The Devolution of Power to Wales was a Pre-legislative referendum in 1997. There was only a 50.1 % turnout, suggesting voter apathy and a lack of knowledge or interest in the subject. The result was extremely indecisive with votes for yes narrowly surpassing those for no (YES: 50.3% -NO: 49.7%). Usually when such an indecisive result occurs, the government spend longer thinking about whether or not to accept the result as valid or to formulate another strategy. However, in this case, the government passed the , creating the .
The Good Friday Agreement in May 1998, was on a very sensitive issue (the Belfast agreement) and it required a concise and decisive result. In May 1998 there were separate referendums in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to endorse the Belfast Agreement. The results were clear with a 71% YES vote and a mere 28% NO VOTE. Turnout, at 81.1% was very high for a developed country where voting is not compulsory and it is estimated that approximately 147,000 people who do not normally vote in elections turned out to vote in the referendum, most of them in traditionally staunch unionist areas.
This conveys how there was a larger and knowledgeable electorate who felt confident to voice their opinions, when they were given the chance. Unlike the Welsh referendum (1997) turnout was high suggesting a lack of voter apathy and thus a real connection from the electorate to this issue.
The result of this referendum is a clear YES and reinforced the importance and usefulness of a referendum on simple answer (but complicated) issues. The government in response to this result passed the .
The Scottish referendum in 1997 was a pre-legislative ,over whether there was support for the creation of a for Scotland and whether there was support for a parliament with tax varying powers. Voter turnout was adequate with 60.1% voting and the result was once again a decisive one with 74.3% voting YES and 25.7% voting No. The electorate were well informed and therefore showed great interest in the political issue, as opposed to previous referendums (1979 –far more indecisive result). The Scottish public voted in favour for tax raising powers for the Scottish parliament and therefore, n response to the majority voting for both proposals, the passed the , creating the and .
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Although Referendums can provide clear decisive answers on difficult political issues, they also have many disadvantages to them. One main disadvantage is that the electorate has no way of triggering a referendum, as only the government has power to do this.
This creates the image that the government has too much power regarding referendums and vital political decisions. As well as undermining parliamentary sovereignty (the right of parliament to make and remake any law and not be bound by their successors) they also allow politicians to absolve themselves of responsibility for making difficult decisions, as referendums are the “people’s choice”.
The government also abuses this system of resolving issues as it will a referendum when they are confident of a positive result (they think they will win).
An evident example of this is the strong likelihood of a referendum on the Single European Currency, as this is an issue that the government still feels confident over.
As well as manipulating when they hold referendums, they can also carefully phrase questions, so to be sure of achieving the outcome they desire and this distorts results, leaving inaccurate referendums. This is the disadvantage of governments not being neutral participants.
Opposing Groups of debate are usually low on resources and funding and therefore, cannot adequately compete with the government’s (or main) view. Another fear over referendums is that complex issues e.g. Good Friday Agreement, can be over simplified by the government (e.g. phrasing of questions) and some issues actually cannot be resolved by a simple YES or NO vote.
The electorate can also suffer from a lack of information on an issue, and so a result may only reflect “a snapshot” of an opinion, and this may be subject to change over time.
Referendums are also victim to the media and other agencies who can significantly influence a result, making them invalid or causing “unjustified” change in opinion e.g. Rich pressure groups, who may cause voters to be swayed by emotion rather than reason.
A regular occurrence with referendums however, is that of low turnout and voter apathy towards issues. This can harm the referendum by creating a result lacking in credibility. An example of low turnout and voter apathy is the November 2004 referendum on whether there should be a North East Assembly; here there was only a 48% turnout indicating a fairly low level of interest on the subject and high levels of voter apathy. This meant that the result (a resounding no by 78%) lack validity.
A concluding failure of referenda is that the decisions made are not final, as the government can go back on them if they want. This undermines the whole process and creates a weakened system of representative democracy.