Educative aspects.

Direct Democracy as an Educative Process.

It has long been understood that direct democracy can only be truly effective if there is a certain level of critical awareness among the citizen-body. Indeed, there has always been an important relationship between education and direct democracy. A democratic community needs to have knowledgeable voters in order to make good policy decisions. To produce such critical-thinking citizens you need to have an effective system of education in place. However, education is often thought of simply as the formal schooling children receive before becoming fully fledged adult members of society. It is important to remember that direct democracy is also an educative process. In other words, making citizens decide among a range of policy or legislative choices also educates them about a number of different political areas.

This educative aspect of direct democracy is often ignored by those debating the merits or faults of the system. Most discussions of direct democracy analyze the instrumental impact it has on political or legislative outcomes. There is little discussion of the beneficial side-effects of citizen lawmaking. In 'Educated by Initiative,' authors Daniel A. Smith and Caroline J. Tolbert focus instead on the 'educative by-products of the initiative process'. The authors conclude that these pedagogical aspects of direct democracy may have a more enduring impact on a political community than any policy outcomes that are produced by the system. Political policies come and go, but a more informed and engaged citizen-body will make for a more healthy and vibrant political community over the long run.

Does the use of direct democracy increase voter turnout and participation?

One of the greatest political problems we face today is voter apathy. However, this does not mean that people are becoming less interested in politics. Even though political participation is declining in general elections, 75% of people questioned said they wanted to have 'more of a say in the way the country is run.' People seem to be disengaged only as far as the present political system is concerned. The same phenomena of political disengagement has also been extensively documented in the US.

Direct democracy has often been seen as a way to combat voter apathy and increase voter turnout. Smith and Tolbert performed an extensive analysis of data for the US from 1970-2002, in order to see if states with direct democracy did indeed have higher voter turnout than non initiative states and they found that states making frequent use of citizen initiatives do indeed have higher voter turnout. There was also a strong correlation between the number of initiatives and the level of voter turnout: more initiatives on a ballot would directly increase the number of voters participating. This provides strong evidence that introducing direct democracy in the UK would increase the level of voter participation.

To summarize, the overwhelming conclusion from empirical evidence is that direct democracy fosters increased voter participation at all levels of political life. The US states with the highest levels of direct democracy have consistently shown higher levels of voter turnout for all types of political elections when compared to other states.

Does the use of direct democracy increase civic engagement?

Coinciding with a decline in voter participation in western representative governments, there has also been a demonstrable decline in civic engagement. In order for democracy to work citizens need to be critically engaged and relatively well informed of policy issues. So, does the use of direct democracy increase civic engagement? A number of prominent political theorists believe that the answer is yes. Direct participation in policymaking is seen to play an educative role, specifically because voters gain easy access to information from referendum campaigns. In the words of constitutional scholar Bruce Ackerman, referendums help engender civic participation because "apathy will give way to concern, ignorance to information, selfishness to serious reflection on the country's future."

In order to empirically test this question, Smith and Tolbert analyzed data from 1970-2002. They divided civic engagement into three specific subdivisions: political knowledge, political interest, and political discussion. They found that overall, citizen initiative campaigns do promote political interest, knowledge and discussion. Specifically, the more citizens were able to participate directly in political choices the higher their levels of civic engagement. Therefore, direct democracy does promote more civic engagement when compared to non initiative states in the US.

Matthias Benz and Alois Stutzer conducted a similar study for the European Union and Switzerland. They also found that voters are better informed about issues when they participate more directly in politics. For example, European states that used referendums to decide on the Maastricht Treaty had substantially better informed citizens than the states that did not use direct democracy. In Switzerland, they found that voters were more informed and engaged in the cantons that had more direct participation, than compared to the cantons that were run as representative democracies.

Overall then, there is considerable evidence to support the claim that direct democracy does indeed increase civic engagement. The higher the level of citizen participation, the more knowledgeable, and interested the citizens become compared to a purely representative style of government.

Does the use of direct democracy effect the level of confidence in representative government?

Confidence in representative government is at an all time low in both the UK and the US. In the US, only 20 percent of people surveyed said they trusted government. In the UK a similar survey found the same, four out of five people did not trust the British government. This pervasive lack of trust in modern government is blamed on a number of factors. To name just a couple of grievances: government is unable to represent the average citizen's interests, representing instead the interests of corporations, special interest groups and powerful individuals. Government is also unable to solve our most pressing problems.

Advocates of direct democracy have long believed that citizen initiatives and referendums would make government more responsive to citizen needs, and hence produce a more trusting relationship between the people and representatives.

Whether direct democracy undermines or compliments representative democracy is clearly a difficult question to answer. What research does show is that citizens living in states with frequent use of direct democracy are more likely to feel that their government is more responsive to their needs. Citizens feel political representatives are more likely to take into account their interests, especially because the voters are able to bypass such representatives through the use of initiatives if they don't. Though this can be seen to constrain traditional forms of representative government, it does allow elected politicians to align their policies more with the interests of the citizen-body, and thus can produce a political climate where representatives and citizens work more closely together on the issues that concern them most.