A healthy regard for referendums

World View: Recalls, referendums and citizens' initiatives have been in the news this week, from California to Poland, France and the Czech Republic. Arnold Schwarzenegger's spectacular victory raised all the issues concerning the relationship between direct and representative democracy.

Are these populist methods which distort representation or valuable tools to deepen it, including in transnational settings such as the European Union?

The Californian systems were put in place during the Progressive era of the early 1900s to extend political accountability and citizen involvement. Other states in the US also adopted them in various combinations. Eighteen have gubernatorial recalls. Since 1912 there have been 275 initiatives put to ballot in California, 96 of which were approved, including term limits for political office, caps on taxation and many other issues.

Often they are not well written and come to grief in the courts; but many have become part of the state's law, including most notoriously Proposition 13 in 1978, which installed the low property taxes that are arguably at the root of the state's current fiscal crisis.

Those appalled at this latest example of populist celebrity politics need to take account of two factors in the result. Many say the recall option was misapplied in this instance, being used to pursue right-wing partisan politics instead of as a constitutional safeguard.

Besides, the decision allowing people to be paid for collecting signatures and the donation by Republican Congressman Darrell Issa of $1.7 million towards that have created a precedent which mocks the Progressives' motives. Collections should be voluntary, as is the case elsewhere in the US.

In addition, exit polls show this was a serious election, with a higher turnout than in November 2002, in which there were real shifts of view among those who supported and opposed Governor Gray Davis on that occasion.

Among the core Democrats one-fifth supported his recall, disillusioned with his performance, while new layers of conservatives rallied to Schwarzenegger. The representative argument is simply that Davis was elected for a (second) four-year term and should not be cast out after only 11 months in office. If Democrats decide to go after Schwarzenegger next year this criticism will become stronger.

In Europe this week referendums were in the news as the Inter-Governmental Conference on a European constitution began its work, based on the draft prepared by the Convention on the Future of Europe. The Polish Prime Minister, Mr Lezhek Miller, said he thought a referendum would be necessary on the outcome if it does not reflect the voting weights provided in the Nice Treaty, thereby diluting Poland's influence in the EU.

His French counterpart, Mr Jacques Raffarin, said "a true European cannot not want a referendum", after an opinion poll in Le Monde showed 74 per cent in favour to 22 per cent against holding one, with a margin in its favour of 72 to 21.

But President Chirac, who advocated a referendum in the 2002 election, is now having second thoughts, largely because French Eurosceptics are more committed to voting against, and mindful of the extremely close result of the vote on the Maastricht Treaty in 1992.

The Czech Prime Minister, Mr Cyril Svoboda, also spoke of having a referendum on the new treaty to head off opposition to it in the parliament. Already the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Denmark and Ireland are committed to having one, bringing the potential numbers up to one-third of the 25 states in the enlarged EU.

The arguments in favour concern the need for a constitutional treaty to have the popular legitimacy only a referendum can provide. Against that, states which will not have one invoke precedents from their Bonapartist, Nazi or authoritarian pasts when they were used to bypass and override parliamentary democracy.

These arguments recall demands made during the convention and still being pressed in the IGC by those calling for a Europe-wide referendum on the new constitution. This could be in addition to member-state ratifications, in an initiative specifically designed to encourage the formation of an EU-wide demos to underpin a new stage of political integration. Although pressed hard on the convention, it was not accepted there.

An article on citizens' initiatives was accepted, much to the delight of the industrious lobby group pushing for it, which attracted widespread support among convention members (their website, www.iri-europe.org, contains a comprehensive guide to these issues).

It provides that "a significant number of citizens, not less than one million, coming from a significant number of member-states, may invite the Commission to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing this constitution".

A European law should determine the specific procedures and conditions required for such a request, including the spread of signatures among the member-states and safeguards against it being flooded by signatures from the larger ones.

Whether in national or transnational settings representative democracy can be supplemented by direct and indirect methods. These include direct deliberative democracy involving citizens, such as referendums and initiatives; majority decision-making by representatives; associative democracy, involving decisions made by recognised experts; and bargaining democracy, such as is found in Ireland's national partnership or in the typical EU negotiations in the Council of Ministers. These can all be made more open, accessible and accountable, as the convention and IGC set out to do.

Democratic argument and deliberation help to build political communities and identities, including those that develop beyond national borders in the EU. It is wrong to base them only on prepolitical, cultural or ethnic homogeneity. Referendums can, with safeguards, engage citizens more directly, make politics more communicative and open to political learning.

One should not conclude from Schwarzenegger's victory that they necessarily endanger representative democracy.