Krzysztof Blusz and Paweł Zerka answer a new question from Judy Dempsey on the foreign and security policy challenges shaping Europe’s role in the world.
After recent frustrating results close to home (in the Netherlands on the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, in Britain on EU membership, and in Hungary on the EU’s migrant resettlement scheme) and in distant places (in Colombia on a peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas), it may be tempting to dismiss the entire idea of referenda. In today’s context of heightened popular agitation, they seem to operate more as a risk than as a cure for democracy and its deficits.
There is a lot of demagoguery, populism, and political conformism behind the recent fashion for referenda. They have become low-hanging fruit for the burgeoning variety of political leaders who relish in positioning themselves as exponents of the common will while hurrying to put even the most strategic or complex issues to a popular plebiscite. All too often, referenda have pitched capricious public sentiment against well-informed decisions. They underwrite short-termism in public debate. The value of referenda in the domains of foreign policy, security, and defense is particularly doubtful.
The lesson to be learned is that any referendum should at the least be designed to avoid locking a country into an irreversible scenario. Allowing for the overdose and veneration of plebiscites does not guarantee democratic inclusion, education, or engagement in public debate. If governments cannot avoid referenda, they should use them as a democratic shortcut and a supplement to representative democracy—but never as its substitute.
The comment above is a part of Judy Dempsey’s Strategic Europe article Are Referenda Dangerous? – on the foreign and security policy challenges shaping Europe’s role in the world. To read the article, please visit: http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/?fa=64835
