Posted by Jay Livingston
In yesterday’s post on the Brexit vote, I wondered aloud about the wisdom of using a referendum to decide on specific policies. A commenter characterized my views as “the quintessential liberal view – elitist, snobbish, dismissive of democracy.”
I had thought that my reservations about direct democracy were more on the conservative side, something along the lines of Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797), much beloved among American conservatives. (“In the twentieth century, he became widely regarded as the philosophical founder of modern conservatism.” Wikipedia) Burke was elitist and snobbish, and he favored decisions by elected representatives, not the masses, even when a representative’s decision contradicted the views of those who elected him. As Burke says to a hypothetical constituent of such a representative, “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”
As for “elitist, snobbish, dismissive of democracy,” the phrase also describes another icon of American conservatism, William F. Buckley, Jr.
Hamilton and Madison also favored a republic, with laws made by representatives, rather than what Madison calls “pure democracy.” Federalist #10 emphasizes this idea, though more to thwart the tyranny of the majority than to provide a buffer against bad judgment. Madison has a point. Suppose that a majority of the members of a community, a university for example, want to prevent conservatives from giving talks on campus.
Pure democracy would give us stronger gun control (including an outright ban on assault weapons), much more government spending on infrastructure, higher taxes on the wealthy (especially on capital gains), Senate hearings and a vote on Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.
But would we really want public opinion to determine these matters? Would we want a referendum on whether we return to the gold standard? Nearly all economists say it’s a bad idea. But it sounds good. After all the gold standard is, well, the gold standard of economic policies. And if something is the gold standard, that means it’s the best in its category. It’s easy to imagine a majority of the people being convinced of its virtues.
Maybe the 2008 bank bailout is a better analogy to Brexit. The bailout was a controversial matter. Simply put, the government would be giving a ton of money to the people who tanked the economy. Still, most economists as well as the Wall Street elites, thought it was necessary. The quintessentially democratic, non-elitist way to decide the matter would have been a referendum.
In March of that year, a poll showed that 60% of Americans opposed a bailout.
3 comments:
I guess "the commenter" referred to here is me, so I'll offer a brief reply.
1) The flaws of a "pure democracy" are well established, and mass voting on every issue is obviously no way to run a big, sprawling society. Representative government with checks and balances is the proven way to go...
2) Nevertheless, putting certain basic issues to the vote of citizens is often advisable, and in Britain the idea of national sovereignty was deemed worthy of everyone's view. "Do we want to be run by nameless bureaucrats in Brussels or make our decisions as a sovereign nation?" -- that's a pretty basic issue that deserved and got a popular vote.
3) Just FYI Burke was not my kind of conservative. Much too shaped by pragmatism of the moment. Buckley sounded like a snob to some because a Yale-educated intellectual partial to arcane vocabulary -- but like other good conservatives he was a democrat. His National Review magazine to this day, by the way, applauds the popular Brexit decision as a legitimate exercise of popular will much dreaded by the left... check it out:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/437217/brexit-referendum-left-opposes-self-government?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Trending%20Email%20Reoccurring-%20Monday%20to%20Thursday%202016-06-28&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives
4) Finally, it makes no sense for you to invoke the opinion of elites to dispel the validity of elite opinion!
"Maybe the 2008 bank bailout is a better analogy to Brexit. The bailout was a controversial matter. Simply put, the government would be giving a ton of money to the people who tanked the economy. Still, most economists as well as the Wall Street elites thought it was necessary." -- In this formulation "most economists" are the very experts shunned by the people in popular voting. Do you think the bank bailout was the best solution? We'll never know, will we? ... Who knows, if the banks had collapsed and a new financial order put in their place, perhaps the economy would have been more open to opportunity for all and the notorious gap between rich and poor would have narrowed, not widened. Think outside the box, dude.
just a correction -- to confirm (not "to dispel")
I didn’t really follow the campaign all that closely, but it seems that two sides were framing the issue differently. For the Remains, it was a matter of rational economic policy – a matter of national economic interest and to some extent personal economic interest. For the Leaves, it was, as you say, a matter of national sovereignty – much more emotional and thus impervious to technical arguments based on numbers.
There’s also the question whether it’s a good idea to change national identity by a simple majority vote. In the US, we don’t allow changes to the Constitution to be made by a simple majority. Maybe we should. Anyway, if you look at the age breakdown in the Brexit vote, in a few years, the other side will be in the majority.
I hadn’t realized that Leave was so popular among US conservatives. Did National Review come out for Leave? Did the WSJ? Weekly Standard? I also wonder whether those who argue for letting the people decide on Brexit are also those who are trying to keep Trump from getting the nomination.
As for the rosy scenario about letting the banks fail, you’re right – we’ll never know. Maybe if the bailout had been put to a majority vote, the people, in their wisdom, would have prevailed over economists across the political spectrum (Bush was still in office, and the economic advice came from conservatives), and maybe we’d all be better off having let the banks fail. Maybe. And maybe if the Cavs had played not Golden State but Montclair State, LeBron et al. would have lost in five games. I'm just thinking outside the box here. We’ll never know, will we?
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