Consultative referendums may provide crucial information about public opinion but have received little attention in the literature compared with their binding counterparts. In this article, we ...analyse 221 Norwegian local consultative referendums on municipal amalgamation using the Venice Commission’s code on referendums. Much of the referendum literature suggests that consultative referendums are in fact binding. The municipal councils followed the outcomes of the referendums in most cases, but 14% chose to go against it. While the overall impression is that the outcomes of consultative referendums are seen as binding, the data indicate that ballot design may affect voters’ choice as well as council decisions. Although many democratic standards were met, the wording of questions and alternatives on the ballot paper were problematic in a number of cases – reducing the democratic value of the citizens’ advice.
This article addresses a critical gap in the literature on winner–loser effects that consists of the lack of attention for highly contentious constitutional referenda. It uses unique multi-wave panel ...data of over 13,000 people that is unrivalled in size and richness. We estimate causal effects of the referendum on rarely studied but crucial public perceptions of the fairness of the way a referendum is conducted. These perceptions pertain to the highly contentious 2016 European Union (Brexit) referendum in the United Kingdom, which is an ideal-type example of a wider class of referenda for which similar outcomes can be expected. We use difference-in-differences methods and find winner–loser effects of a magnitude far greater than ever observed for general elections. Moreover, we find that these effects not only persist, but even grow over time. The findings have profound implications for the use of such referenda.
This study examined the interplay of anti‐immigrant prejudice and intergroup contact experience on voting intentions within Britain's 2016 referendum on its membership in the European Union. In the ...days before the referendum, we asked more than 400 British people how they planned to vote. We measured a number of demographic factors expected to predict voting intentions as well as individuals’ prejudice towards and intergroup contact experience (positive and negative) with EU immigrants. Anti‐immigrant prejudice was a strong correlate of support for Brexit. Negative intergroup contact experience was associated with higher anti‐immigrant prejudice and, in turn, increased support for ‘Leave’. Positive intergroup contact, on the other hand, seemed to play a reparative role, predicting lower prejudice and increasing support for ‘Remain’.
This article shows that key to understanding the referendum outcome are factors such as a profoundly eurosceptic public, high levels of citizen uncertainty, divided mainstream political parties on ...the EU and lack of unity within the ‘Leave’ campaign. The Brexit referendum is more than just about domestic issues and government approval. Utilitarian concerns related to economic evaluations of EU integration coupled with support of or opposition to EU freedom of movement are very likely to influence vote choice. Those campaigns that focus on rational utilitarian arguments about the costs and benefits related to EU membership as a whole but also to EU freedom of movement are expected to swing voters.
The 2016 referendum marked a watershed moment in the history of the United Kingdom. The public vote to leave the European Union (EU)—for a ‘Brexit’—brought an end to the country’s membership of the ...EU and set it on a fundamentally different course. Recent academic research on the vote for Brexit points to the importance of immigration as a key driver, although how immigration influenced the vote remains unclear. In this article, we draw on aggregate-level data and individual-level survey data from the British Election Study (BES) to explore how immigration shaped public support for Brexit. Our findings suggest that, specifically, increases in the rate of immigration at the local level and sentiments regarding control over immigration were key predictors of the vote for Brexit, even after accounting for factors stressed by established theories of Eurosceptic voting. Our findings suggest that a large reservoir of support for leaving the EU, and perhaps anti-immigration populism more widely, will remain in Britain, so long as immigration remains a salient issue.
In Direct Democracy or Representative Government? John Haskell describes the dangers and uncovers the logical flaws of politics-by-plebiscite as practiced in California and other states. Haskell ...makes the case that the populist impulse for direct democracy is as much or more a part of American political culture as the republican restraint embodied in the Constitution. In non-technical language Haskell uses recent discoveries in the social sciences to refute the populist position that direct democracy is the truest form of democracy. He builds on this to make a strong case for representative institutions relevant to a new century when the temptations for instant democracy by initiative and referendum or even over the Internet are greater than ever. He writes that checks and balances and separated powers are all the more essential because of our populist tradition.
The ballot initiative, a form of direct democracy practiced across the country, is often held up as a model of implementing the people's will and, therefore, achieving democracy's most fundamental ...aim. But with direct popular control over policymaking comes a cost: limited deliberative processes to develop proposals. I call this cost the deliberative deficit. Focusing on California's experience, a state with one of the most salient and consequential direct-democratic processes, this Note discusses the need to look beyond traditional institutions to effectively address the ballot initiative's deliberative deficit. After showing why the judiciary, legislature, and the direct-democratic process itself cannot do so, I suggest creating an independent advisory commission (Commission) to review initiatives. This Commission would make specific recommendations to an initiative's drafters so they can more effectively achieve their stated policy goals and mitigate unintended second-order effects. The Commission would not evaluate the initiative's core normative aims, leaving that assessment to voters. Though not a complete panacea, the Commission is a starting point. It is an example of the kind of thinking and new institutional development needed to address the deliberative deficit.
We investigate the impact of the outcome of the EU referendum (Brexit) on various sectors of the British economy over the period June-July 2016. Using the event study methodology, we assess the ...effects of Brexit, relative to what had been anticipated, as measured by abnormal returns (ARs). The results show that the banking and travel and leisure sectors were affected negatively, with a cumulative AR of −15.37% for the banking sector. We observe that Brexit has a mixed effect on ARs with apparent sector-by-sector differences.
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