It is surely nonsense to talk about the people of Ireland rejecting the Nice Treaty. In fact, a mere 18.7 per cent of those eligible to vote said No, hardly the voice of the nation.
If the poll reveals anything, apart from the casual arrogance of the Government and the political establishment, it is surely what a nonsense the referendum is in a parliamentary democracy.
Many countries in western Europe have provision for referendums in their basic laws, but in most cases they are employed sparingly, and then usually to get politicians off a hook, not to impale them on one. Switzerland is a special case, having built them in at both cantonal and federal level as part of the legislative process, and has had about 300 since 1945. Italy, too, has begun to use them as a common device and has held about 50 in the same period, most of them in the past decade or so.
Apart from those two countries Ireland is the main sufferer from the referendum malaise, well ahead of Denmark and France, the only other two countries to reach double figures since 1945.
It is only comparatively recently that the referendum has achieved a degree of respectability. It was long regarded as an anti-democratic device, used by authoritarians such as Napoleon III in 19thcentury France to enforce their control, and by dictators in the 20th century, such as Hitler, to cement their rule. De Gaulle, too, used it to exert his personal authority over the party system. More recently European leaders and parties have tended to use it as a device to avoid problems. Harold Wilson used it in 1975 to get himself off the hook of sharp divisions within his government over the EEC. Tony Blair has promised one in the UK on the euro, partly because the Tories had already done so, and partly to take a difficult problem off the immediate agenda and avoid, for a time at least, undue strains on his own party unity. It will, of course, still be parliament which formally decides, but only after a referendum.
What is so obviously true for the UK is also true for any parliamentary democracy in Europe: the business of government is the business of the government. The origins of democracy may lie in the Greek city-state, where all decisions were endorsed by all citizens, except women and slaves, of course, but no such practice is possible in managing the intricacies of administration, economy and social organisation in even the smallest modern state.
No decision is taken in isolation. Ireland signed the Nice Treaty because it had participated in the negotiations on the treaty, and the Government, and the Oireachtas, had decided this was in the national interest.
It was involved in the negotiation of Nice because Ireland had already signed the Amsterdam Treaty, the Maastricht Treaty, the Single European Act and the Treaty of Accession. All those had been signed by governments elected by the people, and endorsed in the Dail. The essential decisions on the various complex elements in the Nice Treaty were negotiated by Irish politicians, and by diplomats and others employed by them in the service of the State. In all such negotiations there has to be a detailed balancing of the national interest.
So long as this is done under a government to which the electorate has entrusted the affairs of the state, there is nothing secret or undemocratic about it. To ask the public at large to pass judgment on such complex matters on the basis of, in many cases, little or no knowledge of the issues, or at best a crash course of a couple of weeks via the media, is folly.
Look at last year's Danish referendum on the euro. The government, the parliament, most of the major parties, industry, the trade unions, the media, were all agreed it was in the national interest for Denmark to join. It was the logical next step in a progression of policy decisions. It was what those entrusted by the people with the conduct of government were convinced was best for Denmark.
By a small margin, the referendum was lost. The illogicality of all this is then conclusively demonstrated by the fact that the government remains in power, continues to take decisions vital to the national interest, even though the people have just decided it was all wrong on a crucial issue. If it could not get it right on a matter of supreme importance, why is it still in office?
Some see a powerful argument for referendums on important issues outside the normal political debate. But even here the voice of the people is a bit of a nonsense. In Ireland the divorce referendum in 1995 was passed because 31 per cent of the electorate voted for it. Abortion in 1992 was defeated because 42 per cent said No. Amsterdam went through on a 34 per cent Yes, the Single European Act on 30 per cent. %. (In Denmark both of those would have failed, as 40 per cent backing is required for a constitutional change.) Even the great endorsement of the Belfast Agreement in 1998 represented only 52 per cent of the electorate.
The turnout at referendums over the past decades has rarely reached 60 per cent and has dropped below 30 per cent. They mean little and cost a lot. And now another one will have to be held to reverse last week's decision - in the national interest.
Dennis Kennedy is Lecturer in European Studies at QUB