The Deliberative Case for Direct Democracy: A Systemic Approach

Modern political theory has turned a cold shoulder towards the legitimating potential of instruments of direct democracy. Voting in general is viewed as a typically non-deliberative device, necessary only because of practical constraints that place limits on the extent to which decision-making can be purely deliberative. With no mention of bottom-up forms of direct democracy in the literature, top-down referendums are viewed as necessary only when constitutional essentials are at stake. At the same time, to use James Bohman’s language, deliberative democrats are concerned with turning citizens’ communicative freedom (as so-deliberators) into communicative power (where their deliberations impact legislation). This has led to a focus on ways of institutionalising deliberative mini-publics within political systems. This paper argues that mini-publics alone will not do much to translate citizens’ communicative freedom into communicative power. Instead, we should focus more on (bottom-up) instruments of direct democracy, for this end. What we need to look at is not the act of voting itself, but the “deliberative effects” that institutionalising forms of direct democracy will have on the wider system. Four categories of likely deliberative effects are distinguished and focused upon at length: i) threat potential ii) pre-activation iii) activation iv) post-activation. Exploring these points leads me to explain why, among other things, direct democracy will lead a government to be more inclusive in their deliberations with non-governmental actors and why civil society will be stronger and better able to deliberate under a system of this kind. Part of this paper’s merit is to provide a theoretical framework for how to assess the quality of direct democracy across political systems from a deliberative systems perspective. To demonstrate this merit, the paper concludes with an assessment of how various political systems have attempted to employ instruments of direct democracy (including Belgium, Ireland, Switzerland and the UK).