Poll
One thing has to be made clear from the outset. Europeans should have no illusions about the position of the majority of Swiss voters towards the European Union. Both EU-membership and the EU Constitutional Treaty (ECT) would have been rejected by the majority of the Swiss people and the Swiss cantons if they had been invited to vote on them in 2005.
This has, by the way, nothing to do with direct democracy and everything to do with the way Switzerland survived the three European wars from 1870 to 1945, and the dominant perception of this up to 1990. The Swiss Parliament would not behave differently today. And not to forget: the mirror is not responsible for the face you see every morning. So don’t blame referendums when you don’t like their outcome. Think about the reasons why many citizens did not vote the way you would have liked them to do, what you can learn from their referendum behaviour and what you could do better next time.
So it may have come as a surprise to many Europeans in June and September of 2005 that it was this strange Euro-sceptic country at the heart of Western Europe which provided Europe with its two Euro-positive referendums, while the EU-founders France and The Netherlands depressed convinced pro-Europeans with their two anti-ECT referendums. What is the explanation for this kind of European referendum paradox? Is there something to be learned by Europeans who want to link together the Europeanisation of Europe with the Democratisation of Democracy?
Indeed, there are such lessons to be learned. They belong to different levels and are of different natures. Some concern the design of the referendums (1), some the culture of their use (2), and some the way they are implemented (3). Please do not take it amiss that I do not wish to repeat in this article issues about the essential importance of the design of direct democracy for its subject-matter; the many shortcomings and procedural weaknesses in the making of the ECT, which undermined its chances of being accepted by the peoples of Europe; and the need for a very carefully designed European constitution, in order to strengthen not only European integration but also the substance of our democracies; you will find all these issues dealt with in articles on my homepage at www.andigross.ch
1. Differences in the design
1.1. People prefer votes which they themselves have caused to happen. The French and Dutch ‘referendums’ were actually plebiscites decided by the governments, not genuine referendums initiated by a minority of citizens who have collected a certain number of signatures to secure a vote by all on a decision made by the parliament. Plebiscites are always full of the hidden thoughts and agendas of those who decide to organise them, with the result that too many of those invited to vote do not vote on the issue in question, but rather on those who organised the vote - the government or the majority in power. This was clearly the case in France, a little bit less so in the Netherlands, and not at all so in Switzerland, where the government had a clear position on the issue, but played no part in the decision to bring it to a vote. This was made by a small number of citizens who used their right of participation which is enshrined in the constitution.
1.2. The great challenge of a referendum on a constitution is that a constitution relates to and affects many different areas of politics; it has the potential to produce many different opponents, but very few supporters, because the latter hardly ever get everything they hoped for, but are always obliged to make compromises. But this is not an argument against constitutional referendums. On the contrary: a constitution - which is always an agreement between citizens - needs a referendum like a footballer needs a ball. The real challenge lies in the design of the constitution-making process: it has to be transparent, inclusive, participatory, communicative and carefully handled in order to diminish the risk of accumulating opponents – a process which was so badly handled by the leaders of the Convention (on the Future of Europe) and the governments concerned.
The Swiss government and parliament respected this fact by refraining from agreeing packages of measures: they subjected each individual policy issue agreed in a special treaty with the EU to a special parliamentary decision. So the national-conservative opponents of the EU in Switzerland had to collect signatures (for a referendum initiative) against the association of Switzerland to the Schengen/Dublin Treaty separately from those against the extension of the treaty on the free movement of people to the ten new EU member countries. The government even decided to vote on these two European issues on two separate dates – one in June, the other in September - in order to avoid an accumulation of negative dynamics or the mixing up of the two different questions and issues.
The more precise a question or a policy issue is, the more possible it is to avoid people voting on questions which have no rational connection to the issue on the ballot paper.
2. Differences in culture
2.1. The more used people are to voting, and the more issues there are for them to vote on, the more people tend to stick to the issue on the ballot when it comes to making up their minds, and refrain from mixing this up with other policy issues of concern to them, or indulging in simple criticism (of general government policy or performance). In France, the EPT referendum was only the second referendum on European affairs in 13 years. In the Netherlands, it was the first referendum in modern times at all. No wonder, then, that people’s voting decisions on the day were affected by so many different questions and issues.
2.2. The Swiss method of choosing bilateral treaties as a way of finding a relation to the EU and in order to solve problems of common concern was itself the consequence of a lesson the Swiss political class received from the people in a referendum decision. In 1992, the majority of the Swiss voters (with a 78% turnout!) and of the Swiss cantons rejected Swiss membership of the European Economic Area (EEA) - an association of which Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein are part, and which undermines national autonomy and self-determination in economic spheres much more than the treaty-based relationship Switzerland has been able to establish with the EU since 2000.
This meant that the opponents of some of the treaties were not able to question the basic rationale of the system chosen by the government and the majority of the Parliament. In doing so, the latter demonstrated their responsiveness to an earlier referendum decision which increased their legitimacy and the legitimacy of the form of the relationship which they have chosen to establish with the EU.
Neither in France nor the Netherlands will one find similar confidence- and legitimacy-building measures: in France, the winners (by the small margin of 51%) of the Maastricht referendum promised to change their way of building Europe by including the citizens much more: something which has never happened since then. In the Netherlands, the government restricted its openness to direct democracy to the referendum and a single occasion, ignoring the much more creative right of initiative and the extension of the field of direct democracy to domestic issues: all of which did nothing to help, but rather undermined the trust sceptical citizens have in the government.
2.3. One of the big shortcomings of referendums are that they are ‘digital’. One only has one choice on what are often complex issues: either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. The more infrequently referendums are held, the more this structural problem is exacerbated. The more one allows referendums to be held, the more people get used to being able to adapt their vote to the circumstances. They realise that they will often get another chance, that a similar issue will soon be put to a vote again, and so they are able to slightly nuance their voting behaviour. By building up a culture of referendum voting (let us say, at least four to six per year), you also increase the chances that people will really vote on the issue before them, because they know that if they have other concerns they will have another opportunity to also vote on these other matters in the forthcoming years.
3. Differences in practice
3.1. If an important issue is on the ballot, the members of the Swiss government, all 246 federal parliamentarians and many party members at all levels are prepared to spend every evening over a period of three or four months – sometimes even half a year – with voters in smaller or bigger meetings and to discuss the issue with them directly or through the media. This creates an enormous communicative momentum; ordinary citizens begin to think about and discuss the issues in both private and semi-public spheres, and a long and very diverse and multi-level opinion-forming process is established in society. This did happen in France, but not in the Netherlands. In France, the public debate started the previous autumn, more than six months before the vote; in the Netherlands it started only six weeks before, many of the most prominent politicians did not get involved, and the Dutch public debate was neither intense, nor deep nor wide if you compare it with the ones in France or Switzerland. But the quality of the outcome is essentially marked by the quality of the process which leads to the outcome – a basic rule which all proponents of direct democracy should keep firmly in mind.