The Brexit vote has thrown different conceptions of democracy into sharp relief. Some are horrified at the conduct of the referendum campaign; others see the result as the revealed will of the people. Luke Temple uses tweets from the March for Europe event on the 3rd September to show how these views clash. He concludes that the pro-EU movement needs a clear aim if it’s to make any headway. Without defining their political activism, they risk deepening divisions in the UK.
Marching against democracy
The tweet on the right sums up the sentiment that the March for Europe was an anti-democratic event. The owner of the account re-tweeted a statement from the Liberal Democrats, which said that a ‘United Britain’ should be a part of the European Union (and a picture of people waving ‘In’ signs). At face value, this suggests overturning Brexit. ‘Today we march against democracy’ concluded the tweeter. In a similar vein, another tweet said:“What do we want?”“Democracy” “When do we want it?” “When the result goes our way” #marchforEurope”.
Other users shared a screenshot of the referendum leaflet sent out by government to highlight what they considered a key phrase:“The government will implement what you decide.” A large proportion of the twitter ‘conversation’ appeared to echo similar feelings. For them, the electoral procedures of democracy are paramount.
This aligns with minimalist theories of democracy, such as that outlined by Schumpeter in his 1942 workCapitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Schumpeter’s bare-bones, procedural definition sees democracy as primarily a system “for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s votes”. Beyond this input from voters, Schumpeter had little time for notions of ‘the will of the people’ or the ‘common good’.
So for those with a minimalist view, a mass demonstration is, if not frowned upon, then something of a waste of energy. Yet such protests do have the potential to become problematic if seen as attempting to overturn a vote (more on which in a moment).
Criticisms of Schumpeter’s electoral-centric perspective generally present something along the lines that it is “as spare a notion of democracy as one could posit without draining the term of meaning”. Carole Pateman criticised Schumpeterian democracy because “it is the participation of the minority elite that is crucial and the non-participation of the apathetic, ordinary man lacking in the feeling of political efficacy, that is regarded as the main bulwark against instability.” Pateman’s analysis took to task Schumpeter’s view that the masses should be seen (during an election), but not heard the rest of the time.
And so broader understandings of democracy go far beyond voting. Indeed, it is considered a human right that people can voice their opinion through protest and freedom of association. Therefore, for those taking to the streets last Saturday, their marching was for democracy.
Marching for democracy
To the left is a well-liked and re-tweeted photo showing a marcher calling for parliamentary democracy. Here, democratic procedure is important, but it is thedeliberative procedures of parliament that are crucial, and seemingly lacking. Perhaps most fascinating is the statement underneath however – ‘not mob rule’. It doesn’t take much to read into this a criticism of a democratic procedure (a referendum) that relied simply on (the tyranny of) a majority vote.
But interestingly, contradictory statements on the legitimacy of voting and ‘majorities’ were also present at the London demonstration. For instance, one slogan on a flag (retweeted a number of times) was that 63 per cent of people did not vote to leave Europe – a percentage produced by adding non-voters to Remainers. One tweet said: “Not to mention this unelected PM is of a party that doesn’t have a majority of the popular vote #marchforeurope”. Leaving aside the fact that a Prime Minister is not voted for, and that a single party hasn‘t won a majority vote since 1931, here the legitimacy of electoral numbers is again key. Isn’t this a call for the ‘mob rule’ just dismissed on a fellow marcher’s placard?
A tweet arguing directly against anti-democratic criticism focused very much on voice and participation:So #marchforEurope is a march against democracy, eh?…That same democracy that allows people to freely voice their views, eg in a march? Here then, democratic participation is clearly understood as far exceeding the Schumpeterian view.
A final prominent argument raised by tweeters supporting the march concerned the referendum itself not being democratic because voters were misled and lied to: democracy is undermined if those voting are ill-informed. A selection of placards suggested this, including messages such as: “No goodbyes based on lies”, “Referenda – loved by liars & the gullible”, “Hey Hey Boris J. How many lies have you told today?” and rather explicitly “A referendum won by lies and ignorance is not democracy”. Therefore, something needed to be done. But what?
How ill-defined participation becomes divisive
Clearly, differing conceptualisations of democracy clashed over the #marchforeurope. But as this final tweet legitimately asks: if the result of what many see as a democratic procedure was not to be overturned, what, exactly, was the march for? Why was the protest named for ‘Europe’, yet not the EU? Beyond a pro-European vision, did it have political demands? Contradictory slogans and placards suggested no clear message.
In his speech on the day, Owen Jones was very clear – he argued there was no overturning the result, but there would be a push to hold politicians to account and to drive out xenophobia and racism. Yet for the vast majority of people, who experience politics only at a glance, this short speech is subsumed and easily lost within a much broader, ill-defined, and potentially antagonistic political action that can be construed not as targeting the elite and the ‘powers that be’, but instead an enormous swathe of the voting public.
In this country a recent political narrative against inequality, coined by the Occupy movement, tried to unite the 99 per cent against an elite 1 per cent. Now we’re seeing the 48 per cent against the rest. This isn’t sustainable. The terms of the Brexit referendum were harmfully ill-defined. But politicised responses need to learn from this, not continue the trend. Without strongly defined demands and political messages, a demonstration of this kind too easily allows itself to become defined by others projecting onto it. And when the political act can be understood as wishing to overturn their vote, the 52 per cent are unlikely to see anything positive; if they claim to see anti-democratic posturing, there is little to assure them otherwise.
Now, these tweets aren’t representative and organisers can’t vet every placard and tweet, but they must be expected to try and build a coherent narrative around such a mass political act. Image control is important, otherwise an act of democratic political participation might just do more harm than good.
Please read our comments policy before commenting.
Note: This article originally appeared at Democratic Audit. It gives the views of the authors, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: Garry Knight (CC-BY-SA-2.0)
Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/2cRf8iS
_________________________________
Luke Temple is about to complete a PhD on citizen support for democratic governance at the University of Sheffield and is a Research Associate at the Department of Politics there.
My personal opinion is that the best objective of those who wish to revisit this vote is to argue for a Royal Commission to analyse the referendum and suggest a way forward. In fact Leave was two alternatives, a hard Brexit and a Norway style arrangement or something similar. Remain would have been the preferred alternative in a battle of three. Indeed there is clear evidence that a majority of the electorate wanted Remain (by a very small margin) and a significant majority of the resident population wanted it – so Remain could be considered the democratic choice. But it not only has to be the choice, but the accepted choice, and after the referendum that is difficult. You need some accepted political avenue to chart a course through this, and at present we are in chaos – with no-one on the Leave side knowing really what way they should progress this, since neither of the two main Leave alternatives has democratic legitimacy either, since the voters weren’t asked the question. Only a Royal Commission could legitimately analyse this and make a recommendation.
There is of course nothing undemocratic in a campaign seeking to reverse the referendum result, but it is certainly helpful to have this analysis of what such a campaign in practice entails. There are several distinct strands that should be considered separately.
1. Under the legislation setting it up, this was an advisory and not a mandatory referendum. (Unlike the previous one on adopting AV for our electoral system.) Whatever the political pressures to the contrary may be, the Government would be fully entitled to ignore the result on a variety of perfectly proper grounds, not least (i) the undoubted confusion among many of the voters caused by lies and misinformation by the Leavers (it being their case that won on the day) and by some newspapers, and (ii) the winning margin being too small to justify the major constitutional upheaval of a Brexit and its unintended consequences not least for e.g. Gibraltar and relations with the Republic of Ireland. On point (ii) it is worth noting that the 1979 referendum on Scottish devolution required 40% of the total electorate to vote “Yes”. Although the result was almost identical to that of the EU one – 51.6% Yes and 48.4% No – only 32.9% of the total electorate voted “Yes”, and so the proposed devolution was abandoned (for 18 years). The Leave vote in 2016 was only 37.4% of the total electorate, so would not have got over a 40% hurdle – one which should in my view have been required if the outcome was going to be treated as mandatory.
2. Given that the question voted on left completely open what future relationships the UK should have, following a Brexit, with the EU and other countries, the result gives no guidance on whether priority should be given to restricting immigration from the EU (and also, inevitably, all movement of Britons into the EU), or to maintaining unfettered access for both goods and services into the single market. It is as clear as anything can be that we cannot have both. This raises the question: Was this a “first past the post” election leading to a “winner takes all” policy, however small the margin of victory, determined solely by hard-line Brexiteers (as they apparently assume), or should the Government seek a solution, such as membership of the EEA, that would be at least reasonably acceptable to the country as a whole, including the very large minority that wanted to remain? (EEA membership could have real advantages in freeing us from the EU’s unsatisfactory agricultural and fisheries policies.) Any responsible Government, putting the country’s interests before those of its party, if need be, must surely try to find a consensus among as large a proportion of the electorate as possible.
3. Most of those seeking to have the referendum result reviewed are not, it seems, looking for a simple re-run of the referendum, which would arguably be a denial of the democratic process. What is sought is that, once the Government has determined what its strategic objectives are in the upcoming negotiations, the country should vote on (i) whether those are the right objectives, (ii) if they are not, whether it prefers another set of objectives, or (iii) whether none of the proffered sets of objectives are preferable to staying as a full member of the EU. It would be perfectly straightforward to invite voters to put the various options in whatever order they prefer, using a form of transferable vote to determine which is most preferred. Certainly any vote should be preceded by a much more informative and trustworthy campaign on the pros and cons of each option than we got first time round.
4. One strand of the Leave campaign was to “bring back control” to the UK from the allegedly undemocratic, unelected authorities in Brussels. Leavers who were moved by this aspect surely wanted the relevant powers to be exercised in Parliament and subject to all the checks and balances that that should entail, and not by just a different autocracy in London that would be even less accountable until it is far too late to make any changes. It is therefore highly disconcerting that the Government – or are these just Ministers’ personal opinions? – is proposing to rely solely on the royal prerogative to trigger the Article 50 procedure, and not to let Parliament decide on the broad strategic objectives to be sought in negotiations with the EU before doing so. If Parliament will not insist on this for itself, one must hope the forthcoming court proceedings this autumn will make it essential.
Brexit means Brexit makes as much sense as Breakfast means Breakfast…..but on that basis, the lives of millions of UK citizens are to be permanently disrupted….and are being so already (pensioners in the EU mainland are experiencing a drop in their incomes already…for an example).
It is so obtuse that anyone who thinks the result is a mandate for such disruption ( and giving the Tory party the confidence to subvert the constitutional rule that an Act of Parliament can only be revoked by an Act of Parliament ) is not really a democrat.
Arguably, Cameron has managed to split the nation in a way that hasn’t happened since the Civil War. Ok…we are not fighting in the streets…..but don’t think the bitterness isn’t there. An analogy I would suggest is a pressure cooker with a faulty safety valve…..sitting n a slow burner.
I would like to invite brits that feel more kinship this the European way of life rather than the one represented by Boris Johnson, to move to the European Union.
A country run by the old will not deliver a viable work life balance.
“Brexit means Brexit makes as much sense as Breakfast means Breakfast…”
I’ll have a continental.