Lesson From 2010: more direct democracy, not more representative democracy

Additionally, what binds all these supporters, both the left and right, is the belief that it makes people think, rather than the politicians to do the thinking for them.

Indeed, I believe Australians are disillusioned, not with the substance (they know what education and healthcare system they want), but rather the form and way policy is decided.

Equally, the claim that “people do not know what is best for them” does not explain why generalists like Belinda Neal, Jason Wood and Bronwyn Bishop are better placed to commissar the rest of us about which transport policy is best, or why they should dictate laws on family life, our local communities, immigration, and healthcare among other things. On this view politicians like Joe Tripodi, andFrank Sartor are also in a better decision than their electors on planning decisions - hardly a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

Obviously government has more resources than most people: yet the government is notorious for ignoring ideas that are unpalatable to them.

Under CIR, a proposition must satisfy both private and public desires. And for that matter, numerous empirical studies have shown that CIR engages people with political ideas and serves a didactic purpose in educating people on substantive political matters.

A comprehensive study of direct democracy mechanisms and outcomes published in 2001 by Joseph Zimmerman, of the State University of New York at Albany, finds that direct democracy encourages voter participation and greater interest in the government process.

It educates citizens about public problems and possible solutions, and upholds the key democratic tenet that sovereign authority lies in the unassembled electorate, who are “not apathetic, cynical or ignorant in their approach to the initiatives”. If people do not possess the cognitive skills to thinking critical, it is thanks to the status quo and CIR would play its role in ameliorating these problems.

I will have more to say about this shortly, but to quote Thomas Jefferson most people behave responsibly when responsibility is placed upon them. “Men in whom others believe come at length to believe in themselves; men on whom others depend are in the main dependable”

A Right Wing Idea?

The allegation that CIR is a “right wing” idea would, as noted, come to a surprise to the progressive movement in the 1900s. Indeed, quite the contrary, CIR is geared toward centrist, evidence-based policy - unsurprisingly, neither the Bolsheviks nor Nazis were willing to support CIR nor ever have their policies put directly to the people. CIR was never part of any of their platforms.