Prof. Cirila Toplak, PhD
Political Science Department
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
“Better” Rather Than “More” Democracy:
citizens’ perception of direct vs representative democracy
The aim of the workshop “Perceptions of representation: a cross analysis of citizens’ and MPs’ views” is “to analyse the attitudes towards parliamentary representation in contemporary democracies and to explore the impact of the respective attitudes on the citizens’ broader relationship towards the political system.” In this context, I wish to propose a discussion paper based on a cross-national study by Bowler, Donovan and Karp (Enraged or Engaged? Preferences for Direct Citizen Participation in Affluent Democracies, by Shaun Bowler, Todd Donovan, Jeffrey A. Karp in Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 3 (Sep., 2007), pp. 351-362) that, while exploring citizens’ attitude towards direct democracy in affluent democracies, presents some noteworthy conclusions on citizens’ perception of representative democracy.
In a study that included 11 EU Member States (founding members as well as post-Communist members), USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Switzerland, the authors demonstrated that substantial enthusiasm for direct democracy in studied polities “may reflect what people find lacking in representative democracy as much as it reflects interest in a more participatory version of democracy.« Approval for direct democracy is therefore not coming primarily from people who are politically engaged and wish for “more democracy”, i.e. public participation in decision-making processes, but at least as much from people who are not necessarily interested in politics but feel a strong urge to control and correct the ways representative democracy is currently functioning. The results of the study demonstrated furthermore that “the most consistent factors predicting interest in additional opportunities to participate are political distrust and the idea that citizens must "keep watch" on their government.” Important lessons to be learned here that I propose to discuss in my paper include the assumption that demands for “more” democracy are primarily a reaction to a lack of “better” (representative) democracy and not an expression of strong will for political emancipation and innovation as well as the impact of this assumption on our take on the contemporary citizen; that renewal of political trust by an effective and transparent system of public monitoring of representatives’ political behaviour and decisions seems crucial to re-stabilisation of representative democratic systems; that for normative improvements rather than alternatives to the current political system we should look above all into public reasons for distrust of the representative democracy – corruption, hypocrisy, irresponsibility and prevalence of special over public interests.
