The role of referendums

[Mike Shaw]

What do people think about referendums playing a greater role in
government?

[Judy]

In principle, it would be a good idea, as it would give people a say
on specific topics in between elections.

One difficulty is in making sure that any questions are very carefully
posed so that the opportunity is not wasted.

[simg]

The overwhelming majority of people are completely uninterested in and
ignorant of the facts about almost all of the issues about which they
have opinions (myself included).

Yes, our current method of government is not perfect, but the idea
that the general public could make better decisions than
"professional" MP's is completely ridiculous.

Not to mention the cost ...

[Mike Shaw]

'The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation
with the average voter.' - Churchill

[Warren Draper]

"the idea that the general public could make better decisions than "professional" MP's is completely ridiculous."

What professional MPs?

Do universities offer doctorates in Apparatchikism nowadays?..

The apparatchik's aim in life is to out-ass-kiss, out-maneuver, out-threaten, out-lie and ultimately out-fight his or her way to the top of the pyramid-any pyramid. Appropriately, Russia produced a superb specimen of homo apparatchikus--Josef Stalin. Many American novels have described the wheeling and dealing of apparatchiks in various occupations; perhaps the classic fictional character of this kind is Sammy Glick, the movie tycoon in Budd Schulberg's novel, What Makes Sammy Run? Niccolo Machiavelli wrote a handbook for apparatchiks that is unsurpassed to this day--The Prince. But the most successful of this breed need neither exemplars or hand-books; they seem to know instinctively what to do.

It often happens that when a person possesses a particular ability to an extraordinary degree, nature makes up for it by leaving him or her incompetent in every other department. Thus we see owners of baseball teams who lack any understanding of the sport, heads of banks who couldn't balance a checkbook, industrialists whose main industry is riding around in fancy limos, and generals who know more about playing golf with congressmen than they do about fighting wars.

Robert Shea - Empire of the Rising Scum 

--
give me sun, give me dirt, give me water
give me sweet everlasting love

'Sundirtwater' by The Waifs

[simg]

professional in the sense that it is what they do full time for a
living.

many of them also have political science related degrees

[Warren Draper]

"professional in the sense that it is what they do full time for a living."

Don't do it very well though do they? ;-)

I do agree however that participatory democracy would be difficult as things stand. We've been apathetic as a nation for an awfully long time, but there's an up and coming generation who have proven to be more politically astute than we ever were.

I live in hope :-D

[Burkhard Heim]

Hi, just joined, and was looking through the past posts.

Re: representation vs. direct democracy, the main problem with a few
people deciding a lot of things for a lot of people comes when they
cease to represent the informed wishes of those people (and that's the
main argument for referenda). Having a referendum on a few things of
massive importance (changing the way the country fundamentally works,
for example) is maybe a good way of doing things, but not best for
policy in general I think - the issues raised about your average voter
not knowing or really giving a shit are probably correct. To be
honest, I think a better way is to make politicians more accountable
to their electorate, given that we're not realistically capable of
getting away from some form of centralised representative democracy
for some time, should we want to.

Basically, I think we should try and figure a way of adequately
expressing our common ground through representatives, and not think
too hard about referenda. There are three problems with this in the
U.K. as it stands. Firstly, until this election, the majority of
voters were not represented by any government in living memory. The
incumbent government always had a minority of the popular vote, even
if it had a large majority of seats, due to the first past the post.
In most governments the government has had a disproportionately strong
grip on the country. Proper, STV-MMC-PR (ha, acronyms are fun - that'd
be short for 'a proper voting system') would make this radically
fairer - Scotland already does it at a local level. Secondly, party
politics is far too strong. In local elections, people should be able
to publicise a platform that is independent of, or broadly (but not
absolutely) agrees with a party line. We shouldn't have to vote for a
person, we should vote for their policy. Binding pre-election pledges
are good news here, and so is equal, universal public funding for
political candidates, should they be able to raise enough signatures
to get on a ballot. More independents, more independence for the win.

Those two points kind of deal with how to get people that actually
represent most constituents in to government. The third thing would be
trying to keep the corruption out of politicians once they get there.
There's a lot of transparency improvements that can happen there, but
having a power of recall (and not just for criminal wrongdoing - based
on whim, but with a higher cut-off for numbers of signatures) would
cause many politicians to become much more sensitive to the people
that allow them to be where they are. Perhaps a universal mid-term
confidence poll too, with a supermajority required to boot a rep? I'm
thinking out loud here.

So yeah... that was meant to be a short reply on referenda, and it
kind of rolled along. Any thoughts?

BH