Direct Democracy and How Does it Work

Jun 30, 20205 min read

Updated: Jul 2, 2020

By Bailey Lane

Democracy is a concept based on a rule of the majority that aims to include all citizens. Since the foundation of the State, democracy has played an important role in our society - it gives the people a sense of responsibility in decision making and that their voices are heard. However, is this the purest form of democracy? The simple answer: no. Pure democracy or direct democracy is rare. Switzerland is an example of where direct democracy is in place.

What is Direct Democracy?

In Ireland we have a system of indirect or representative democracy, i.e. we elect our representatives or TD's who make the decisions for us. With direct democracy, the citizens have direct participation in the decision-making process. In this style of democracy, the citizens usually gather to vote in referenda or by an assembly of citizens to solve issues in the country, rather than having candidates and elections. This removes the need for political parties and allows each political decision to be made by the citizens.

The History of Direct Democracy

Direct democracy was most influential in Ancient Greece, where cities such as Athens had an assembly democracy where all males would gather to vote on important decisions of the city. This system was so widely used that even court cases were decided by an assembly vote. Since then the most prominent place direct democracy is found is in Switzerland. It was also common in the early formation of US states, as well as Germany post World War 1.

Essentially, there were three main reasons for the development of direct democracy:

In regions where there was conflict with the social class of ordinary people to stop a small number of people (also called an oligarchy) from dominating political control. e.g. Switzerland.
The development of a new state or a move towards an independent country, as seen after the second World War, could also lead to the adoption of this system.
Direct democracy may also be adopted when a state is moving to a democracy from the authoritarian rule of one person.

Most modern democracy has however, developed from feudal systems and people gaining more and more representative democracy. Direct democracy therefore has developed with two basic features:

1. Focusing on specific decisions rather than voting for parties and long-term programmes.

2. The citizens act as the main decision-makers and do not delegate this power.

The Pros and Cons of Direct Democracy

Principles of Direct Democracy

The Center for Global Development set out the 8 principles required for direct democracy to function.

A call for a vote for an initiative or a referendum should come from the people and not by the government. This can be done by means of collecting a predetermined amount of signatures. This essentially means in terms of hierarchy, it should be bottom up not, top down.
A popular decision should be reversible or be capable of being updated by the same legitimate means.
Direct Democracy must first begin at local level rather than national government level.
The fundamentals of how the process works should not be open to amendment prior to a popular vote to ensure stability of the system.
To ensure there is no bias in the voting and that there is unity of subject matter within initiatives, essentially a vote should only be about one thing and not multiple issues at the same time.

Note: The final guiding principles deal with the prevention of the majority forcing their opinions onto the minority (preventing tyranny of one group).

If an initiative conflicts with a basic right of certain people it must be explicitly stated prior to the vote.
The validity of a proposed initiative should be decided by a legal body and not a political body.
The validity of the initiative must be declared prior to a popular vote.

The Center for Global Development go into these 8 principles in greater detail and can be found here https://www.cgdev.org/blog/8-principles-direct-democracy

How does Direct Democracy Work in Switzerland?

In Switzerland they mainly use three instruments of direct democracy which are all types of referenda.

A mandatory referendum results in a vote that must be held on amendment to the country’s constitution. For this to succeed there must be a double majority, meaning that it must pass both a majority of the people and cantons to amend the constitution.
Citizens can launch a popular initiative to demand a change to the constitution. Any citizen who is eligible can sign for a popular initiative and the committee must collect 100,000 signatures within 18 months for one to be held.
The final way is by optional referendum where calls for a referendum on new laws or against certain international treaties are made. For this to be held either 8 cantons must request it or they must collect 50,000 signatures in 100 days.

While 65% of Swiss citizens surveyed were satisfied with their government, there continues to be a very low turnout in votes. This begs the question, why if you give people more of a voice, is there a lower turnout? This anomaly is a difficult question to answer and is one of the major flaws of direct democracy.

Would it work in the EU and for Ireland?

In short, if Switzerland were to join the EU it would mean that policy in some areas could no longer be decided by the Swiss alone, but in all other areas, Switzerland would retain full sovereignty and the Swiss would be free to vote as directly as they please. As far as this working in Ireland, it would be complicated. The idea of political parties and representative democracy has been long installed in Irish history. Ireland already tends to vote on issues at a higher rate than other countries, so it may prove difficult to convince people they need to vote more and may lead to what we have already seen with direct democracy, a situation where voter participation and engagement drops.

Direct Democracy Ireland are a group that push for the system to be implemented in Ireland. They state that “Reintroducing direct democracy can solve the problems of party politics making it obsolete and irrelevant. By giving the people ultimate control, people can overrule the party whip, preventing any party becoming dominant, while preventing actions or laws passed contrary to the interests of the people. The era of ‘left vs. right’ in Irish politics will end, to be superseded by a better system representing interests of the Irish people.”

It is difficult to say whether or not the Irish system would really benefit from a change to direct democracy but with this group growing, the idea may become more and more appealing to people.

Conclusion

While Direct Democracy can be a very useful and inclusive system that gives a greater voice to the people, it is not without its flaws. For an unexplained reason, participation rate seems to fall and the system can be difficult to implement. Whether Ireland will ever move more towards a system like this is yet to be seen.