Continuing on from those thoughts of Paul a few years back, here’s a connected series of tweets on the rising popularity of plebiscitary democracy from Professor Richard Ashcroft…
A thought on referendum culture, which seems to be sweeping the world.
— Richard Ashcroft (@ashcroftethics) October 3, 2016
The now standard accounts of referenda suggest that either they are direct democracy or that they enable protest votes.
— Richard Ashcroft (@ashcroftethics) October 3, 2016
I don't think in most cases they are true direct democracy as they tend to be single issue plebiscites rather than interactive policy-making
— Richard Ashcroft (@ashcroftethics) October 3, 2016
So lets look at the protest vote angle. Suppose they are, as is now often claimed, "revolts of the masses" against elites.
— Richard Ashcroft (@ashcroftethics) October 3, 2016
That implies something very wrong with the structure of politics, something probably unfixable in large complex distributed societies.
— Richard Ashcroft (@ashcroftethics) October 3, 2016
But functionally they work a bit like the Bad Other in a relationship. Purely negative, without explanation.
— Richard Ashcroft (@ashcroftethics) October 3, 2016
"No I don't want that. Not like that, anyway",. "But what _do_ you want?" "You ought to know. But you've been denying it to me."
— Richard Ashcroft (@ashcroftethics) October 3, 2016
The complement of that is that the elites then project onto this Great No whatever they want to find there.
— Richard Ashcroft (@ashcroftethics) October 3, 2016
Hence – "Brexit Means Brexit", "Trump May Be Shocking But At Least He's Not the MSM", "Peace, but not on those terms." etc.
— Richard Ashcroft (@ashcroftethics) October 3, 2016
But perversely the power to grant referenda lies with those same elites. The masses can't simply demand them ad lib.
— Richard Ashcroft (@ashcroftethics) October 3, 2016
Or is it simply a folie de grandeur, a belief that the Elites know what the masses really want, and know how to control that want?
— Richard Ashcroft (@ashcroftethics) October 3, 2016
And what does it say about our political cultures, that they should be governed on this large scale by such strange, personal desires?
— Richard Ashcroft (@ashcroftethics) October 3, 2016
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty