Firstly people argue that it encourages direct participation, which is very good for democracy as people are directly influencing what happens in their country. How can we be a true democracy only happens every five years or so?
Referendums also help the Government receive backing for their plans. If they win a referendum, then they will say that they can carry out something because the public want it. This is truly democratic as people will get their say and it will influence the government.
Supporters of referendum say that people become out of touch with politics in between general elections, meaning that the arguments in between the general elections are almost pointless. Referendums are the perfect way to keep people interested in politics.
They also help to provide a definite answer, rather than a muddled opinion on what the people think that the government should do.
Some people are against democracy. Churchill famously said ‘The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter’. He has a good point because he is saying that the average Joe in Britain doesn’t have a degree in politics like a number of politicians do, so why are they good enough to make a decision? Why let someone put a cross in a box because they have read about an issue maybe for maybe 2 minutes in a tabloid newspaper, when people have been thinking hard about a decision for a lot of time and they know possible consequences of decisions.
Also, referendums don’t reflect what the public think. Sometimes barely half of people turn up, so you aren’t getting a view of what the public thinks, which is the whole point of a referendum. People vote for an MP, if they have an issue with a possible decision then they can make a petition or protest.
Another argument against referendums is that the government doesn’t have to use the results. There is nothing that says that whatever the public says must go in a referendum and from what the government said recently, they could have referendum after referendum until a result goes their way.
Governments may also only use referendum when they are confident of victory, so on many issues they could turn down a referendum because they don’t feel that their stance will be very popular, so they don’t have the possible embarrassment of losing a referendum.
To make questions understandable to the public, the writers have to use basic questions and answers, yes or no. Issues such as adopting the Euro can’t be so simple as yes or no. The writer would have to put, for example, yes if interest rates do not exceed best performing countries by more than 2% as it says in Gordon Brown’s 5 economic tests. Not many members of the public are going to have much idea what that means at all, and then you get a random box cross, which is pointless.
In conclusion I would say that referendums aren’t very good because the people aren’t clever enough to make decisions, not everyone votes, the results can be pointless and the issues are oversimplified.
