Brexit shows limits of referendums in deciding policy

Since the 18th century, people have attempted to assert their right to participate in the polity and establish “people power”. The model has taken different shapes, from time to time and place to place.

It came through socialist revolution, nationalistic movements against colonial rule and through parliamentary democracy with elected representatives. Western parliamentary democracy has been the most popular form of transition from authoritarian regimes to people power through peaceful means.

The United States pioneered this liberal democratic order with support from the United Kingdom and other European countries in the post-World War II era. Of late, another model of direct democracy is gathering steam to complement representative democracy.

This happens when people cannot rely fully on their elected representatives for critical issues such as constitutional change and is known as a referendum, which gives people the licence to say yes or no to an issue or a cluster of related ones.

The voting becomes issue-based, and not representative-centric. We see this often in Switzerland, while the Brexit referendum is a candid example of this initiative.

A portion of UK citizens considered themselves “losers”, facing job loss, income crunch and competition from European Union immigrants working in the UK. This segment of population lost confidence in both ruling and opposition party representatives.

They won an exit enthusiastically and narrowly. Maybe they were driven by transient whims more than careful deliberation and did not visualise the long-term impact of their decision.

After the outcome, Google was flooded with questions such as “What will happen now?” and “What is the EU?”, evidence of post- rather than pre-deliberation.

Referendums seem to be a turning point in the history of global polity, and it is time to evaluate their pros and cons. They are, no doubt, a contentious, hot issue now.

Unless voters are mature and informed enough about the whole spectrum of an issue’s short- and long-term ramifications, policy change by referendum may be risky and damaging for the populace, both the winners and losers, and even other countries.

A referendum is okay for low-impact exercises such as assessing public opinion, but not for an abrupt policy change. Let us leave policy decisions to our elected representatives, after prolonged debate in Parliament.

This should apply to all countries following the path of parliamentary democracy, irrespective of geographical size, from Singapore to India.