance of popular input, the military in fact dampened it.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary most likely devised his country’s referendum — on whether to reject European Union requirements for accepting refugees — to pre-empt inevitable objections in the bloc to his anti-migrant policies and to bolster his political standing at home. In both cases, it was about using the vote as an instrument to strengthen himself.
High-risk, high-reward votes for peace
This stamp of popular legitimacy, though, can sometimes be a good thing, settling contentious national disputes that might otherwise lead to political turmoil or even to armed conflict. But it is precisely because the stakes are so high that the risks are, as well.
Northern Ireland’s Good Friday peace deal in 1998 was followed by two referendums, one in Northern Ireland and one in the Republic of Ireland.
- New York Times