The dangers of giving the common man a say

Now, however, the world and its politics are in flux. No, we are not quite experiencing a time like the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions, but long-standing left-right fault lines taken for granted for decades no longer seem to apply. Just consider the recent study by the Swedish academic Sören Holmberg that showed voters agree with only 70 percent of “their” party’s platforms. As a result, insecure politicians are once again turning to referendums as tools. Even the Scottish National Party — a party built around Scottish independence — held a referendum on the question in 2014, despite having gained a majority three years earlier (and, indeed, when asked, a majority of Scots voted against independence). If the SNP no longer views its majority as a mandate to pursue independence, perhaps we should not be surprised that Santos felt it was not politically feasible to make peace with the FARC without consulting voters first.

But from the perspective of the politicians who organize them, there’s a problem with referendums: They don’t control the outcome. Sometimes ruling parties can lose unexpectedly, which happened in Colombia, where most expected the peace deal to sail to an easy victory. Or, in the case of Hungary’s Orban, who also held a referendum that failed to draw sufficient turnout to produce a binding result, they can be won — but not in the way a government might have hoped.