Cameron seeks California style referendums for Great Britain
One item in the Tory manifesto has caught a few American bloggers' eyes: a pledge to institute "California-style" referendums on public policy issues if they can garner the support of 5% of the population. Alex Massie objects:
As commenters have pointed out and as California's experience demonstrates these can easily fall prey to powerful interest groups. This is especially so if the threshold for putting an issue on the ballot is too low. And 5% of available voters is, I'd hazard, too low. Apart from anything else experience suggests that you can get 10% of voters to believe in just about anything.Consider this example from tonight's YouGov tracking poll: 11% of voters say they'd like to see a "Grand Coalition" in which the Tories, Labour and the Liberals share power. That's madness, obviously and a reminder that when turnout is too high or too low it can be heavily influenced by people who really ought not to be allowed anywhere near a polling place. The other problem, mind you, is that most of us are, on some given issue, one of those people...
Matthew Yglesias raises further competence concerns:
In general, I think the key to getting the political process right is to understand the importance of popular participation in consenting (or not) to policy proposals veruss the importance of technocratic design of policy proposals. The problem with Californiaâ??s initiatives isnâ??t so much that the public gets to vote on them as that the actual proposals themselves are designed by interest-group advocates who arenâ??t accountable for the consequences of their ideas and generally lack the technical competence to draft sound proposals. One strength of parliamentary systems is that even rank-and-file legislators primarily have a consent (or not) role while policy design is in the hands of ministries
Personally, I think Kevin Drum has it right: since when did California become a model for good government?
(AP Photo)
