Direct democracy

Direct democracy comprises a form of democracy and theory of civics wherein all citizens can directly participate in the decision-making process. Some adherents want both legislative and executive powers to be handled by the people, but most extant systems only allow legislative decisions.

Modern direct democracy is characterised by three pillars:

• Initiative
• Referendum including binding referenda
• Recall

Direct democracy in its traditional form is Rule by the people through referenda. The people are given the right to pass laws, to veto laws and to withdraw support from a representative (if the system has representatives) at any time. Some of the issues surrounding the related notion of a direct democracy using the internet are dealt with in internet democracy, e-democracy. In the United States when specific direct democracy issues, other than the election of representatives, reach a local- or state-level ballot, they are commonly referred to by local and state governments as "ballot questions" or "ballot measures".

Various governments around the world exhibit one or more of the above pillars; for example, just over half the states in the United States have citizen-sponsored ballot initiatives and the vast majority have either initiatives and/or referenda.

Switzerland provides the strongest example of a modern direct democracy, as it exhibits the first two pillars at both the local and federal levels. In the past 120 years more than 240 initiatives have been put to referendum. The populace has been conservative, granting about 10% of the initiatives put; in addition, they have often opted for a version of the initiative rewritten by government.

The second pillar can include the ability to hold a binding referendum on whether a given law should be scrapped. This effectively grants the populace a veto on government legislation.

With the advent of the Internet, there have been suggestions for e-democracy/Internet democracy, which comprises various mechanisms for implementing direct democracy concepts.

Digital direct democracy

Digital Direct Democracy. Even before the predominance of the Internet, electronic constituent assemblies were designed and used effectively. The ECAs combined television, telephone, and computer technologies to put representatives together with their constituencies in real time. The ECAs did the difficult consensus work of agenda-setting, defining proposals, amending proposals, and then voting (Hollinshead, 1998, "Electronic Constituent Assembly"). ECAs have not been widely used. Nonetheless, they may well be the precursors of future digital forums in which representatives and constituencies can effectively work together in real time.

For more on these subjects see e-democracy and internet democracy

History

Direct democracy was first experimented with in the ancient Athenian democracy of ancient Greece (beginning circa 508 BCE (Finley, 1973)), which was governed for two centuries by a general assembly of all male citizens, by randomly selected officials, and one elected representative charged to command the army of the city (strategos).

The restrictive conditions for citizenship in Athenian democracy (only male citizens could participate) and the small size (about 300,000) of the Athens city-state minimized the logistical difficulties inherent to this form of government.

Also relevent is the history of Roman democracy beginning circa 449 BCE (Cary, 1967). The ancient Roman Republic's citizen lawmaking -- citizen formulation and passage of law, as well as citizen veto of legislature-made law -- began about 449 BCE and lasted the approximately four hundred years to the death of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE. Many historians mark the end of the Republic on the passage of a law named the Lex Titia, 27 November 43 BCE (Cary, 1967). The presence of citizen lawmaking in Rome's governance was a strong, contributing factor to the rise of Rome, and its Greco-Roman Civilization, to a greatness all out of proportion to the rest of the ancient world (Carey, 1967). Polybius (c.200-120 BCE) immortalized the Roman Republic's constitutional citizen lawmaking in Book VI of his The Histories.

Since Athenian democracy, however, this form of government has rarely been used (some governments have implemented it in part but few as fully as in ancient athens. Modern mass-suffrage democracies generally rely on representatives elected by citizens (that is, representative democracy).

Modern-era citizen lawmaking began in the towns of Switzerland in the 1200s. In 1847, the Swiss added the statute referendum to their national constitution. They soon discovered that merely having the power to veto Parliament's laws was not enough. In 1891, they added the constitutional amendment initiative The Swiss political battles since 1891 have given the world a valuable experience base with the national-level constitutonal amendment initiative (Kobach, 1993).

Many political movements seek to restore some measure of direct democracy or a more deliberative democracy (based on consensus decision-making rather than simple majority rule). Such movements advocate more frequent public votes and referenda on issues, and less of the so-called "rule by politician". Collectively, these movements are referred to as advocating grassroots democracy or consensus democracy, to differentiate it from a simple direct democracy model. Another related movement is community politics which seeks to engage representatives with communities directly.

Pros and cons

The traditional, and to many still compelling, objection to direct democracy is that it is open to demagoguery. Another objection to direct democracy is that of practicality and efficiency. Deciding all or most matters of public importance by direct referendum is slow and expensive, and can result in public apathy and voter fatigue. Modern advocates of direct democracy often suggest e-democracy (sometimes including wikis, television and internet forums) as a method of reducing these problems.

Since referendum questions have to be short and have a yes/no answer, voters may choose incoherent policies: for instance, a majority may vote in favor of reducing taxes, while a majority may also vote for increasing expenses for public education.

A common answer to the above problem in normal governance is hypothecation of taxes. The common response to this criticism of direct democracy is that the problem of inconsistent decision making is not only found in direct democracy.

In seeking to limit the popularity and societal foothold that direct democratic principles could naturally attain, government officials and adherents to strict republican principles tend to utilize memes such as mob rule and mobocracy to exacerbate a natural tendency in citizens to fear what might happen (especially with regards to their fundamental civil liberties) if all their fellow citizens were to directly make decisions on a significant degree of public policy.

Some political scholars use the term semi-direct democracy to describe direct democracy systems that are mediated in some way to protect civil liberties as well as protecting minority interests from majoritarianism. However, since direct democracy mechanisms are almost always mediated in this way, this term suggests a grey area where there is most likely none.

Interestingly, direct democracy models in practice usually focus on the adversarial process of advocating and choosing one of usually two broad or sweeping options defined for the citizens by experts. They usually de-emphasize the deeper, and some would argue more "direct" to public concerns, deliberation required for agreement that actually stands the test of time. For this reason, direct democracy is associated more with right-wing politics or left-wing politics, as evidenced by who backs many initiatives in U.S. states that provide for them. Note however that any decision resulting from an initiative must comply with prevailing constitutional law, which usually includes disallowing any abrogation of civil liberties. Thus, initiative results are often challenged in the courts.

Direct democracy in the United States

In the United States, ballot measures and their corresponding referenda are widely used at the state and sub-state level. There is much state and federal case law, from the early 1900s to the 1990s, that protects the people's right to each of these direct democracy governance components (Magleby, 1984, and Zimmerman, 1999). The first United States Supreme Court ruling in favor of the citizen lawmaking was in 'Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company v. Oregon', 223 U.S. 118 -- in 1912 (Zimmerman, December 1999).

In various states, referenda through which the people rule include:

• Election of representatives (constitutionally used in all 50 states).

• Referrals by the legislature to the people of proposed constitutional amendments (constitutionally used in 49 states, excepting only Delaware -- Initiative & Referendum Institute, 2004).

• Referrals by the legislature to the people of proposed statute laws (constitutionally used in all 50 states -- Initiative & Referendum Institute, 2004).

• Constitutional amendment initiative. This is the most powerful people-initiated, direct democracy governance component. It is a constitutionally-defined petition process of proposed constitutional law, which, if successful, results in its provisions being written directly into the state's constitution. Since constitutional law cannot be altered by state legislatures, this direct democracy component gives the people an automatic superiority, and their rightful sovereignty, over representative government (Magelby, 1984). It is state level in eighteen states: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, and South Dakota (Cronin, 1989). Among the eighteen states, there are three main types of the constitutional amendment initiative, with different degrees of involvement of the state legislature distinguishing between the types (Zimmerman, December 1999). Below state level, citizens in thousands of home rule jurisdictions -- e.g., cities, towns, boroughs, counties, school districts, water districts, etc. -- have this power over their unicameral legislative bodies, even in states that do not have it at the state level. In most jurisdictions, conflicts between proposed law referrals from the legislature and the proposed law, petition-process initiatives from civil society in the same election are resolved on the basis of which receives the highest number of votes (Kobach, 1993, and Zimmerman, December 1999).

• Statute law initiative. This is a constitutionally-defined, people-initiated, petition process of proposed statute law, which, if successful, results in law being written directly into the state's statutes. The statute initiative is state level in twenty-one states: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming (Cronin, 1989). Note that, in Utah, there is no constitutional provision for citizen lawmaking. All of Utah's I&R law is in the state statutes (Zimmerman, December 1999). In most states, there is no special protection for citizen-made statutes -- the legislature can begin to amend them immediately.

• Statute law referendum. This is a constitutionally-defined, people-initiated, petition process of the proposed veto of all or part of a legislature-made law, which, if successful, repeals the standing law. It is state level in twenty-four states: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming (Cronin, 1989).

• The recall. This is a constitutionally-defined, people-initiated, petition process, which, if successful, removes an elected official from office by "recalling" the official's election. In most state and sub-state jurisdictions having this governance component, voting the ballot that determines the recall includes voting for one of a slate of candidates to be the next office holder, if the recall is successful. It is state level in eighteen states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Ihaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2004, Recall Of State Officials).

There are now a total of 34 U.S. states with constitutionally-defined, people-initiated, direct democracy governance components (Zimmerman, December 1999, and Neitzke, 2004, State Of The Republic, appendix, "DD States Chart").

See also

• Democracy (varieties)
• Direct action
• Liquid Democracy
• Nader's Concord Principles
• Participatory democracy

External links

• Beyond Plutocracy -- free online book, "Beyond Plutocracy: True Democracy for America" by Roger Rothenberger.
• Citizens' Initiative and Referendum -- I&R Proposals and campaign resources for direct democracy such as citizens' initiative, referendum, and recall in the United Kingdom.
• Comparisons with diagrams by 'Devolve!'
• Democracy 2.0 -- A political science research project dedicated to promoting and effecting Pervasive Democracy and direct, nonpartisan resolution of community issues in U.S. states and localities.
• Direct democracy in Switzerland
• Direct Democracy Manifesto
• Direct Democracy Meeting Place
• Google Directory: Direct Democracy
• Initiative & Referendum Institute
• The National Initiative for Democracy