Top-down or bottom-up? Reflections on L Trueblood, Referendums as Representative Democracy

Leah Trueblood has written an elegantly clear and concise work on a subject that is only to grow in importance in the coming years. Her attempt to provide a new normative basis for referendums is admirable for its ambition, depth and rigour. Referendums as Representative Democracy is an original and thought-provoking account of referendums that is, in itself, coherent. However, it is a partial account that does not do justice to the various types of referendums as they have evolved over centuries in different constitutional systems and as they are used in practice today. Taking as its starting point a particular theoretical model of referendums, Trueblood develops a counter-model that in many ways reproduces the deficiencies of the model it criticises. At the same time, she disregards a whole category of other referendums, namely, those that may be initiated by citizens. Bottom-up referendums have philosophical and historical roots that are very different from those of the top-down instruments Trueblood is interested in. Placing citizens, rather than authorities, centre stage, they are less prone to populist misuse than referendums initiated from above. It is these instruments with real democratic potential that we should shift our focus to, instead of trying to salvage a category of referendums that, given their top-down approach, cannot and should not be salvaged.