The Promise and Pitfalls of Direct Democracy: Referendums and Initiatives in Representative Systems

Undergraduate / Graduate

The majority of representative democracies retain mechanisms of direct democracy: referendums and citizens' initiatives. These mechanisms are controversial. Supporters view them as rightfully restoring a role for citizens in collective decision-making. They point to U.S. states where voters have recently used Medicaid and abortion referendums and initiatives to bring public policy more in line with voters' preferences. Critics view these mechanisms as giving too large a role to uninformed voters and as sidestepping the important deliberative processes that happen in legislatures. These critics point to "bad" referendum decisions, such as the U.K.'s Brexit vote in 2016. In this course, we will study mechanisms of direct democracy from the "top," exploring how party and legislative elites deal with direct democracy, and from the "bottom," exploring how voters approach them, with an eye toward answering the question, are referendums and initiatives good for democracy?