Do populist values or civic values drive support for referendums in Europe?

Abstract

Representative democracy gives voters the right to influence who governs but its influence on policy making is only indirect. Free and fair referendums give voters the right to decide a policy directly. Elected representatives usually oppose referendums as redundant at best and as undermining their authority at worst. Democratic theorists tend to take electing representatives as normal and as normatively superior. The nominal association of popular decision making and populism has strengthened this negative view. Public opinion surveys show substantial support for holding referendums on important issues. Two major theories offer contrasting explanations for popular support for referendums; they reflect populist values or a commitment to the civic value of participation. This innovative paper tests an integrated model of both theories by the empirical analysis of a 17-country European survey. There is substantial support for all three civic hypotheses: referendum endorsement is positively influenced by attitudes towards participation, democratic ideals and whether elected representatives are perceived as responsive. By contrast, there is no support for populist hypotheses that the socioeconomically weak and excluded favour referendums and minimal support for the effect of extreme ideologies. The conclusion shows that most criticisms of referendums also apply to policy making by elected representatives. While referendums have limits on their use, there is a democratic argument for holding such ballots on major issues to see whether or not a majority of voters endorse the choice of their nominal representatives.

Populist Attitudes and Direct Democracy: A Questionable Relationship

“…Thirdly, the methodological weakness can be avoided by removing the tautological indicators. The straightforward approach to this is to use scales or indicators of populist attitudes that do not tap into items that are close to the essence of direct democracy such as "people and not politicians should decide"; for an example of a potential alternative, see Rose and Wessels (2020). Another possibility is to decompose the scales to separate people-centric attitudes and other components of populism (Mohrenberg et al 2019).…”

“…The conceptual problem of the works connecting citizens’ populist attitudes with support for direct democracy is the ambiguity surrounding the role of direct democracy in the political system. These works measure the support for direct democracy through survey questions about citizens’ willingness to have more frequent referendums (Mohrenberg et al 2019; Rose and Wessels 2020; Zaslove et al 2020) or whether citizens would like referendum results to have a greater political weight or to be binding (Jacobs et al 2018). Conceptually, they look at referendums as instruments of direct democracy that “are people centered, reduce the power of the elite and are a means to keep the corrupt elite in check” (Jacobs et al 2018: 520); for a similar approach, see also Mudde (2007: 151‐152).…”

“…Their findings indicate that populist attitudes are positively associated with the support for referendums either in terms of use or in terms of providing them a more decisive role in the decision‐making process. Evidence comes from the Netherlands (Jacobs et al 2018; Zaslove et al 2020), a comparison of France, Germany, Switzerland and the UK (Mohrenberg et al 2019), and 17 European countries (Rose and Wessels 2020). These studies have the concept of populist attitudes in common, but they operationalize it differently.…”

Do populist parties support referendums? A comparative analysis of election manifestos in Europe

“…Their findings indeed indicate that populist attitudes in the public are positively associated with the support for referendums either in terms of use or in terms of providing them a more decisive role in the decision-making process. Evidence comes from the Netherlands (Jacobs, Akkerman and Zaslove, 2018;Zaslove et al, 2020), a comparison of France, Germany, Switzerland and the UK (Mohrenberg et al, 2019), and of 17 European countries (Rose and Wessels, 2020). Another approach has been proposed by authors such as Bowler et al (2017) or Rooduijn (2018) who study voters of populist parties to see whether they are more supportive of referendums that the rest of the electorate.…”

Voters of Populist Parties and Support for Reforms of Representative Democracy in Belgium

“…Several recent studies have lifted part of the veil by analysing how populist politicians, voters or citizens would be strongly supportive of some reforms of representative democracy. In particular, there has been quite a lot of attention on the link between populism and support for direct democracy (Bowler et al, 2017;Jacobs et al, 2018;Mohrenberg et al, 2019;Rooduijn, 2018;Rose & Wessels, 2020). A few authors have also examined the connection between populism and technocratic attitudes (Bertsou & Caramani, 2020;Caramani, 2017), or between populism and support for strong leadership (Donovan, 2020).…”