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.
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?