GGAL Wave 1 -- Referendum CP

1NC

1NC Referendum CP
Text: The United States Federal Government should put to vote
a direct binding national referendum to <action of the plan>
Solves the case-Public supports curtailing surveillance-err on
the side of liberty
PRC 15 [Lee Rainie and Mary Madden for the Pew Research Center on Internet, Science, and Tech;
Americans View On Government Surveillance Programs; 03/16/2015; accessed 07/01/2015;
<http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/03/16/americans-views-on-government-surveillance-programs/>.]

Americans are divided in their concerns about government surveillance of digital

communications In this survey, 17% of Americans said they are very concerned about government surveillance of
Americans data and electronic communication; 35% say they are somewhat concerned; 33% say they are not

13% say they are not at all concerned about the surveillance . Those
more likely than others to say they are very concerned include those who say
they have heard a lot about the surveillance efforts (34% express strong concern) and
very concerned and
who are

men (21% are very concerned). When asked about more specific points of concern over their own communications
and online activities, respondents expressed somewhat lower levels of concern about electronic surveillance in
various parts of their digital lives: Americans Have More Muted Concerns about Government Monitoring of their Own
Digital Behavior39%

say they are very concerned or somewhat concerned about

government monitoring of their activity on search engines. 38% say they are very
concerned or somewhat concerned about government monitoring of their activity on their email
messages. 37% express concern about government monitoring of their activity on their cell
phone. 31% are concerned about government monitoring of their activity on social media sites, such as Facebook
or Twitter. 29% say they are concerned about government monitoring of their activity on their mobile apps. In
addition, notable numbers of respondents said that some of these questions were not applicable to them. In
general, men are more likely than women to say that they are very concerned about government surveillance of
Americans data and electronic communications (21% vs. 12%). Men are also more likely than women to be very
concerned about surveillance over their own activities on mobile apps and search engines. When asked to

survey respondents were critical of the programs,

frequently referring to privacy concerns and their personal rights. Q: Could you please
elaborate on their concerns, many

explain briefly why you have this level of concern about government surveillance of Americans personal data and
electronic communications? Every citizen should have the right to their own privacy inside there [sic] own homes
and who they talk with. I feel this gives the government too much control. The fourth [amendment] originally
enforced the idea that each mans home is his castle, secure from unreasonable search and seizure by the
government. What happened to privacy? At the same time, others suggested that the programs could
be helpful for prevention of criminal activity and terrorism, and they are not personally concerned because they
have nothing to hide: Law-abiding citizens have nothing to hide and should not be concerned. I am not doing
anything wrong so they can monitor me all they want. Small price to pay for maintaining our safe environment

References to terror or terrorism also appeared in many of the

open-ended responses, and others pointed to conflicts between personal privacy,
individual rights, and national security : If in the event I do something unacceptable to the
from terrorist activities.

government or country, they have the right to investigate me. Otherwise they are taking away my privacy as an

A majority say they

are losing confidence that the public interest is being served by the surveillance
programs Those who are aware of the government surveillance programs say they are
becoming increasingly skeptical of U.S. surveillance programs. The 87% of the respondents
American citizen. Monitoring is okay for potential suspects but not every American.

who say they have heard of the programs were asked, As you have watched the developments in news stories
about government monitoring programs over recent months, would you say that you have become more confident
or less confident that the programs are serving the public interest? Some 61% of these respondents said they were
less confident and 37% said they were more confident. Those more likely than others to say they are less confident
include those very/somewhat concerned about government surveillance (80%) and those who have heard a lot
about the surveillance programs (71%). In addition, those who say they are less confident include those who say
they are very/somewhat concerned about government monitoring of their activities on social media, search

Republicans and those leaning Republican are

more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to say they are losing
confidence (70% vs. 55%). The public is evenly split about the capacity of the judicial system to balance
engines, mobile apps, cell phones, and email.

privacy rights with intelligence agency and law enforcement needs Many Americans are split on the effectiveness of

49% disagree when

asked if they think the courts and judges do a good job balancing the publics right
to privacy with the needs of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to collect
information for investigations. Those who are more likely to say they agree the
courts are striking an appropriate balance include: those who have heard only a
little about the surveillance programs (56%), those who are not very/not at all
concerned about the programs (63%), and those whose confidence in the surveillance programs has
the judicial system in balancing privacy and national security. Some 48% agree and

grown over time (83%). However, there are no notable partisan differences on this question.

Counterplan demonstrates direct democracy is feasible- key to

solve the concentration of political power and impending crises
that cause extinction
Gare 3
Arran, Swinburne University social sciences professor, Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia, Ph.D. from
Murdoch University, "Beyond Social Democracy? Beyond Social Democracy?" Democracy and Nature, 9(3), Nov
2003, via EBSCO database
In the new order, the states role, along with a range of new institutional structures ranging from the local to the
international level, is exclusively to create the stable framework for the efficient functioning of the market. Although
this phase extends the market into the Third World, power is concentrated as never before with the elites of the
core zones. Civil society has dissolved almost completely, people have been brutalized, and
politics and democracy rendered superfluous. Only a small minority of the world population, mostly in a few affluent

the
consequence of the internationalization of the market economy and the concentration of economic power it
engenders, is an ecological crisis that threatens to develop into an eco-catastrophe,
regions in North America, Western Europe and East Asia are benefiting from these developments. And

the destruction of the countryside, the creation of monstrous mega-cities and the uprooting of local communities
and cultures (p. 116). Fotopoulos argues that with liberalized commodity and capital markets, the
internationalization of the market economy with an over-riding commitment to economic growth, it is impossible to
regulate the market to control its destructive imperatives. Any country that attempts to do so (for instance
Sweden), will lose its international competitiveness (p. 86ff). Market efficiency in an internationalized economy and

This argument provides the background for the defence

inclusive democracy. Going beyond efforts to democratize industrial production and focusing on the
community rather than merely the economy, the project of inclusive democracy encompasses the
political, economic, social and ecological realms ; that is, any area of human activity where
decisions can be taken collectively and democratically. Democracy is defined as the
social control of the market are irreconcilable.
of

institutional framework that aims at the equal distribution of political, economic and social power. . . in other words,
as the system which aims at the effective elimination of the domination of human beings over human being (p.
206f). Ecological democracy is defined as the institutional framework that aims to reintegrate humans and nature.
The original example of genuine democracy (although it was confined to a small proportion of the total population)
is taken to be ancient Athens of Pericles. The liberal democracies of the modern world, social democratic models
and Marxist socialism that reduce politics to the scientific management of production, are dismissed as various
forms of oligarchy. Fotopoulos traces the history of these social forms, claiming them to be perversions of the
democratic ideal. Fotopoulos offers an historical, social and economic analysis of ancient Greek democracy to show
what true democracy is and the conditions for its success. The basis of democracy must be the choice of people for

Political decisions should be made by citizens collectively

in community assemblies, not through representatives. Positions to which authority is
individual and collective autonomy.

delegated should be filled by lot on a rotation basis. All residents in a particular geographical area should be directly
involved in decision-taking processes and should be educated to enable them to do so. Political rights should be
accompanied by social and economic rights and, to ensure this, productive resources should be owned by the
demos (the people). In one of the most important sections of the book, Fotopoulos provides a detailed model of a
production and distribution system simulating and gaining the benefits of a market economy while avoiding the
destructive effects of real markets. This involves a combination of democratic planning and a voucher system,
securing the satisfaction of basic needs for everyone while enabling individuals to maintain their sovereignty as
consumers. Satisfaction of basic needs involving more than one community should be coordinated through a
confederal plan formulated in regional and confederal assemblies made up of delegates. Fotopoulos shows how
such a system could be made workable economically and politically. The point of offering such a model is not to

direct democracy is feasible.

we do not have to wait for the conditions for inclusive democracies to

prescribe how people should organize themselves but to demonstrate that

Fotopoulos argues

evolve. They can be created at almost any time, although it is easier at some times rather
than others. Fotopoulos argues that to escape the destructive imperatives and brutalizing effects of the present
order, The immediate objective should. . . be the creation, frombelow, of popular bases of political and economic

public realms of direct and economic democracy which,

will confederate in order to create the conditions for the establishment of a new

power, that is, the establishment of local and

at some stage,

society

(p. 284). This struggle must be undertaken simultaneously at the political, economic, social and cultural
levels. The final part of the book is devoted to the philosophical justification of inclusive democracy. Essentially,

the core of democracy is autonomythe freedom of people

to be self-instituting, that is, to be able to put into question and transform their existing
institutions and their dominant social paradigm (beliefs, ideas and values).1 Any philosophy
Fotopoulos develops Castoriadis arguments that

that denies the possibility of such autonomy is criticised. In particular, Fotopoulos attacks those who see democracy
as the outcome of something other than the free choice of people, whether this be the truths of religion, the laws of

The question then is whether people are

prepared to struggle for democracy now, given that their failure to do so not only means
accepting their subjugation and brutalization, but also the destruction of the ecological
conditions of their existence.
nature, the cunning of reason or the evolution of society.

Theory

Perm Do Both
---The permutation links to the internal net benefit --- Only
committing to implement the will of the people mobilizes voter
participation.
DuVivier 6 [KK DuVivier; Professor of Law at University of Denver; The United States as a Democratic
Ideal?: International Lessons in Referendum Democracy p 845-848; University of Denver Sturm College of Law;
2006; accessed 07/01/2015; <http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?
ID=3730870700221010040870961201250130180170880250720630030740231270920241050021140990020450
160300420410270260000200840971200931270550810550540070930931071141
2107511105805801609809208410007506907009501206608207612312301912003108007711208509406707201
3&EXT=pdf&TYPE=2>.]

Advisory
referendums are not as common in the United States, and some state constitutions
disallow ballot questions that have no legal effect. 171 Yet New Zealand172 and several
In contrast to votes that bind in legal terms, some referendums are only advisory or consultative.170

European countries, including Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom,173 have used

referendums that do not formally bind. Critics of the New Zealand advisory referendum process,
however, call it a fraud on the community because the government asks the public
for its opinion when the Government has said that it will not necessarily follow that
opinion.174 Consequently, New Zealands advisory referendum statute, although popular at first,175 [w]ithin
a decade . . . appears to have fallen into desuetude.176 This conclusion presumes, however, that the primary
objective of citizen initiated referendums is for them to create positive law. The reality, in fact, is that most

despite low passage rates and despite high costs, the main reason interest
groups in the United States continue to pursue unsuccessful initiatives is that they can be
an effective route to exert pressure on other political actors .178 Thus, these advisory
referendums allow citizens to place pressure on legislative bodies to take a certain
course of action.179 In the United States, citizens have used advisory referendums in the local government
initiatives fail,177 and

arena. For example, in 1983, local voters passed Proposition 0 that asked the City of San Francisco to notify
President Reagan that they favored the repeal of bilingual ballot provisions of the Federal Voting Rights Act.180 In
addition, during the late 1970s, advisory referendums directed attention to national environmental and nuclearfreeze issues.181 More significantly, the experience in Europe has shown that advisory referendums often
effectively bind governments. No parliament in Europe has explicitly disregarded the verdict delivered by the
people, and were this to happen on a major issue, the fallout would be severe.182 Furthermore, an advisory
referendum often proves preferable to one that binds. First, it does not conflict with an existing system of
government that requires legislative supremacy. For example, in the United Kingdom, the notion of parliamentary
sovereignty183 dictates that Parliament cannot be formally bound by an advisory referendum.184 Consequently,
an advisory referendum exerts pressure while simultaneously preserving the existing governance system.185
Second, an advisory process better reflects the reality that government actors must interpret and implement any
measure.186 An advisory referendum allows a legislature flexibility to predict the outcome of a provision in a
manner that reconciles possible conflicts187 and anticipates constitutional challenges in the courts.188

---Turn --- Leaks

(A.) The lie permutation will be leaked.
Washington Times 2012
Obama, the leaker in chief, The Washington Times, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jun/8/obama-theleaker-in-chief/

legislators are worried about the brewing crisis of administration staff

leaks. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, told CNN
on Thursday, Ive been on the Intelligence Committee for 11 years and I have never seen it worse. Mr.
Even very liberal

Obamas high dudgeon about the temerity of accusations of White House impropriety will not be enough to save his
team from scrutiny. There have been leaks about drone strikes, U.S. special operations and foreign classified

There have
been leaks to newspapers, TV and Hollywood screenwriters. Some leaks have been more
information such as Israels alleged deal with Azerbaijan to support a military strike against Iran.

damaging than others. One story that broke last month detailed a CIA informant penetrating high levels of al Qaeda
of the Arabian Peninsula, making off with their most sophisticated new bomb and providing information leading to a
successful drone strike on a leading militant. The information fed to the public portrayed the operation as a major
success, but intelligence specialists were alarmed at the amount of detail that was leaked. Embarrassingly, it soon

turned out that this was not an American-led effort at all but a long-term British-Saudi operation that was
compromised by the very leaks that trumpeted its success and erroneously attributed credit to the United States.
This does seem to be a tawdry political thing, former CIA bin Laden hunter Michael Scheur said at the time.

(B.) Err negative --- Referendum process creates informed

citizens with a strong incentive to expose lying politicians.
Feld & Kirchgassner 2000
Lars P., Uniersity of St. Gallen, SIAW-HSG, Institutsgebaude, Gebhard, Corresponding Author, Direct democracy,
political culture, and the outcome of economic policy: a report on the Swiss experience, European Journal of Political
Economy, Vol. 16, 287306
According to our analysis in the previous sections, direct legislation in Switzerland is basically characterised by two

the political discourse preceding a decision at the ballots results in better

information of citizens compared to the same citizens and possibly also legislators in
representative democracies. Thus, politicians and well informed specialists in the
legislature have less flexibility to pursue their personal interests. Second, the
referendum discourse leads to reflection regarding policy positions : Do proposed policies
benefit narrow self-interest or the public at large? Therefore, citizens should feel more responsible
for their community and be more prepared to accept decisions that lead to income or wealth losses for
themselves. Both mechanisms are expected to lead to differences in economic policy
decisions.
features. First,

---The permutation links to politics --- Non binding referendums

shift the decision-making burden back onto the government
and precludes political shielding.
Butler & Ranney 1994
David, American Enterprise Institute and Austin, prof. emeritus @ UC Berkeley, Referendums Around the World,
Theory, p. 260

referendums can contribute to a special political culture in which

politicians are inhibited, for good or ill, from acting as representatives. They can avoid making difficult
and unpopular decisions by referring divisive issues to the people; they make other
decisions, while they are secure in knowing that those decisions may be overruled
by the people. As chapters 4 and 7 make clear, in Switzerland and the high-user American states, those
ever-present possibilities shape politicians' strategies in ways that are largely
unknown in low-user political systems . In chapter 3, Vernon Bogdanor contrasts the use of the
6. Frequent recourse to

referendum in France and in Italy. In France, the president uniquely has authority to call a referendum unilaterally;
there the device has added significantly to presidential power over policy making. In Italy, Switzerland, and some
American states, the people have authority to call a referendum unilaterally; thus in those polities the device has
become a major constraint on the power and actions of elected officials. 7. Even in the low-user systems, however,

politicians regard the referendum device, in James Callaghan's words, as "a rubber life raft
into which we may all have to climb." When that happens, everyone has to turn to a new form of
most

politics, in which party cues to the public are much less effective than usual and coalitions of interested groups on
both the Yes and No sides have to learn how to work together, often across established lines of political cleavage, in
formal or informal umbrella organizations.

(B.) Links to direct democracy --- Rejecting representative

government is an ethical obligation --- Every instance of direct
democracy is key.
Robinson 2007
Nick, Yale Law School, J.D., Citizens Not Subjects: U.S. Foreign Relations Law and the Decentralization of Foreign
Policy, Akron Law Review, 40 Akron L. Rev. 647

With
more possibility for participation, we become thicker citizens. We have greater ability to
engage in our communities and in turn more control over and understanding of our
own lives as humans. For Durkheim, government had its own consciousness. Such a characterization
The argument in this article for local democratic participation is also, perhaps primarily, a humanist one.

highlighted that although government at its root might merely be a shared idea in a community of conscious

humans, it could also have its own agency. The state had its own logic that was removed, and even unknown, from
those that "thought" government into existence. He writes of a democratic state that " the

closer
communication becomes between the government consciousness and the rest of
society, and the more this consciousness expands and the more things it takes in, the more democratic
the character of the society will be." n14 For Durkheim, it is the democratic state's
reflection upon its citizens through its citizens that gave democracy a moral
superiority. n15 [*655] When we debate where and how democratic governance will
occur, we are battling over what choreography of thought will define our state and
we as citizens. Such stakes are not easily quantifiable. If our aim in structuring governance, however, is not to
reach definable utopias, but rather to balance as best we can the competing interests and tensions of being human
and being governed, then we must take into account governance's transcendent depths and not just its readily
chartable currents.

Perm-Do CP
The permutation is severance --- several reasons
Curtail implies a legal restriction-the permutation does not on
face curtail surveillance
Merriam Webster 15 http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/curtail
: to make less by or as if by cutting off or away some part <curtail the power of the
executive branch> <curtail inflation>

Should means the plan must be immediate and certain

Summers 94 (Justice Oklahoma Supreme Court, Kelsey v. Dollarsaver Food
Warehouse of Durant, 1994 OK 123, 11-8,
http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/DeliverDocument.asp?
CiteID=20287#marker3fn13)

The legal question to be resolved by the court is whether the word "should"13 in the May 18 order connotes futurity
or may be deemed a ruling in praesenti.14 The answer to this query is not to be divined from rules of grammar;15 it
must be governed by the age-old practice culture of legal professionals and its immemorial language usage. To
determine if the omission (from the critical May 18 entry) of the turgid phrase, "and the same hereby is", (1) makes
it an in futuro ruling - i.e., an expression of what the judge will or would do at a later stage - or (2) constitutes an in
in praesenti resolution of a disputed law issue, the trial judge's intent must be garnered from the four corners of the
entire record.16 13 "Should" not only is used as a "present indicative" synonymous with ought but also is the past
tense of "shall" with various shades of meaning not always easy to analyze. See 57 C.J. Shall 9, Judgments 121
(1932). O. JESPERSEN, GROWTH AND STRUCTURE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1984); St. Louis & S.F.R. Co. v.
Brown, 45 Okl. 143, 144 P. 1075, 1080-81 (1914). For a more detailed explanation, see the Partridge quotation infra

Certain contexts mandate a construction of the term "should" as more than merely
indicating preference or desirability. Brown, supra at 1080-81 (jury instructions stating that jurors
note 15.

"should" reduce the amount of damages in proportion to the amount of contributory negligence of the plaintiff was
held to imply an obligation and to be more than advisory); Carrigan v. California Horse Racing Board, 60 Wash. App.
79, 802 P.2d 813 (1990) (one of the Rules of Appellate Procedure requiring that a party "should devote a section of
the brief to the request for the fee or expenses" was interpreted to mean that a party is under an obligation to
include the requested segment); State v. Rack, 318 S.W.2d 211, 215 (Mo. 1958) (" should"

would mean the

same as "shall" or "must" when used in an instruction to the jury which tells the triers they "should
disregard false testimony"). 14 In praesenti means literally "at the present time." BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY 792

the phrase denotes that which in law is presently or

immediately effective, as opposed to something that will or would become effective
in the future [in futurol]. See Van Wyck v. Knevals, 106 U.S. 360, 365, 1 S.Ct. 336, 337, 27 L.Ed. 201 (1882).
(6th Ed. 1990). In legal parlance

Severance is illegitimate-no counterplan would compete if the

2AC could pick and choose which parts of the plan to advocate

Intrinsic Perm-Referendum on something else

Intrinsincess is illegitimate-it makes the plan conditional and a
moving target-the negative bases their strategy on the 1AC
plan, not on what he 2AC decides to advocate.
Rejecting representative government is an ethical obligation
--- Every instance of direct democracy is key.
Robinson 2007
Nick, Yale Law School, J.D., Citizens Not Subjects: U.S. Foreign Relations Law and the Decentralization of Foreign
Policy, Akron Law Review, 40 Akron L. Rev. 647

With
more possibility for participation, we become thicker citizens. We have greater ability to
engage in our communities and in turn more control over and understanding of our
own lives as humans. For Durkheim, government had its own consciousness. Such a characterization
The argument in this article for local democratic participation is also, perhaps primarily, a humanist one.

highlighted that although government at its root might merely be a shared idea in a community of conscious
humans, it could also have its own agency. The state had its own logic that was removed, and even unknown, from
those that "thought" government into existence. He writes of a democratic state that " the

closer
communication becomes between the government consciousness and the rest of
society, and the more this consciousness expands and the more things it takes in, the more democratic
the character of the society will be." n14 For Durkheim, it is the democratic state's
reflection upon its citizens through its citizens that gave democracy a moral
superiority. n15 [*655] When we debate where and how democratic governance will
occur, we are battling over what choreography of thought will define our state and
we as citizens. Such stakes are not easily quantifiable. If our aim in structuring governance, however, is not to
reach definable utopias, but rather to balance as best we can the competing interests and tensions of being human
and being governed, then we must take into account governance's transcendent depths and not just its readily
chartable currents.

Illegitimate/No legal precedent

1. Lit base checks local level referenda in the U.S. and
national referenda abroad provide theoretical clash
2. Best policy option were not using it yet because our
democracy is broken
And, not illegal theres predictive evidence on
implementation of national referenda just like theres evidence
on the implementation of the plan
Tutt 14 [Andrew Tutt, law clerk in Washington, D.C. and a Visiting Fellow at the Yale Information Society
Project.; McCutcheon Calls for a National Referendum on Campaign Finance (Literally); Columbia Law Review;
10/2014; accessed 07/06/2015; <http://columbialawreview.org/national-referendum_tutt/>.]

a binding national
referendum, where a laws legal force is conditioned on its endorsement by a
majority of voters during, for example, a national presidential election.27 Nothing in the
Constitution affirmatively precludes such an outcome , and indeed, tens of thousands
of laws are conditioned on the actions of some other party before they take effect.
But the analysis is somewhat more difficult when one speaks of the possibility of

Many regulatory delegations, for example, provide that they will not bind regulated parties until such time as the
administrator of the agency charged with administering the regulatory program takes certain ministerial actssuch

a national referendum is entitled

to analysis under the same logic. If such a law were passed, Congress and the President, in their
collective judgment, will have elected to delegate to the People themselves the
decision of whether the law should or should not bind them .29 There are limits to this
principle, however, though where they are to be found is a complex question. For instance, both the
legislative veto (by which Congress allowed itself to veto a law at a later date) and the line-item veto
(by which the President was authorized to pick and choose which parts of each law he would veto) have been
held unconstitutional because they violate the Constitutions deep structural principles.30 In light of these
cases, it can safely be said that any law that meddles with how the Constitution
fundamentally works is vulnerable to collateral constitutional attack on structural and
as promulgating a regulation implementing the statute.28 In principle,

separation-of-powers grounds.

Solvency

Say Yes
Referendums draw the most politically engaged voters who are
educated on the issue at hand
Donovan and Karp 6 [Todd Donovan, professor of political science at Western Washington
University; Jeffrey A. Karp, professor of politics at the University of Exeter; Popular Support for Direct Democracy p
683-684; Party Politics Vol 12 No 5; SAGE Publications; 2006; accessed 07/01/2015;
<http://www.jkarp.com/pdf/pp_2006.pdf>.]

the effects of political reforms designed to lower barriers to participation

notes that such reforms often
have the effect of mobilizing higher proportions of interested voters than less interested
ones. He finds that when rules are changed to make it easier to vote, people with higher
levels of political interest are most likely to take advantage of the rule change. The
less interested, in contrast, lack sufficient levels of interest to be engaged, even when
barriers to participation are reduced. From this perspective, it seems plausible that when
democratic institutions require additional effort from citizens, those institutions will
elicit less support from people with low levels of interest in politics than from those
with more interest. For many people, the desire to participate in initiative and
referendum decisions probably corresponds with some level of political interest.
In a survey of

(e.g. postal voting, absentee voting, election-day registration), Berinsky (2005)

Perhaps we should not be too surprised, then, to find some evidence here consistent with the cognitive mobilization

Referendums and initiatives do require that citizens make more political

decisions than they would have to do otherwise, and possibly require that they must also
obtain additional cues and information to make such decisions . Although there is ample
evidence suggesting that readily available cues assist people in making such decisions
(Bowler and Donovan, 1998; Lupia, 1994), the act of participating in a referendum nevertheless
presents the citizens with additional cognitive costs of participation . Unlike previous
studies of attitudes about direct democracy, some of our findings are consistent with the idea that the
politically interested and politically engaged , at least in some nations, are less sensitive to
such costs, and, thus, more supportive of direct democracy . These findings are also
thesis.

consistent with other research suggesting that referendums may encourage the politically interested and educated
to turn out at elections (Donovan et al., 2005). Results from this study also have implications for normative

Our results provide little support for the idea that direct
democracy may be used as a tool to mobilize those most peripheral to politics , nor do
assessments of direct democracy.

they demonstrate that direct democracy finds particular support on the far right of the ideological spectrum. This
might be possible, but we find little support for those ideas here. This point is important. Although

we do find

some mixed support for the political disaffection thesis , the patterns we observe in our
multivariate analysis suggest different conclusions than those reached by Dalton et al. (2001). Although we do find
that frequent use of referendums had more opposition among those with a university education (in some nations),
many of our multivariate findings fail to conform with the results they report from Germany and elsewhere in
Europe.2

Approval rates for NSA surveillance are consistently dropping

Americans value privacy more highly and dont consider
surveillance key to combating terrorism
Page 14 [Susan Page; Washington Bureau chief of USA Today reporting on a survey conducted by USA Today
and the Pew Research Center; Poll: Most Americans now oppose the NSA program; USA Today; 01/20/2014;
Accessed 07/01/2015; < http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/01/20/poll-nsa-surveillance/4638551/>.]

Most Americans now disapprove of the NSA's sweeping collection of phone

metadata, a new USA TODAY/Pew Research Center Poll finds, and they're inclined to think there aren't
adequate limits in place to what the government can collect. President Obama's
announcement Friday of changes in the surveillance programs has done little to allay
those concerns: By 73%-21%, those who paid attention to the speech say his proposals
WASHINGTON --

won't make much difference in protecting people's privacy. The poll of 1,504 adults, taken Wednesday
through Sunday, shows a public that is more receptive than before to the arguments made by
former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. His leak of intelligence documents since last spring has fueled a global
debate over the National Security Agency's surveillance of Americans and spying on foreign leaders. Edward
Snowden in a file photo provided by The Guardian Newspaper in London. (Photo: Glenn Greenwald and Laura

Those surveyed now split, 45%-43%, on whether Snowden's disclosures have

helped or harmed the public interest. The snapshot of public opinion comes as the White House, the
Poitras, AP)

intelligence agencies and Congress weigh significant changes in the way the programs are run. In his address,

Obama insisted no illegalities had been exposed but proposed steps to reassure
Americans that proper safeguards were in place. By nearly 3-1, 70%-26%, Americans say they
shouldn't have to give up privacy and freedom in order to be safe from terrorism .

That may reflect the increasing distance from the Sept. 11 attacks more than a decade ago that prompted some

American public decisively favors national

security when it feels the threat acutely and imminently but tilts in the other direction when
more of the more aggressive surveillance procedures. the

the threats seem more remote," says Peter Feaver, a National Security Council aide for presidents George W. Bush

Among those who paid attention to Obama's speech, only 13% say his
proposals to rein in the surveillance programs would make it more difficult for the
government to fight terrorism. Only half of those surveyed said they had paid even a little attention to
and Bill Clinton.

the speech, however. The president called for a third party rather than the government to hold the massive stores
of phone metadata, and he said intelligence analysts would need a court order to search it except in emergencies.
He proposed establishing a panel of independent lawyers who could argue in some cases before the super-secret
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. And he said the United States would stop eavesdropping on friendly

Attitudes toward the surveillance program have turned more negative

since last June and July, when the Snowden revelations were new. In polls in June and July 2013,
more Americans approved of the program than disapproved. Now, by 53%-40%, a majority disapproves.
foreign leaders.

Even so, by 56%-32%, those surveyed say the government should pursue a criminal case against Snowden.
"Snowden's decision to run away first to China and then to Russia -- in other words, to two of the powerful countries
most associated in the public mind with being potential adversaries and systematic violators of human rights -- has
probably contributed to the public's ambivalence toward him," says Feaver, now a political science professor at
Duke University. "Even those members of the public who think his actions may have served some public interest
somehow recognize that his actions have almost certainly helped Russia and China in their competition with the
United States." The margin of error for the full sample was +/-3 percentage points.

Court Rollback
Precedents are already set rollback only occurs when the
results of the ballot are unconstitutional or not deemed
procedurally valid, and standards check
UNCHR 1 [U.N. Commission for Human Rights, Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights;
Guidelines for Constitutional Referendums at National Level; Adopted by the Venice Commission at its 47 th
Plenary Meeting; 07/6-7/2001; accessed 07/07/2015;
<http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/compilation_democracy/guidelines1.htm>.]

constitutional referendums in the new

democracies has highlighted a number of issues which the present guidelines seek to address.
These guidelines set out minimum rules for constitutional referendums and are designed to
ensure that this instrument is used in all countries in accordance with the principles of
democracy and the rule of law. Constitutional referendums are taken as referring to
popular votes in which the question of partially or totally revising a State's Constitution (and not of its
federated entities) is asked, irrespective of whether this requires voters to give an opinion
on a specific proposal for constitutional change or on a question of principle. By definition a constitutional
I. THE GENERAL CONTEXT Recent experience of

referendum is concerned with a partial or total revision of the Constitution. A constitutional referendum may : be
required by the text of the Constitution which provides that certain texts are automatically submitted to referendum
after their adoption by Parliament (mandatory referendum); take place following a popular initiative : - either a
section of the electorate puts forward a text which is then submitted to popular vote; - or a section of the electorate
requests that a text adopted by Parliament be submitted to popular vote; be called by an authority such as : Parliament itself or a specific number of members of Parliament; - the Head of State or the government; - one or
several territorial Entities. Constitutional referendums may be held both with respect to texts already approved or
not yet approved by Parliament. They may take the form of : a vote on specifically-worded draft amendments to the
constitution or a specific proposal to abrogate existing provisions of the Constitution; a vote on a question of
principle (for example: "are you in favour of amending the constitution to introduce a presidential system of
government?"); or on a concrete proposal which does not have the form of specifically worded amendments, know
as a "generally worded proposal" (for example: "are you in favour of amending the Constitution in order to reduce

It could be a question of : a legally binding

referendum or a non-legally binding referendum II. GUIDELINES A. Legal basis The following issues must
be expressly regulated at constitutional level: - types of referendum and the bodies competent to
call a referendum; - the subject-matter of referendums ; - the effects of referendums; general norms and principles (point II.B), including the franchise; - the main rules governing procedural
and substantive validity (points II.C and II.D); - judicial review (point II.P). All the guidelines outlined below
should be covered by the Constitution or legislation. B. General norms and principles 1. The constitutional
principles of electoral law (universal, equal, free, direct and secret suffrage) apply to referendums.
2. Equally, fundamental rights, especially freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and freedom of
association must be guaranteed and protected . 3. The use of referendums must comply
with the legal system as a whole and especially the rules governing revision of the Constitution. In
the number of seats in Parliament from 300 to 200?").

particular, referendums cannot be held if the Constitution does not provide for them, for example where

Judicial review should be

available in the field covered by the present guidelines. C. The procedural validity of texts submitted to a
constitutional reform is a matter for Parliament's exclusive jurisdiction. 4.

referendum Questions submitted to a referendum must respect: - unity of form: the same question must not
combine a specifically-worded draft amendment with a generally-worded proposal or a question of principle; - unity
of content: except in the case of total revision of the Constitution, there must be an intrinsic connection between
the various parts of the text, in order to guarantee the free suffrage of the voter, who must not be called to accept
or refuse as a whole provisions without an intrinsic link ; the revision of several chapters of the Constitution at the
same time is equivalent to a total revision; - it is desirable that the same question does not simultaneously apply to
the Constitution and subordinate legislation (unity of hierarchical level); D. The substantive validity of texts
submitted to a referendum Texts submitted to a constitutional referendum must abide by the substantive limits
(intrinsic and extrinsic) of constitutional reform. They must not be contrary to international law or the Council of
Europe's statutory principles (democracy, human rights and the rule of law). Texts that contradict the requirements
mentioned under II.C and II.D should not be put to the popular vote. E. Other aspects of free suffrage In
addition to the principles set out under B, C and D, free suffrage - particularly free determination of the elector's will

implies: 1. The right to expect that referendums provided for by the legislative
system will be organised, and in compliance with the procedural rules; in particular, referendums
-

must be held within the time-limit prescribed by law ; 2. Fairness of the vote a. the question
submitted to the electorate must be clear (not obscure or ambiguous); it must not be misleading; it
must not suggest an answer; electors must be informed of the consequences of the
referendum; voters must answer the questions asked by yes, no or a blank vote ; b.
The authorities must provide objective information . This implies that the text submitted to
referendum and an explanatory report should be made available to electors sufficiently in advance, as follows: they must be published in an official gazette at least one month before the vote; - they must be sent directly to
citizens and be received at least two weeks before the ballot; - the explanatory report must give a balanced
presentation not only of the executive and legislative authorities' viewpoint but also the opposing one. c. Contrary
to the case of elections, it is not necessary to completely prohibit the intervention of the authorities supporting or
opposing a proposal submitted to referendum. However, the national, regional and local authorities must not
influence the outcome of the vote by excessive, one-sided campaigning. The use of public funds by the authorities
for campaigning purposes during the referendum campaign proper (ie in the month preceding the vote) must be
prohibited. A strict upper limit must be set on the use of public funds for campaigning purposes in the preceding
period. 3. The right to accurate establishment of the result by an independent body and formal publication in the
official gazette. The vote must be declared invalid where irregularities could have modified the (negative or
positive) outcome of the vote. In addition, a partial cancellation of the vote is possible when irregularities only
occurred in specific geographical areas (regions, districts, even polling stations). F. Funding - The general rules on
the funding of political parties and electoral campaigns must be applied to both public and private funding. - In
contrast to elections, the use of public funds by the authorities for campaigning purposes need not be strictly
prohibited in all cases; however, it must be restricted - see point II.E.2.c above. - Payment from private sources for
the collection of signatures for popular initiatives, if permitted, must be regulated, with regard to both the total
amount allocated and the amount paid to each person. G. Use of public places a. Advertising Supporters and
opponents of the proposal submitted to a referendum must have equal access to election hoardings. b. Collection of
signatures If authorisation is required in order to gather signatures for popular initiatives on public thoroughfares,
such authorisation may be refused only in specific cases, on the basis of overriding public interest and in
accordance with the principle of equality. c. Right to demonstrate Street demonstrations to support or oppose a text
submitted to referendum may be subject to authorisation: such authorisation may be refused only on the basis of
overriding public interest, in accordance with the general rules applicable to public demonstrations. H. Media Public
radio and television broadcasts on the electoral campaign must allocate equal amounts of time to programmes
which support or oppose the proposal being voted on. Balanced coverage must be guaranteed to the proposal's
supporters and opponents in other public mass media broadcasts, especially news broadcasts. Financial or other
conditions for radio and television advertising must be the same for the proposal's supporters and opponents. The
prohibition of the publication of opinion polls during the week before the election can be considered. J. Specific rules
for popular initiatives - Everyone enjoying political rights is entitled to sign an initiative or referendum. - The timelimit for collecting signatures (particularly the day in which the time-limit starts to run and the last day of the timelimit) must be clearly specified, as well as the number of signatures to be collected. - Everyone (regardless of
whether he or she enjoys political rights) must be entitled to collect signatures. - All signatures must be checked. In
order to facilitate checking, lists of signatures should preferably contain the names of electors registered in the
same municipality. - In order to avoid having to declare a vote totally invalid, an authority must have the power,
prior to the vote, to correct faulty drafting, such as: - the question's obscure, misleading or suggestive nature; violation of the rules on procedural or substantive validity; in this event, partial invalidity may be declared if the
remaining text is coherent; sub-division may be envisaged to correct a lack of substantive unity. - See also point II.F,
third paragraph (remuneration for collecting signatures) and point II.G.b (use of public places for collecting
signatures). K. Referendums imposed by the Constitution (mandatory referendums) The cases where referendums
are imposed by the Constitution may be limited to total revision or revision of fundamental provisions. In the latter
case, the Constitution will identify these particular provisions in an article the revision of which is subject to a
mandatory referendum. L. Parallelism in procedures For a certain period of time, a text that has been rejected in a
referendum may not be adopted by another procedure for constitutional revision; During the same period of time, a
constitutional provision that has been accepted in a referendum may not be revised by another method of
constitutional revision. The above does not apply: - in the case of a consultative referendum (which does not bind
the authorities); - in the case of a referendum on partial revision of the Constitution, where the previous referendum
concerned a total revision; - in the event of rejection of a text adopted by Parliament and put to the popular vote at
the request of a section of the electorate; a similar new text must not be submitted to vote unless a referendum is
requested. M. The role of Parliament When a draft constitutional revision is proposed by a section of the electorate
or an authority other than Parliament, Parliament must state its opinion on the text submitted to vote. It may be
entitled to put forward a counter-proposal to the proposed text. A deadline must be set for Parliament to give its
opinion: if this deadline is not met, the text will be put to the popular vote without Parliament's opinion. N. Effects of
referendum Referendums on specifically worded draft amendments will usually have a binding character and their
implementation will not present particular problems. Referendums on questions of principle or other generallyworded proposals should be consultative only. While some countries recognise that such referendums may bind
parliament in principle, this leads to difficulties of implementation and entails a high risk of political conflicts. O.
Quorum It is admissible for acceptance by a minimum percentage of the electorate to be required in order for a
referendum to be valid. This type of quorum is preferable to requiring a minimum turnout. P. Judicial review

Observance of the above rules will be subject to judicial review . This is exercised, in the final
instance, by the constitutional court - if it exists - or by the supreme court. In particular, judicial review

will focus on: - the franchise; - the completion of popular initiatives; - the procedural and substantive
validity of the texts submitted to referendum , which should be subjected to preliminary review;
domestic law determines whether this control is obligatory or optional; - respect for free
suffrage; - the results of the ballot.

Experts Key
Experts overestimate their own knowledge, have tunnel vision,
and engage in group think engaging the public is key to
involve public values and create more popular policies
Shane 12 [Peter M. Shane, Chair in Law at the Moritz College of Law of Ohio State University; Cybersecurity
Policy as if Ordinary Citizens Mattered: The Case for Public Participation in Cyber Policy Making pg 455-458;
Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society; 09/02/2012; accessed 07/01/2015; <
http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/students/groups/is/files/2012/02/9.Shane_.pdf>.]

intense objections from agency policy makers are likely to appear in the form of
doubts as to the utility of deliberation with non-experts . In research I did in 2009 on early
The most

efforts by the current Federal Communications Commission (FCC) leadership to expand public input in FCC decision

senior staff expressed genuine uncertainty as to the role nonexpert opinion was supposed to play in their decision making . In the words of one staff
making,72 a number of

member, Arent we supposed to be the expert agency? Whats the general public going to tell me about the hard

Such an objection, however, ignores two

critical points. The first is that decision making confined to experts is prone to its own
kinds of deficiencies. Happily, evidence does suggest that experts are less likely to make
certain sorts of predictable errors, such as overestimating the likely recurrence of vivid events, and
technical choices we face that I do not already know?73

more likely to gain some adaptive ability to overcome erroneous judgments as a result of repeat encounters with

Experts, however: are subject to three distinct biases of their

own. First, they are likely to overestimate their actual knowledge . In the experimental setting,
specific factual scenarios.74

they demonstrate levels of confidence in their judgments that exceed the actual advantages conferred by their

they are likely to adopt a world

view that turns largely on the area of their expertise and are unable to weigh its
relative merits against other matters outside the zone of their expertise . . . Third, and relatedly,
they are subject to routinized ways of approaching problems and to an unreflective
"group think" style of inbred behavior.75 Melding expert analysis with broad-based deliberation can
help offset each of these biases. Indeed, public deliberation may be critical for countering the
tendency among experts to pose problems solely within the technical frameworks with
expertise, the propensity to be "often wrong, but never in doubt." Second,

which they feel most comfortable. Whether to devote public resources to better firewalls, for example, or to various
kinds of workarounds that would permit critical infrastructure to function even in the face of cyber aggression is a
determination as likely to involve political, social, and economic tradeoffs as it is a technical assessment regarding
the possible success of such strategies. So are decisions regarding our national doctrine on cyber war, investments
in systems designed to improve cyber attribution, the allocation of cyber authority among military and civilian
authorities, and the scope of presidential authority over the Internet. One does not have to impute ill motive to

specialists in law, economics, military science, and information science might be tempted
to characterize these issues as ultimately about legality, efficiency , operations research,
or sound management. All of these disciplines are implicated, but so are public values regarding liberty,
privacy, accountability, and competing priorities. These values should not be
subordinated in the creation of public policy. The second point is that good design for a policy
imagine how

process intended from the outset to accommodate non-expert policy input is quite likely to improve the quality of
the relevant technical analysis as well.

Cybersecurity policy is a question of values expert opinion

not necessary and the only way to access all three facets of
democracy
Shane 12 [Peter M. Shane, Chair in Law at the Moritz College of Law of Ohio State University; Cybersecurity
Policy as if Ordinary Citizens Mattered: The Case for Public Participation in Cyber Policy Making pg 453-455;
Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society; 09/02/2012; accessed 07/01/2015; <
http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/students/groups/is/files/2012/02/9.Shane_.pdf>.]

The U.S. currently faces cyber policy issues that raise questions of value and general
direction susceptible to intelligent discussion by non-specialists . Public participation
has long been linked to a series of benefits for governance that are salient in the realm
of cyber policy. Models of lay deliberation exist that are well designed to achieve those

benefits. Powerful questions remain, however, about the role of a deliberative public in
making government policy and whether public participation even if attractive in principle can be
designed effectively to ward off predictable sources of frustration and poor quality. The case for public participation

genuinely
democratic governance must entail public participation . With the exception of purely
in policy making has both normative and instrumental aspects. The core normative proposition is that

procedural theories, in which democracy means little more than institutionalized electoral competition under fair

contemporary political theorists have coalesced around what the NRC has called a
three key elements of democracy: political equality, popular
sovereignty, and human development.66 By definition, political equality entails the right
of every citizen to participate in making public policy . Popular sovereignty proposes that
democratic citizens be governed only by laws to which they give consent in some
meaningful way. Human development captures the idea that democratic participation not only
allows citizens to promote their interests, but represents an important means through which
they come to understand their interests in the first place and how those interests
relate to and depend on those of other citizens. 67 Democracy, in this last sense, is a system of
experiential learning. There is thus a direct link between citizen involvement in policy
making and each feature of governance that is now regarded as foundational to democracy. It is
understandable however, that policy makers both elected and appointed may undervalue such
normative commitments in structuring the concrete policy processes in which they participate. The
good that may come from fulfilling these democratic commitments is likely to be felt
only gradually and over a diffuse population. In the short-term, elected policy makers
may well be focused primarily on their immediate political fortunes , while appointees seek to
conditions,

remarkable consensus on

demonstrate the kinds of concrete progress in the achievement of immediate bureaucratic goals that will warrant

It is
hard to imagine a time, however, in which the case for some loftier, long-term
thinking would be more urgent. Public confidence in governing institutions has never
been lower, and the publics alienation from elected authorities never greater .68 The
outpouring of right and left-wing populist energy, embodied respectively in the Tea Party and
Occupy movements, testifies eloquently to Americans widespread cynicism about the
capacities and motivations of governing elites.69 Meaningful efforts to reconnect everyday
citizens with their governing institutions are urgently required to reestablish public
trust. In their absence, a wave of general anti-government sentiment may make it impossible
for any agency, no matter how urgent its mission, to garner the public support necessary to do jobs
that need doing. In the cyber realm, for example, there is credible worry that cuts being mulled over by
Congress and the White House could sink the nations nascent cyber defenses.70 Cyber policy makers,
moreover, ought to recognize that public participation in their domain may also furnish
practical benefits that will enhance their mission, even in the relatively short term. Public participation
can aid in agenda setting by clarifying the problems that need to be addressed and the priorities that
ought to attach to them. The public may bring to decision makers attention potential
impacts of different policies that might not otherwise be considered, as well as information about the
potential distribution of burdens and benefits. The perspective of outsiders might be especially
useful in assessing the credibility of information that policy makers have gathered, and in testing
continuing resource support adequate to meet near-term challenges on behalf of well-defined constituencies.

the logic that, in the minds of policy makers, links potential policies to desired objectives. In the realm of
environmental policy, the NRC, after an exhaustive review of available case studies and survey and experimental
research, concluded that, on average, public participation enhances the quality and legitimacy of environmental
decisions, as well as the capacity of both experts and the lay public to make better decisions in the future.71 There
is no obvious reason why the outcome should be different in the cyber realm, where the mix of fact and value
inputs is similarly complex and positive impacts are likely to depend on the behaviors of multiple groups of actors,
including private citizens.

High Voter Turnout

Direct referendums can enact positive law or repeal and veto
existing laws and bills and they encourage the best voter
turn-out
DuVivier 6 [KK DuVivier; Professor of Law at University of Denver; The United States as a Democratic
Ideal?: International Lessons in Referendum Democracy p 845-848; University of Denver Sturm College of Law;
2006; accessed 07/01/2015; <http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?
ID=3730870700221010040870961201250130180170880250720630030740231270920241050021140990020450
160300420410270260000200840971200931270550810550540070930931071141
2107511105805801609809208410007506907009501206608207612312301912003108007711208509406707201
3&EXT=pdf&TYPE=2>.]
- Note: highlight portions about Italys direct initiatives ability to modify and repeal laws if the plan takes negative
action (ex: repeals the PATRIOT Act but doesnt implement a law to do that)
B. Effect of Referendums: Binding v. Advisory Referendum outcomes vary. Some bind or make their terms obligatory.
Others simply advise and allow legislators and executives to retain some discretion over implementation. Binding
referendums compel governments to implement them.162 What the referendum compels the government to do,

The direct referendum provides the most common

binding process and becomes positive law once passed.163 Switzerland,
Australia, and approximately half of the states in the United States offer this direct
referendum process.164 The opportunity for citizens to flex their muscles in
this way encourages use: Switzerland and Australia account for the most frequent
referendums on a national level.165 Likewise, Oregon, California, Colorado, North Dakota, and Arizona
historically represent states with the highest initiative use, and all offer direct initiative processes.166 Italy has
used a unique version of the direct initiative . Article 75 of Italys Constitution contains the
however, depends on the process established.

referendum abrogativo, which allows citizens to nullify legislation enacted at the national level.167 This veto can

the process allows citizens to negate actions by

the legislature and because the threat of a referendum veto has often motivated the
parliament to act, commentators have argued that it has done much to serve the long-term
interests of the Italian people and has transformed Italy from a partyocracy to democracy.168 The
apply to all or portions of legislation. Because

effectiveness of this process has made Italy the European country with the second highest use of referendums,
surpassed only by Switzerland.169

AT: Highjacked By Elites --- 2nc Say Yes

---Statistical data concludes against the propensity for elite
cooption.
Matsusaka 2005
John G., Professor of Finance and Business Economics in the Marshall School of Business, Professor of Business and
Law in the Law School, and President of the Initiative & Referendum Institute, all at the University of Southern
California, Direct Democracy Works, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Volume 19, Number 2, Spring pg. 185206

Despite the concerns of special interest subversion, the evidence generally shows
that direct democracy serves the many and not the few. Matsusaka (2004) examines fiscal
data spanning the entire twentieth century at both the state and local level to determine

whether the initiative promotes tax and spending policies favored by the majority or, as the special interest view
maintains, leads to policies favored by a minority and opposed by the majority. The study first documents three
significant policy changes brought about by the initiative: 1) spending and tax cuts; 2) decentralization of spending
from state to local governments; and 3) a shift of revenue out of broad-based taxes and into user fees and charges
for services. Numerous opinion surveys are then examined, which generally show that a majority of people favored
the three changes brought about by the initiative. Thus, as far as fiscal policy is concerned,
appears

to have delivered policies desired by the majority .

the initiative

AT: Highjacked By Media --- 2nc Say Yes

---Empirically disproven --- Voters can break with media
opinion.
Rourke et al. 1992
John, University of Connecticut, Richard Hiskes, and Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh, Direct Democracy and International
Politics, p. 174
What about the impact of modern electronic media? It would be foolish to argue that the media plays no role in how
people vote in foreign policy referendums. As Todd Gitlin has cogently pointed out, the more a given policy option is
foreign to the day-to-day experience of a citizen, the more he or she depends on mass media to clarify and define

while voters have been influenced by media reports and endorsements,

there have been dramatic cases of voters disregarding media messages . Recall both
the inability of the Gonzalez government, despite its control over television, to
determine the outcome of the Andalusian vote and Gorbachev's failure to produce
an overwhelming victory during the Soviet-unity vote. These cases demonstrate
that the voters' political opinions are not simply created by the media. There is always
issues.1 Still,

some unpredictability and independence in voters' thinking, and even if only a minority of voters do not blindly
follow media, party, and elite endorsements, this minority can be large enough to determine the outcome of a
referendum, especially in a close vote.

AT: Delay --- 2nc Solvency

---Fiat solves --- The cp mandates the process begin
immediately. You should be skeptical of their solvency deficit
claims absent qualified evidence providing a specific
timeframe.
---Setup takes 90 days.
Singer 2011
Bill, member of the Herskovits PLLC law firm, Time for a National Referendum on Economic Policy, Broke & Broker,
August 8th, http://www.brokeandbroker.com/1013/national-economic-referendum-bill-singer/

Let us then submit those proposals to a popular vote with the requirement that the two plans
receiving the most votes after a primary-type ballot would then be ultimately submitted to the
American public for a vote within, say, 90 days. During that interim, Congress would be welcome to
draft a super-majority counter-plan that would be listed on the same final ballot. It would be an interesting
challenge to the House and Senate to see if they can forge a single piece of legislation that the public will support.

---Implementation only takes two.

Shermer 1969
Shermer, Ph.D. Govt Studies American University, American Referendum Association, The Sense of the People
Probably the best answer to this seemingly valid argument is contained in the following statement of the late U.S.
Sentaor Jonathan Bourne, Jr., in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Sept., 1912,

individual voters of the state (Oregon) in the quiet of their own homes
could better consider and decide upon an average of one bill in two days
than members of the legislature , amid the hurry and strife and personal feeling incidence to a
issue: In my opinion, the
in the evening

legislative session, could consider and decide upon an average of twelve bills a day. It is erroneous to assume that

the voter is required to pass upon a large number of measures in the few minutes he occupies the booth on
election day. Such is not the case. He has several weeks to determine how he will vote, and merely takes a
few minutes in which to mark his ballot . To support his contention, Senator Bourne added, that in
one year (about 1911) each member of the Oregon Legislature had to consider five hundred bills in forty days

With
todays shorter work week, and tomorrows thirty-hour-week resulting inevitably
from automation, it is not a question of whether people have the timethe question is
(approx. twelve per day), plus political questions, resolutions, and problems of parliamentary procedure.

whether they have the inclination. The referendum system is designed to create the desire and the incentive to
study the issues.

---None of their advantages are time sensitive, they are all

based on slow shifts in institutional structures which dont
know the difference between 2 months and 6---err neg unless
they can produce a card that says their impact will happen too
quick for the ref and that the plan would be quick.
---Delay claims links more to the affirmatives representative
process.
Craig 2012
Tim, D.C. height debate set for Capitol Hill, The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/dcwire/post/dc-height-debate-set-for-capitol-hill/2012/07/16/gJQAcJwRpW_blog.html

In April, The Washington Post reported that Gray and U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House
Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wanted to explore whether federal restrictions on building heights
should be relaxed. Though any change could take years of congressional and local debate ,
U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chairman of the subcommittee that has oversight over the District, has scheduled a
hearing on the matter for Thursday at 1:30 p.m.

Precedents
Switzerland proves developing referendums was a key part of
solidifying lasting direct democratic ideals, and the best way
to inspire personal confidence
Kobach 93 [Kris W. Kobach, professor at University of Missouri School of Law; THE HISTORY OF DIRECT
DEMOCRACY IN SWITZERLAND; Dartmouth Publishing; 1993; accessed 07/06/2015;
<http://www.athene.antenna.nl/MEDIATHEEK/KOBACH-1.html>.]

The referendum evolved from ideal forms of direct democracy . By 'ideal forms', I mean
citizen assemblies that carried out the business of governing through a direct vote of
2.

the governed. The plebiscite imposed by Napoleon in 1798 and carried out in 1802 was the first nationwide
referendum held in Switzerland; but it was not an indigenous institution as such. Introduced by outsiders and
heavily weighted in favor of regime approval (by counting abstentions as yes votes), it was an artificial
development. The Swiss federal referendum adopted in 1848 descended from cantonal referendums, which in turn
descended from the tradition of rural Landsgemeinden and urban Great Councils. Switzerland enjoyed a strong

Although nineteenth-century
political opportunists sometimes hijacked the referendum for their own advancement,
they probably could not have done so without a political culture sympathetic to the
use of direct democracy. The impact of frequent, uncontrolled referendums in a system without this
tradition of direct democracy long before the introduction of the referendum.

tradition might therefore be very different. Chapter Eight presents a detailed examination of the referendum's

The referendum and the initiative have long been used by minor
parties and political outsiders as a minority veto against the governing majority , or as
influence in other polities. 3.

a way of opening the doors of power. The Radicals of the 1830s were the first to use direct democracy in this way,
legitimizing their attacks on the waning political establishment. The Radicals gradually rose to become the
dominant party of the nineteenth century and have remained in the government to the present day. The perceived
utility of the referendum to Radicals declined accordingly. Then, starting in 1839, conservative forces and Catholic
groups began to use the referendum as effective brake on Radical power. This process reached its apogee in the
1870s when Catholic-led referendums nearly brought the Radical government to its knees. In the late 1880s, The
Catholic Conservatives gained for themselves a perpetual seat on the Federal Council through the effective use of
referendums. After 1900, it was the Social Democrats' turn. They fought the legislation of the ruling bourgeois
parties with the facultative referendum, and they were the first out-group to successfully change the structure of
the political system via the constitutional initiative. In bringing about proportional representation, they made their
eventual position on the Federal Council a virtual certainty. It is difficult to overstate the importance of direct
democracy in fostering Swiss consociationalism. The pressure generated by referendum campaigns led directly to
the inclusion of the four major parties in a grand coalition government. After the completion of Switzerland's
Konkordanz-Demokratie with the magic formula in 1959, there were no major political parties left outside the
government. The devices of direct democracy then fell to the ascendant interest groups and the minor parties.

The referendum and the initiative continue to be used to undermine the position of those
in power. Even a consensual system like Switzerland's cannot achieve absolute
agreement among all concerned parties on every political issue . Interest groups who feel
that their needs are not being met by the existing political consensus have recourse to the referendum or the
initiative. Outsider parties like the Greens, the Auto Party, and the anti-foreigner Democrats utilize the devices of
direct democracy much as the Catholics and Social Democrats did in the past. Post-1959 facultative referendums
might therefore be interpreted as indicators of failed attempts to build consensus. Most laws that are challenged by
referendum have failed to win the assent of a significant portion of the electorate. Even if only 25 percent of the
voters in a referendum with 40 percent participation reject the law, more than 450,000 citizens (out of a total

The frequency of referendal

challenges in Switzerland implies that even a highly consensual polity cannot always
accommodate the narrow interest groups and other political minorities not present
at the bargaining table. Thus, direct democracy plays a critical role in compensating
for the failure of consociational political arrangements in this regard . 4. The
referendum has at times been used as a means of venting general unease with the
government. Although the calling of referendums represents specific and sometimes intense dissatisfaction
electorate of 4 1/2 million) will have officially registered their disapproval.

with particular policies or circumstances, negative votes in referendums also give voice to general discontent with
the government. Widespread frustration with economic and social conditions, political leadership, or even the entire
political system can lead many citizens to strike out blindly at the government position, regardless of its merits. This
contributes to a phenomenon known in Switzerland as the Neinsager (naysayer) vote. Even seemingly harmless
proposals which entail no obvious disadvantages, cost little or nothing, and are opposed by none of the major
interest groups routinely run into a negative vote of 10-25 percent. This figure is usually higher in rural regions.

Arguably, the vote of 1 April 1990 demonstrated the Neinsager phenomenon in its most extreme form. The
referendum followed two major political scandals. In November 1989 Elisabeth Kopp, the Minister of Justice and
Police, resigned after it was discovered that she had provided confidential government information to her husband,
which he then used in his business dealings. Following the parliamentary commission investigation that ensued, an

In January 1990, it was revealed that the political branch of

the Federal Police (the Bundesanwaltschaft) had compiled secret, Cold War-style files on 900,000
Swiss citizens, organizations, and resident aliens. Unhindered by parliamentary scrutiny, the political
branch (dubbed by its critics the 'Schnffelpolizei,' or 'snooping police') had undertaken extensive
wiretapping and intrusive investigations into the private affairs of citizens . The resulting
public fury over what became known as the Fichenskandal was immense. The April 1990 referendum saw
the rejection of all six measures on the ballot . Along with four anti-highway initiatives that were
even greater scandal was unveiled.

widely expected to fail, two fairly uncontroversial federal laws (concerning wine import standards and a change in
the definition of which civil court cases could be taken to federal courts) were rejected. It seems that many

disillusioned citizens assumed a Neinsager attitude and cast six negative votes in a row.
Arguably, the tense political environment in the wake of the scandals also
strengthened the naysayer faction. However, the baseline Neinsager vote of 10-25 percent should not be
taken as a sign of unusual levels of discontent in the Swiss political system. On the contrary, a 1972 study by Dusan

the Swiss were more 'satisfied with the way their government was
being run' than citizens in any other European democracy or in the United states. In the survey, 68
Sidjanski found that

percent reported being satisfied in Switzerland, compared to 65 percent in the United States, 44 percent in West
Germany, 44 percent in the United Kingdom, 41 percent in France, and 27 percent in Italy. However, this survey did
not distinguish between satisfaction with the present government and satisfaction with the political system. A 1979
study measured support for the overall political system and found that more than 70 percent of Swiss citizens rated
it as highly or very highly responsive to their needs. The fact that the percentage of habitual Neinsager voters is
significant even in a system registering such high regime approval suggests that there is likely to a be a sizeable
core of disaffected citizens in every democracy. Uncontrolled referendums outside of Switzerland encounter the
naysayer, sometimes in even greater numbers. Australian referendum outcomes clearly exhibit this tendency. On
the other hand, infrequent plebiscites legitimizing new regimes or new territorial arrangements are unlikely to run
into this phenomenon. Such referendums often register affirmative votes of well over 90 percent. 5. The

referendum and initiative have given the Swiss voter a say on policy questions in what
has become a highly solidified political system. Consociational democracy may allow
more groups to be represented in the national executive, but it can have the side
effect of making elections virtually impotent with regard to influencing policy . Shifts in
support for the parties have no effect on the composition of the government. Therefore, voter choices in elections

A clear policy mandate only becomes possible when a

party with a very narrow agenda suddenly experiences a surge in support, as happened with
are unlikely to result in policy changes.

the National Opposition in 1971. However, on the whole, the Swiss parties' electoral support has been remarkably
static. The 2:2:2:1 distribution of seats on the Federal Council has an aura of permanence about it. Consequently,
the average Swiss voter is not likely to believe that switching his vote from the candidate of one party to that of
another party will result in concrete changes in national policy. As Henry Kerr suggests, it may be a case of plus a
change, plus c'est la mme chose. The same 1972 survey cited above asked Swiss voters how much the outcome of
the 1971 election was likely to change federal policy. Only 1 percent said 'a lot', 32 percent said 'somewhat', 43
percent said 'not at all', and 24 percent said 'don't know'. If the 'don't know' response can be taken as reflecting a
low level of confidence in the policy impact of elections, then three out of five Swiss voters felt that even the
relatively turbulent 1971 elections made little difference. Swiss parliamentary elections in the last three decades

The referendum and initiative have

assumed the function of conveying citizens' policy preferences - a function that might have
gone unserved if such institutions had not existed. It is through direct democracy that Swiss
voters decide how high taxes will be, express preferences about domestic and
foreign policy, and determine the role of their military . It may be that consociational
democracies need referendums if their citizens are to have a meaningful influence
upon the direction of policy. In this fashion, referendums complement consociational
systems rather that contradict them.
have been primarily about choices between political personalities.

Cybersecurity
The best way to create cybersecurity policy must raise
awareness, ensure public education, and show definitive
commitment a binding referendum meets all three criteria for
the best decisionmaking capacity
Shane 12 [Peter M. Shane, Chair in Law at the Moritz College of Law of Ohio State University; Cybersecurity
Policy as if Ordinary Citizens Mattered: The Case for Public Participation in Cyber Policy Making pg 443-445;
Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society; 09/02/2012; accessed 07/01/2015; <
http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/students/groups/is/files/2012/02/9.Shane_.pdf>.]

aims most often advanced in connection with public participation are threefold :
public education and mobilization, better quality decisions, and enhanced decisionmaking legitimacy.38 In the cyber realm, the aims of public education and
mobilization seem highly salient. The issues are complicated. The tradeoffs are subtle. Greater
public knowledge is a likely prerequisite to the kinds of behavioral change among
ordinary users that would enhance network security. Greater public knowledge is
also quite likely a prerequisite to mobilizing political support for the levels of public
investment required to advance cybersecurity. It would thus seem imperative to design public
The

participation opportunities in the cyber policy realm to maximize public awareness and knowledge acquisition. What
better decision making consists of in the cyber (or any other) realm is ambiguous.39 In terms of efficiency, it

the best cybersecurity decisions would be those that achieve the

most appropriate levels of network and critical infrastructure security at the least
cost. It may simply prove impossible, however, to ever make such an assessment persuasively. Additionally, the
might seem obvious that

goal of efficiency needs to be weighed in conjunction with considerations of distributive equity. A least-net-cost

It
seems reasonable then, as a second-best approach, to judge the quality of decisions at least
in part by inputs that are observable and thus manageable. For example, were decisions
based on a shared understanding of the problem under examination? Was the most current and
reliable information brought to bear? Did decision makers have the benefit of well-informed
arguments for contending positions? Were efforts made to curb the kinds of
decisional bias that can skew group interaction ? Were efforts made to ensure that
solution would likely seem less attractive if the costs are unduly borne by any one segment of the affected public.

recommendations would not disproportionately burden persons or interests who went unrepresented in the

should want a model for public participation that

makes the development of a coherent, shared understanding of the issue most
likely, and which brings to the forefront the best information and the strongest arguments from a truly inclusive
group. As for enhancing legitimacy, three factors would seem to loom largest . The first is
whether the deliberation was representative of the affected public which , in the cyber
domain, is really everyone. The second is whether there was transparency and balance in
the development and presentation of the scientific or other technical information that set the
foundation for deliberation. The third is whether there is a credible commitment among policy
makers to take the consequences of public participation into serious account . This
decisional process? Given these criteria, we

need not be a commitment to do what a majority of participants prefer, but it should be at least a commitment to
explain ultimate decisions publicly, including reasons for not acting in concert with the public deliberation should
the relevant decisions actually go that way.40 Translating the general values associated with public participation
into appropriate objectives for a public participation initiative on cybersecurity thus produces the following

The project should: Aim at maximizing informed public awareness;

Engage a significant representative sample of Americans in policy deliberation; Facilitate
specifications.

discussions aimed at generating a common, coherent understanding of the problems under consideration; Involve
the most reliable current information; Publicize the sources of information being discussed and the processes by
which that information was produced; Expose participants to strong arguments for all contending positions;
Deploy best practices in terms of reducing the influence of group processes that reduce the quality of deliberative
outcomes; and

Entail a commitment by relevant policy makers to take the

recommendations of the public participants into serious account, including a commitment

to offer public reasons for not following any recommendations that the majority of public deliberators favor.

Net Benefits

Snowball---2NC
CP generates broader interest in direct democracy---snowballs
Garrett 1 (Elizabeth, University of Chicago Law professor, "International Human
Rights Law in Practice: Issues in Implementing Referendums in Israel: A
Comparative Study in Direct Democracy," lexis)
Ideally, a structure for a popular vote would be implemented before a government
announced a decision to submit a particular issue to a referendum. Once a specific
issue becomes the subject of direct democracy, the stakes become higher because
one side will often be benefited by one set of implementation decisions and the
other side disadvantaged. Moreover, rules that are shaped to accommodate
interests in a particular ballot question may prove ill suited for referendums that are
held in the future but are unanticipated at the time the framework is established.
For [*160] example, the United Kingdom ("UK"), after a series of ad hoc
referendums conducted under differing rules that appeared (and probably were)
largely a result of political factors rather than of principle, appointed a commission
(the "Nairne Commission") to establish a set of electoral regulations that could be
used to govern all future referendums. 1 The United Kingdom discovered, as have
many countries and as Israel may, that a nationwide referendum is seldom a
one-shot experience; once used, popular elections usually remain as part of a
hybrid democratic system with elements of representative democracy and elements
of direct democracy.

And, Referendums create a sense of community and individual

importance which spurs broader cooperation
McFarlane 1 (Audrey, University of Baltimore law professor, When Inclusion
Leads to Exclusion: The Uncharted Terrain of Community Participation in Economic
Development," lexis)

Of course, not all democratic political theories advocate direct participation. Most democratic political theory
presumes that participation should take place at the ballot box in a republican form of government. n178 By
contrast, a smaller collection of democratic theories posit that the basic, yet crucial, process of participation is
citizens themselves being involved in priority--setting, as well as decision--making, dialogue and deliberation. n179
"Participatory politics deals with public disputes and conflicts of interest by subjecting them to a never--ending
process of deliberation, decision, and action." n180 At the heart of this strong democratic theory is "democratic
talk," which is more than mere speech: "It refers both to human discourse and interaction using both language and
linguistic symbols." n181 According to Benjamin Barber, strong democratic talk serves nine functions: it allows "the
articulation of interests; bargaining and exchange; persuasion; agenda--setting; exploring mutuality; affiliation and
affection; maintaining autonomy; witness and self--expression; reformulation and re--conceptualization; [*911]
community--building as the creation of public interests, common goods, and active citizens." n182 1. The Power of
Discourse: Self--Development, Self--Transformation, and Interdependence The major function and effect of
participation for proponents of democratic theory is an educative one. n183 Direct participation provides certain
educational benefits and fosters certain psychological attitudes that are valuable to the person and to the society.
Participation therefore serves as a learning process that educates citizens with the skills needed to sustain
democracy. n184 This can be an education in how to negotiate a political process and create a sense of political
effectiveness. n185 Under this approach, national or statewide representative institutions are an insufficient form of
democracy. Such national or statewide institutions involve "electoral competition between elites [that] deprives
non--elites of access to conditions of their own development." n186 The educational effects of direct participation
and strong democratic talk extend beyond political effectiveness. Democratic participatory theory is premised on

Participation is thought to foster

important individual attitudes and psychological qualities that develop in spheres
small enough to allow direct participation, such as the workplace, the neighborhood, the school
board, and local government. n187 It promises to provide [*912] experiences that make people
"more public--spirited, more tolerant, more knowledgeable , more attentive to the interests of
others, and more probing of their own interests." n188 During a participatory process, the
individual is thought to learn that one "has to take into account wider matters than
profound arguments of self--development, indeed, self--transformation.

[one's] own immediate private interests . . . to gain cooperation from others, and . . .
learn[] that the public and private interest are linked. n189 Participationists conceive of
people at their best and then seek a politically institutionalized form of direct democracy "to help them become

The transformational benefits of participation extend beyond

the individual to the greater community and are quite profound . Participation brings
about an awareness of interdependence . n191 Moreover, participatory deliberation and
action educates people to see their common interests, and therefore, community
grows out of participation. n192 Accordingly, democratic political theory promises to further
better than they are." n190

individual autonomy through the process of dialogue, bargaining, challenge, compromise, and consensus building.

Autonomy develops through interactions with other people and through learning about their
which allows people to "distinguish the wants,
desires, and commitments that lend coherence to their identity from the wants,
desires, and commitments that they have, perhaps uncritically, accepted from their
culture and may experience as a source of unhappines s." n194
n193

unique capacities, problems, and interests,

Impact Calc---2NC---Demo
Direct democracy outweighs their marginal solvency deficit--1. Magnitude---Concentrated political power assures ecological
destruction which risks extinction, try or die for civic
engagement to spur more public involvement, only the gesture
of the CP shows the referendum process to be feasible, thats
Gare
2. Root cause- concentration of power makes all their impacts
inevitable---they cant solve because they just shift what elites
have power
Fotopoulos 97 (Takis, former Polytechnic of North London economics senior

lecturer, Inclusive Democracy movement founder, Towards an Inclusive Democracy

pg. x-xi)
But, if a 'radical' democracy, under today's conditions of concentrated political and economic power, is Utopian in
the negative sense of the word, an inclusive democracy is definitely more than just a Utopia, in the sense of an
ideal society. A liberatory project is not a Utopia if it is based on today's reality and at the same time expresses the
discontent of significant social sectors and their explicit or implicit contesting of existing society. As the book

the roots of the present multidimensional crisis (ecological,

economic, political, social, cultural) lie in the non-democratic organization
of society at all levels, in the sense that it is the concentration of power in the hands
of various elites that marks the foundation of every aspect of the crisis .
Thus, it is the concentration of economic power, as a result of commodity relations and the grow-ordie dynamic of the market economy, which has led to the present economic crisis. This crisis is
attempts to show,

expressed, mainly, by the continuous expansion of inequality, the relentlessly growing gap, not only between the
North and the South, but also between the economic elites and the rest of society within the North and the South. It
is also the concentration of economic power in the hands of economic elites which fuels the social and cultural
crisis, as expressed by the parallel spread of the dialectic of violence, both personal and collective, drug abuse,

it is the concentration of
political power in the hands of professional politicians and various 'experts' that has
transformed politics into statecraft and resulted in a crisis of traditional politics , as
general social irresponsibility, as well as cultural homogeneity. Furthermore,

expressed by the growing reluctance of citizens to participate in it as members of political parties, as voters, and so
on. Finally, the fact that the main form of power within the framework of the growth economy is economic, and

that the concentration of economic power involves the ruling elites in a constant
struggle to dominate people and Nature, could go a long way towards explaining
the present ecological crisis. In other words, to understand the ecological crisis we
should not refer simply to the prevailing system of values and the resulting technologies, nor just to
production relations, but to the relations of domination that characterize a
hierarchical society which is based on the system of market economy, and the implied idea of dominating
the natural world. It is no accident that the destruction of the environment during the
lifetime of the growth economy, in both its market economy and state socialist versions, goes far
beyond the cumulative damage that previous societies have inflicted on the
environment. Therefore, the project for an inclusive democracy does not only
express the highest human ideal of freedom in the sense "of individual and collective autonomy, but it is also
perhaps the only way out of the present multidimensional crisis.

3. Turns war- settled conceptions of democracy license

violence
Barkawi and Laffey 99 (Tarak, University of Wales international relations

lecturer, and Mark, University of London international relations lecturer, SAGE)

Liberal democratic institutions enable the expression mediated through

bureaucratic party structures of popular interests. In this sense, liberal
democracy does make a difference. But liberal conceptions of democracy also have
a class content (see Jessop, 1978). This is overlooked in the democratic peace
debates, which take for granted that liberal democracies are 'market democracies'
and that liberal political institutions are embedded in, and reflect, capitalist social
relations. Dahl and many others argue that a capitalist socio-economic order limits
the democratic potential of liberal democracy and constrains the prospects for
development beyond polyarchy (1998: 178-9). Liberal democracy contributes
directly to the maintenance of a capitalist socio-economic order it is 'equilibrium
democracy' (Macpherson, 1977: Ch. 4). One consequence of an increasingly narrow
and settled conception of democracy is that it serves to stigmatize alternative
expressions of democratically grounded claims. A hegemonic liberalism 'defines out'
other historically valid democratic claims and may licence violence against them.10

4. Conflict---Representative systems assure squabbling which

prevents any long term solutions for their advantages
Polak 2005
Jiri, Editor of Worldwide Direct Democracy Newsletter, Founder of the First International Congress on Direct
Democracy in Prague, Direct Democracy A Historical Necessity, Worldwide Direct Democracy Vol. 7 No. 3,
http://www.planet-thanet.fsnet.co.uk/groups/wdd/05_09.htm
The period of Rule by Representation and Ideology began in the late 18th Century, with the Great French Revolution
and the establishment of the USA. Both these revolutions were presented and justified as inaugurating an era of
Rule by Citizens. However, in practice, owing to low level of social development and communication technology,
such a rule had to be established and maintained indirectly, by electing citizen representatives. And, since society
was deeply divided into classes or interest groups, inevitably, to be elected, the candidates had to identify
themselves with a certain class or group and pretend to represent the interests of that particular group. Thus,

the

representation system was (and still is) based on conflicts: conflicts among employers and
employees, among peasants and city dwellers, among religions, races, nations and regions. Inevitably, the
representatives have not been interested in any real solutions to these conflicts . On
the contrary, they have been interested in the perpetuation of these conflicts as a
base of their power and privileges. A new, political aristocracy has emerged , not quite
hereditary (but family relations and other personal contacts have continued to play an important, or even crucial
role.) Instead of the ideology of feudalism, the new aristocracy has developed an ideology of group representation
as (the only possible and true) democracy. This ideology is still maintained by virtually all party politicians and other

This system is not democracy because in a

genuine democracy, policy has to be responsive to the interests of the citizenry as a
whole, not to this or that group, and certainly not to the interests of a political class. A genuine democracy must
members of the establishment, including the media.

be directly controlled by ordinary citizens, not by organizations who, inevitably, develop oligarchic interests of their

This is why millions of innocent people are doomed

to die in unnecessary wars, why we face gradual deterioration of our environment,
why many desperate and powerless individuals are driven to terrorism . These individuals
own. We live enslaved under a gigantic bluff.

do not oppose "Western values", "democracy", and "liberty". They oppose the imperialism, the arrogance, and the
exploitation of the poor perpetrated by Western oligarchies in the name of the citizens living in their privileged
countries. In a genuine democracy, there would be no terrorism because its causes would vanish. A genuine
democracy would be based on social harmony, tolerance, mutual respect, stable peace, alleviation of poverty, and
the preservation of natural environment. This vision is the ultimate rationale of the DD movement. This vision is
what we are fighting for.

Ethics---Impact---2NC
---The affirmative is unethical --- The logic of representative
politics ends in authoritarianism.
Rourke et al. 1992
John, University of Connecticut, Richard Hiskes, and Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh, Direct Democracy and International
Politics, p.
Positive liberty is both a fuller and potentially more dangerous view of liberty, according to Berlin. The focus of
positive liberty is the source, rather than the extent, of coercion and derives from the wish on the part of the
individual to be his own master. This aspect of liberty takes as its goal the self-actualization of the individual as an

it is not enough to avoid external coercion

to be truly free one must take charge of ones life and be truly able to choose goals and
values by oneself. The individual, in short, must be rationally self-directed and a full participant in
everything that affects individual direction and choice. The difference between negative and positive
freedom is a subtle one, but Berlin realizes that its impact is potentially huge. Since positive liberty, unlike
negative liberty, does not assume that the individual is the best judge of his or her own
interests, positive liberty opens the door both for democracy with its emphasis on self-government
and participation and for authoritarian systems that promise discovery of the true self. Positive liberty also
autonomous being to realize his or her full potential. Here

stretches the political realm to include every aspect of life where power is exercisedat work, home, school,
church, everywhere. If power is exercised, the politics is present. If politics is present, it must be democratic politics,
and I must participate in it to ensure that I am part of the decision.

---Ethics come first--- Participatory politics is a priori ethical

question more important than consequentialist policy
outcomes.
Rourke et al. 1992
John, University of Connecticut, Richard Hiskes, and Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh, Direct Democracy and International
Politics, p.
Theorists of strong democracy are not of one mind concerning the impact of referendums on foreign policy. Some

policy impacts per se is not as important as the value of the participatory

process. The creation of an interested involved and reflexive citizenry should be the
stimmum bonum; the unquestionably highest good, of politics . Whether the results of
referendums disrupts preexisting traditions or policymaking is a secondary issue at
best. A policy without active involved citizens is intrinsically deplorable , this view
maintains, regardless of whether or not there is continuity of the content of policy.
argue that

Democracy
Turns the case-Using democratic involvement and civic
engagement as a public problem solver resurrects the
economy, accommodates growth, solves poverty, creates more
sustainable communities, increases public agency, engages
disenfranchised youth, and provides the framework for solving
every impact more effectively
Briggs 8 [Xavier de Souza Briggs, former engineer, MIT Urban Planning professor, Vice President for
Economic Opportunity and Assets at The Ford Foundation; Democracy as Problem Solving, Civic Capacity in
Communities Across the Globe pg 7-9; The MIT Press; 2008; accessed 07/07/2015;
<http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/9780262524858_sch_0001.pdf>.]

democracies confront important public problems. What is at stake in

is how to shift the economy,
accommodate urban growth or decline as part of a more sustainable future, and
invest in human development through institutions and leadership decisions that
span government, business, and civil society . Wider demands for participation in
decision-making, and much more robust expectations of transparency and accountability, help define
the new civics of leading changebut with few clear roadmaps from place to place and
situation to situation. Does more democracy mean less development (progress), for example?
At their best,

Pittsburgh, and communities in much of the rest of the world ,

The glass-walled room is a place for informal consultation, for exchange and problem solving out of the official
public eye, and so it has a place in the larger civic fabric of a changing industrial region. As an inversion of

the new room is a place where, as

a costly public impasse can be reexamined without the
need to protect reputations or go on the record. It hits me, as Councilman Peduto takes me to the
yesterdays hidden-from-view back room for elite decision makers,
negotiation analysts would point out,

heart of a changing Pittsburgh through his own story, that we can envision the glass-walled roomthe figurative
one, not the one in this coffee shop, that isbut not always get there, that when we get there, we often bring our
own rules to the table, not a shared sense of how to act together to make our civic life more productive. A world
away, I am in Mumbai (Bombay), a major engine of the surging Indian economy and a city-region where almost half
the population lives in slums. Here, a global bank recognizes that a unique network of nongovernmental
organizations accountable to the urban poor offers the very best option for limiting the costly delays and conflicts
that threaten housing projects. Meanwhile, smarter government subsidies trigger the market, regulation helps curb
abuses that sap economic efficiency and also erode trust, and broader spatial planning ensures that efforts to give
Mumbai a world-class airport and other needed infrastructure will not steamroll the poor who have yet to share in
Indias new prosperity. It all began about twenty years ago, when government and civil society organizations slowly
threw out an older set of rules about who could be counted on for what. We grew tired of protesting and then
depending on government to deliver, the president of Indias National Slum Dwellers Federation tells me as our
taxi speeds past the citys countless construction projects, so we decided to start creating our own solutions. Yet
the slum dwellers did not surrender their political strengthIndias slums have long been called vote banks in
highly competitive political campaignsin order to form a think tank, planning outfit, or hasty partnership with
government. A rich sequence of learning and bargaining, cooperation and conflict, among civil society groups, local
and state government agencies, and private developers and lenders has over two decades, brought new progress
on slum redevelopment. This is no small thing since slum-led growth is how much of the world urbanizes, because
Asia and other developing regions are urbanizing quickly, and because Mumbai has such huge and economically
important slums. Much of the future of Indias cities hinges on the kinds of arrangements that are redeveloping
Mumbais slums. In Salt Lake City, an innovative organizing initiative for regional visioning and consensus building
one very carefully launched outside of state and local legislatures, with participation by businesspeople,
environmentalists, and othersdevelops a broad-based constituency for sustainable quality growth and then
helps the public sector develop new capacity to institutionalize and implement the vision. Constituency and
capacitythe will and the wayare much needed elsewhere, too. In Pittsburgh and the Greater ABC region (in the
heart of industrial Brazil), public, private, and nongovernmental institutions work to install new foundations for
competitiveness in a global economy, including regional leadership that overcomes a stubborn localism about

the Workers Party helped lead a peaceful revolution

to install more participatory local governance in the ABC and other regions, as the country
emerged, in the late 1980s, from decades of military dictatorship. Brazils experience
illustrates how the transition to democracy and vigorous party competition can shape urgent
economic restructuring, while greater Pittsburgh lacks both factors but has a long history of
public-private cooperation enabled by philanthropic organizations and others that act as civic
important investment decisions. In Brazil,

intermediaries. And in San Francisco and Cape Town, advocates leverage direct democracy (in
the former case) and new constitutional rights (in the latter) to build a new commitment to
the well-being of disadvantaged young people and their families . The change agents know
that investing in people, the younger the better, is the most basic imperative in a changing
world, and yet they struggle to define governments role in that effort alongside new and varied roles for
nongovernmental or civil society organizations: as organizers of pressure politics for expanded forms of
accountability, as conveners of policy discussions, as service providers and coproducers of change, and more. In
both cases,

strong support for government intervention contends with the limits on

what government alone can accomplish to solve important problems . In each of these
cases to come, the players made significant achievements against the oddsin the face
of division and complexity and the risk of process paralysis that has confounded
other communitiesto resolve important problems and to do so in democratic ways .
How did they do it? The answer turns out to lie in how we think about democracy and
what it means to make it work as a recipe for solving public problems

The referendum process is the best avenue to direct

democracy best suits the needs of the public and breaks
down political dictatorships regardless of outcome
Frey 94 [Bruno S. Frey, guest professor of Political Economy at Zeppelin University, former professor at the
University of Zurich and Business School of the University of Warwick; Direct Democracy: Politco-Economic Lessons
from Swiss Experience pg 338-340; The American Economic Review Vol 84 No 2; JSTOR; 05/1994; accessed
07/01/2015; <http://down.cenet.org.cn/upfile/55/200518181441127.pdf>.]
Most scholars and lay people are biased against direct democracy and its use of popular initiatives and referenda.
Americans normally think of New England town meetings (at best a curiosity), of school bond votes (a very narrow
issue), and of California (where the voters are hopelessly over- burdened). While 26 states allow popular referenda,

the United States is indeed one of the only democracies that does not permit
referenda at the national level. The negative view of direct democracy, however, is also prevalent in
other major democracies. The French tend to associate referenda with plebiscites for the president (Charles de
Gaulle was particularly skillful in this respect); the Germans emphasize the bad experiences made during the
Weimar Republic and the Third Reich (Adolf Hitler had, among other issues, ratified the annexation of Austria by a

referenda have played a major

role in putting an end to partitocrazia (the dictatorship of established parties); and there are the
Swiss in whose country popular initiatives and referenda are a central part of democratic
life, thus by far dominating all other countries with respect to the frequency of use .1
later plebiscite). The Italians, on the other hand, think differently today:

Economic theory does not have a favorable view of direct democracy. Public economics disregards the issue when

Public choice associates direct

democracy with various voting rules (Dennis Mueller, 1989 part II), but the institutions of
direct democracy as such are neglected. I will argue and substantiate by empirical evidence that
popular referenda are a feasible and effective institution to fulfill individual
preferences and are able to break the cartel of politicians directed against voters
and taxpayers. I. Institutions of Direct Democracy Popular initiatives and referenda supplement, but are no
substitute for institutions of representative democracy such as parliament and government. Referenda must
be embedded in a federal system, as each issue should be decided on the lowest possible level,
consistent with fiscal equivalence. De- centralization is also essential for the citizens to
acquire the information and knowledge to make a well-reasoned decision . There is a
second crucial institutional feature: referenda do not simply consist of a choice between given alternatives, but
should be looked at as a process extending over time . Three stages can be differentiated. A.
Pre-Referendum Stage Referenda stimulate discussion among citizens, and between
politicians and voters. The public-good situation of discussion which benefits all citizens is transformed into
a private good as the participants are expected by the other citizens to have opinions,
thus reaping private benefits (see Albert Hirschman, 1989). Pre-referendum talk produces a
number of important effects. Preferences are articulated, enabling mutually beneficial
assuming a benevolent dictator maximizing social welfare.

bargaining and exchange (on efficiency of direct democracy, see Eli Noam [1980]), and the agenda of
alternatives is determined by the citizens, thus constituting the relevant decision space.
Discussion provides information on the theory component, or the causal relationships
involved (Victor Vanberg and James Buchanan, 1989); it moreover constrains free-ridership and rent-seeking.
Discourse is claimed to lead to communicative rationality and to a shared view of what is normatively accept- able,
thus being an application of an ideal discourse as propagated especially by the German philosopher Jiirgen

While referenda do not fully meet the criteria of unprejudiced talk and
and nonpersuasive behavior among equals, every citizen who cares
may participate (in this sense it is nonhierarchical). Unlike the rather academic and institutionally unbound notion of the ideal discourse (John Dryzek, 1987), the pre-referendum discussion is practically
relevant, focused, and limited in time. It is in sharp contrast to instant referendum, electronic voting,
or teledemocracy, which simply register voters preferences. Empirical evidence supports the
contention that discussion strongly affects out- comes even though cheap talk (James
Habermas.2

nonstrategic

Johnson, 1993) should be ineffective following the traditional rationality point of view. The proportion of cooperators
in one-shot prisoners dilemmas increases dramatically from 26 percent to 73 percent when participants are
allowed to talk to each other prior to making their still independent choices. Behavior more in accordance with
generalizable than with narrow self-interest has also been observed in coordination and ultimatum games in
which the allocator keeps a smaller share of the prize for him- or her- self when a prior discussion has occurred

The positive effect of discussion on cooperation has

also been established for real-life common-property resource setting (Elinor Ostrom et al.,
1992). B. Formal Decision Stage The pre-referendum stage screens the alternatives to be
voted upon, reduces the number of relevant alternatives (often to two), and makes the preferences
more homogeneous, thereby lowering the chance that the preference-aggregation paradox will occur.
Discussion thus supports a structure-induced equilibrium. Constitutional considerations
(e.g., Richard Thaler, 1992; Frey, 1992).

demand that the decision rule has to be more restrictive the more important the issue to be decided upon is
(Mueller, 1993). This requirement is met in Switzerland. Changes in the federal constitution must be approved by
the majority of both the voters and the cantons; initiatives to change the federal constitutions are put to the vote
with the support of 100,000 citizens (about 2 percent of the electorate), while optional referenda concerning
changes in federal laws need only be supported by 50,000 citizens. C. Post-Referendum Stage

Participants in

the referendum process seek to predict the vote outcome and adjust the propositions in
order to attract voters in their favor. In Switzerland, many propositions do not reach the formal decision
stage but are withdrawn by the initiators when they realize that the government offers an alternative, which is likely

When surprises nevertheless do occur, the

government and parliament react to unexpectedly large minorities by at least partly
meeting their concerns. Such adjustments also tend to occur when there are marked
differences between the majority by voters and by regions (cantons). In that case, a new
initiative tends to be undertaken. Revised referendum outcomes due to changed
circumstances and discussion are not a weakness of direct democracy, but rather an
indication of a lively political process by which the participants gain new in- sights. A political vote is
to draw more votes (a so-called "counter-proposition).

not final, but rather an interim result of an ongoing process of deliberation (Habermas, 1992 p. 220).

Capitalism 1NC v K Aff

Representative democracy allows powerful political machines
to overwhelm the public referendum initiatives engage the
public and dismantle government overreach
Frey 94 [Bruno S. Frey, guest professor of Political Economy at Zeppelin University, former professor at the
University of Zurich and Business School of the University of Warwick; Direct Democracy: Politco-Economic Lessons
from Swiss Experience pg 340-341; The American Economic Review Vol 84 No 2; JSTOR; 05/1994; accessed
07/01/2015; <http://down.cenet.org.cn/upfile/55/200518181441127.pdf>.]
II. Breaking the Politicians Coalition Economists and rational-choice political scientists subscribe to Joseph

definition of democracy as the competitive

struggle by parties for votes. This characterization is adequate only for modern (twoparty) democracies at election time. Between elections the politicians have
considerable lee- way, in particular because the voters strongly discount past experience and in many
Schumpeters (1942) and Anthony Downss (1957)

countries have little or no possibility to punish politicians who exploit their discretionary room (see Frey, 1978). The
Schumpeter-Downs model of democracy needs to be complemented by a model in which ( between

elections) a coalition of all (established) politicians and parties stands against the
voters and taxpayers. Such a model of the political class deviates from models of exploitative government
(Geoffrey Brennan and Buchanan, 1980) be- cause the political class also includes politicians outside government.
As soon as a politician (party) enters parliament, he or she is they are drawn into the coalition. The members of
parliament are a well-defined group jointly reaping rents. They have (with exceptions) spent their lives together in
all kinds of meetings and sessions, committees and commissions. Outsiders entering parliament find it difficult if
not impossible to survive outside the coalition. A whole set of rules and institutions bolsters this coalition. The
seniority principle, or party discipline, robs members of parliament outside the coalition of the chance to enter
influential commit- tees, to speak in full session, and to receive public money and material support to carry out their

Picturing politicians as forming a coalition

against taxpayers and voters seems to be an apt illustration of representative
democracy between elections. It has indeed been argued for the United States that party
competition must be easily the most protected industry (Adam Przeworski and Fernando
Limongi, 1993 p. 59). Government and courts, including courts of accounts, constrain the coalition
of politicians only fractionally, since they not only lack the constitutional rights to do so, but also
have little incentive to oppose seriously the legislators on whom they depend in many ways.
The institution of popular referenda is a much more effective constraint on the
politicians coalition. Initiatives coming from the voters cannot be controlled by
political job effectively and to secure their reelection.

parliament; the agenda set- ting power is with the electorate. While parliaments take great efforts neither to
publicly discuss nor to vote on politicians salaries, pensions, and other privileges, initiatives may bring the issue to
the fore. In Switzerland, many initiatives at all levels of government effectively opposed politicians rent-seeking

More relevant
is the discretionary power from which the politicians benefit
indirectly at voters expense. Again, referenda provide an effective institution to
break the politicians coalition in this respect , as is illustrated by an historical episode in
(but voters were sometimes prepared to raise politicians incomes when they saw it justified).
than monetary rent-seeking

Switzerland (see Charles Blankart, 1993). During the 19th century, the Swiss House of Representatives (Nationalrat)
was elected according to majority rule, which strongly favored the then reigning Radical-Democratic Party.
Proportional representation was strongly rejected by the members of the classe politique for alternative, which is
likely to draw more obvious reasons of self-interest. Nevertheless, in 1918, a referendum induced by a popular
initiative was accepted by a majority of the population and cantons. In the subsequent election, new politicians and
parties came into the House, and the Radical-Democratic Party lost more than 40 per- cent of their seats. Instances

voters breaking the politicians cartel are no rarity: among the 250 referenda held
in Switzerland between 1848 and 1990, the majoritys will deviated from the stated will of
the parliament in 39 percent of the cases. Important examples in which the classe politique was solidly in
of

favor of a move but the electorate was strongly against are the decisions of whether to join the United Nations
(1986) and the European Economic Area (1992). Econometric analyses support the contention that direct
democracies have the stated effect on policy outcomes. Based on data of Swiss communes it has been shown that
the more developed the institutions of direct voter participation, the better the voters preferences for publicly
supplied goods are fulfilled and the more strongly public expenditure is determined by demand (i.e., by citizens
willingness to pay) rather than by supply factors, in particular by the politicians and bureaucrats own interests.
Moreover, public supply is less costly, and the share of public expenditures in GNP is smaller, the more direct

democratic institutions are used (ceteris paribus) (Werner Pommerehne, 1990). It is at least suggestive that
Switzerland with her direct democracy has a lower public-expenditure share than do other OECD-countries with
representative democracies. III. Concluding Remarks Cumulating research on the properties of popular referenda
has revealed two major aspects on which the economics of institutions has to focus. One is the importance of

the number of propositions and the

frequency of ballots must be low enough that the voters have an incentive and the
opportunity to collect and digest the respective information in order to participate
actively in the decision. The issues have to be put before the voters at the lowest federal level consistent
with fiscal equivalence. Also, rational voters only seriously engage in discussions if they
have a choice (i.e., referenda should not degenerate to plebiscites). The second crucial element is that direct
democratic institutions enable voters to break politicians and parties coalitions
directed against them. Direct participation serves to keep the ultimate agendasetting power with the voters. Initiatives and referenda are effective means by which the voters can
regain control over politicians; the widely held Madisonian fear of irresponsible voters and excesses of
the majority has no empirical basis in a well-chosen constitutional framework .
discussion in the pre-referendum stage. It implies that

Capitalism 2NC Buying Votes

Money has little proven influence in referenda voting patterns,
and turn the most popular option garners the most monetary
support, increasing access to popular majority viewpoints to
all participants
Stratmann 5 [Thomas Stratmann, Department of Economics, George Mason University; The
Effectiveness of Money in Ballot Measure Campaigns pg 103-104; Symposium on the Impact of Direct Democracy;
09/02/2005; accessed 07/03/2015; <http://www.gmu.edu/centers/publicchoice/faculty%20pages/stratmann/vitae
%20files/effectmoney.pdf>.]

those who are concerned that

interest groups have too much influence in the process.7 This side of the debate is concerned
about the influence of money on outcomes. Spending by wealthy or well-funded interests may
give those interests an advantage with respect to the passage or defeat of ballot measures over those
who do not have the financial means to present their views though an advertising campaign. Some claim that
if those who spend are more likely to win , than those without the financial means to
compete are limited in their political participation . David Broder for example, suggests that
the initiative process has become the favored tool of millionaires and interest groups that use
their wealth to achieve their own policy goals. 8 Broder continues to argue that initiative campaigns
On one side of the debate on money in ballot measure campaigns are

have become a money game, where average citizens are subjected to advertising blitzes of distortions and halftruths and are left to figure out for themselves which interest groups pose the greatest threats to their

academic literature has found little evidence

that interest groups can purchase their preferred policies through the initiative process. The
literature has found that money has only a small influence on whether initiatives pass .
selfinterest.9 As mentioned in the Introduction, the

Campaigning to maintain the status quo is more successful than campaigning to change it and successful

even if there was

evidence that the side which spends more money is also more likely to win, this does
not necessarily imply an inequality in access to political participation. The reason that the
winning side spends more simply reflects that this side represents the views of many
voters and thus was able to attract many funds.
campaigning in part depends on the type of interest groups involved. Moreover,

Expertism
Referendums especially key on the issue of cybersecurity key
to public investment, participation in programs, and
meaningful citizenry
Shane 12 [Peter M. Shane, Chair in Law at the Moritz College of Law of Ohio State University; Cybersecurity
Policy as if Ordinary Citizens Mattered: The Case for Public Participation in Cyber Policy Making pg 433-435;
Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society; 09/02/2012; accessed 07/01/2015; <
http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/students/groups/is/files/2012/02/9.Shane_.pdf>.]

The total abdication of cybersecurity policy to experts, however, has been, and continues
to be, a profound mistake. Given the ubiquity of computer networks and our
reliance as a society on their integrity and robustness, the quality of cybersecurity is an
issue that affects everyones interests. Excluding the general public from any
meaningful voice in cyber policymaking removes citizens from democratic
governance in an area where our welfare is deeply implicated. Further, as the papers in this
volume amply testify, the technologies and the processes entailed in cybersecurity
are costly, likely requir[e]ing significant public investment.2 Cybersecurity builds on practices
that include routines and procedures in the hands of ordinary individual computer users.3 Mobilizing citizen
backing for the requisite public investment in cybersecurity , and even more for the common
commitment to adopt responsible computing habits, will be substantially more difficult if people
have virtually no understanding of what they are being asked to do or to support .
Finally, the concern over decision-making competence is easy to overstate . The design of
cybersecurity involves technical choices requiring specialized competence, just as does the implementation of
environmental policy, biomedical research policy, or, for that matter, counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

the design of cybersecurity also implicates a series of choices among competing

values and priorities that are the ordinary stuff of politics . The lay publics
inability to address strictly technical or expert questions does not mean it is
incompetent to weigh competing policy answers to the general question, What should the
government do?4 Indeed, I would argue that an administration explicitly committed to
unprecedented levels of both transparency and collaboration 5 should regard
cybersecurity as offering an ideal opportunity to engage the public more meaningfully
in policy deliberation than has so far been the American norm. Models abound, both in other nations
use of citizen consultations to involve the public in technology-related policy making and in U.S.
experience with citizen consultation in environmental decision making.6 Not only do such models offer the
prospect of improving our cyber policy posture through public engagement, but meaningful
citizen engagement in this area of complex decision making could provide a pivotal model for
how to deepen the meaning of citizenship in the digital age.
But

The cult of the expert cedes political agency in the face of

economic collapse and climate change valuing the knowledge
of individuals and creating an inclusive political engagement
for all
Boyte 9 [Harry C. Boyte, founder and codirector of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship and Senior
Fellow at U Minnesotas Humphrey Institute; Civic Agency and the Cult of the Expert pg 1-3; A Study for the
Kettering Institute; 2009; accessed 07/07/2015; <http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED510128.pdf>.]

IN THE FACE OF MULTIPLYING GLOBAL CRISES, from economic collapse to global warming, many
signs of a politics that develops civic agency self-organizing, collective citizen efforts to solve
problems and create public things in open settings without tight prior scripts are also appearing. A civic
agency approach is built through what we call public work, based on a sense of the citizen as a
cocreator of a democratic way of life and a view that emphasizes politics productive as well
as participatory and distributive aspects. Such an approach is an alternative to

conventional ideological politics, on the one hand, and community service and volunteerism, on the
other. An alternative with rich emergent practices and concepts, it intimates the fulfillment of the vision of

We are also caught in a corrosive knowledge war that presents

On the one side are detached and technocratic
champions of the singular authority of scientific and disciplinary knowledgewhat might be
called the cult of the expert. Those of us in research universities are all too familiar with the posture
of the best and the brightest, bringing solutions to those viewed as ignorant,
passive, needy, and pitiable. As we have come to better understand the inner workings of higher
education, we have found that the expert cult is often a cover for deep insecurities
research faculty members are generally better understood as isolated and trapped
scholars than as arrogant know-it-all experts. But the consequences of detachment are
nonetheless dramatic. As Josiah Ober observes in Democracy and Knowledge, classical Athens had many
practices and methods of aggregating expert and amateur knowledge. In contrast, Contemporary practice
often treats free citizens as passive subjects by discounting the value of what they
know. . . . Willful ignorance is practiced by the parties of the right and left alike . An
humanizing an impersonal world.

a fierce obstacle to such civic politics.

Athenian brought by time machine to the present would see the cloistered expert approach to problem solving and

The cult of the

expert has many effects. Professionals have narrowed identities from civic to disciplinary
policymaking as both worse for democracy and less likely to benefit the community.2

no longer are most teachers or clergy or businessmen and women schooled to think of themselves as building the

Dominant models of knowledge making undercut the

moral and civic authority of forms of knowledge that are not academic wisdom passed
down by cultural elders, spiritual insight, local and craft knowledge, the common
sense of a community about raising children . As they do so, they also undermine the confidence,
civic life of a place through their work.

standing, and authority of everyday citizens without degrees and formally credentialed expertise. As former

one percent of Americans or less produce

the knowledge that counts. Institutions of many kindsfrom schools to nonprofits, businesses to
congregations, government agencies to universitieshave lost community roots. In consequence,
institutions have come to be conceived as abstract, bureaucratic, and largely impervious
to culture change, defined by rules, regulations, structures, and procedures, not as human creations
that can in turn be re-created. David Mathews, president of the Kettering Foundation, has made a strong
case for the community side of knowledge, which he calls organic politics, informal gatherings, ad
hoc associations, and the seemingly innocuous banter that goes on when people mull over the meaning of
their everyday experiences.3 Organic politics is open-ended, relational, and grounded in
local knowledge and shared agreements accumulated through experiences over time. It generates power to
and power with, not only power over. Community politics is narrative in quality . Like every person
within a community, it is unique and one-of-a-kind. But everyday citizens are not innocents in the
knowledge war. An anti-intellectual know-nothing culture of victimhood and grievance
has spread, especially dysfunctional for those in poverty or social isolation. Knownothing politics disparages academic knowledge , science, and professional practices in the
name of community and personal experience. This has been long developing. It was at the heart of
Occidental College president Ted Mitchell has observed,

the Reagan Revolution and it pervaded the G. W. Bush presidency. More recently, vice-presidential candidate
Sarah Palin was a case in point. The appeal of her message reflects an overlooked divide in America in recent
elections, differences in education levels were a far more salient factor in how people voted than income levels.4

We have to get beyond expert cults and aggrieved communities if we want to

develop civic agency, the capacities of people and communities to solve problems
and to generate cultures that sustain such agency . Community is the living context for
evaluating expert knowledge. But without engagement with other ways of knowing, appeal to
community knowledge produces a know-nothing reaction to the larger world. Sustained
interaction between different kinds of knowledge also requires reconceiving institutions
as living communities and dynamic cultures, with norms, values, practices, and patterns
that can be changed.

Politics
Avoids the link to politics even government sponsored
referendums doesnt place the impetus for decisionmaking on
legislators
DuVivier 6 [KK DuVivier; Professor of Law at University of Denver; The United States as a Democratic
Ideal?: International Lessons in Referendum Democracy p 842-844; University of Denver Sturm College of Law;
2006; accessed 07/01/2015; <http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?
ID=3730870700221010040870961201250130180170880250720630030740231270920241050021140990020450
160300420410270260000200840971200931270550810550540070930931071141
2107511105805801609809208410007506907009501206608207612312301912003108007711208509406707201
3&EXT=pdf&TYPE=2>.]

referendum procedures can vary along a

commentators characterize them mainly in the degree to which they
remove control over the making of laws from elected representatives and transfer it
to ordinary voters.139 The poles at either end of this continuum provide the two basic categories:
government initiated or citizen initiated.140 Government-sponsored referendums are
those drafted by a particular branch of the government . The choices range from the head of
A. Origin of Referendums: Government or Citizen Sponsored Although
continuum,

state or of government, the government as a whole, a majority or a minority of MPs, a particular number of
regional, cantonal or local assemblies.141 In most cases, the legislature is the responsible branch. A referendum
measure generally must receive the support of a majority of legislators to place it on the ballot.142 In some
countries, however, a minority party143 or executive144 has had the power to call for a referendum to bypass an

Government-sponsored matters vary considerably in content. Some

seek citizen validation of government actions.145 Others ask citizens to make
controversial decisions when the government cannot reach a consensus,146 allowing legislators to
avoid decisions that could generate negative political repercussions. 147 Because
political motivations often prompt governments to seek citizen votes , some commentators
unsupportive legislature.

have concluded that most governmentsponsored referendums offer a less valuable form of direct democracy than

governments increasingly have felt compelled to give their

citizens a voice even when that voice may not favor the current leaderships
position. For example, although most citizen votes to ratify the various treaties associated with European
citizen-initiated measures.148 Yet,

integration proceeded as government leaders planned,149 French and Dutch citizens derailed the EU Constitution
when they rejected their leaders positions and voted against ratification in recent referendums.150

Direct binding referendums mandate of the counterplan

become law once passed and dont go through other branches
of the government
DuVivier 6 [KK DuVivier; Professor of Law at University of Denver; The United States as a Democratic
Ideal?: International Lessons in Referendum Democracy p 845-848; University of Denver Sturm College of Law;
2006; accessed 07/01/2015; <http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?
ID=3730870700221010040870961201250130180170880250720630030740231270920241050021140990020450
160300420410270260000200840971200931270550810550540070930931071141
2107511105805801609809208410007506907009501206608207612312301912003108007711208509406707201
3&EXT=pdf&TYPE=2>.]
B. Effect of Referendums: Binding v. Advisory Referendum outcomes vary. Some bind or make their terms obligatory.

Binding
referendums compel governments to implement them.162 What the referendum
compels the government to do, however, depends on the process established. The
direct referendum provides the most common binding process and becomes
positive law once passed.163 Switzerland, Australia, and approximately half of the states in the
United States offer this direct referendum process .164 The opportunity for citizens to flex their
Others simply advise and allow legislators and executives to retain some discretion over implementation.

muscles in this way encourages use: Switzerland and Australia account for the most frequent referendums on a
national level.165 Likewise, Oregon, California, Colorado, North Dakota, and Arizona historically represent states
with the highest initiative use, and all offer direct initiative processes.166 Italy has used a unique version of the
direct initiative. Article 75 of Italys Constitution contains the referendum abrogativo, which allows citizens to nullify
legislation enacted at the national level.167 This veto can apply to all or portions of legislation. Because the process

allows citizens to negate actions by the legislature and because the threat of a referendum veto has often
motivated the parliament to act, commentators have argued that it has done much to serve the long-term
interests of the Italian people and has transformed Italy from a partyocracy to democracy.168 The effectiveness
of this process has made Italy the European country with the second highest use of referendums, surpassed only by
Switzerland.169

Republicans are showing support for national referenda

amendment Congressional majority means easy passage
Jones 13 [Jeffrey M. Jones, Gallup poll Managing Editor, assistant director and research fellow for the Hoover
Institution; Americans in Favor of National Referenda on Key Issues; Gallup; 07/10/2013; accessed 07/07/2015;
<http://www.gallup.com/poll/163433/americans-favor-national-referenda-key-issues.aspx>.]

at a time when Americans are highly frustrated with the federal

government. The reforms are three Dr. George Gallup promoted in a 1978 "Reader's Digest" article entitled "Six
The July 6-7 poll comes

Political Reforms Most Americans Want." In addition to the three reforms tested this month, the other reform ideas
Dr. Gallup advanced were congressional term limits, abolishing the Electoral College to elect the president based on
the popular vote, and campaign finance reform. Back then, a majority of Americans favored all six reforms. At
various times this year, Gallup has retested public support for the reforms using slightly different question wording
and format and found that half or more of Americans still favor each of them. In January, Gallup found 75% in favor
of term limits and 63% for abolishing the Electoral College. Last month, Gallup found 79% supporting overall limits

shows
national issue referenda, with 68% support , trailing term limits and campaign spending limits in
terms of popularity of the proposals. Like term limits, issue referendum procedures are currently in
place in many U.S. states, allowing voters to directly decide on key issues rather
than having elected representatives in the legislature decide all issues. Since Dr. Gallup's
on campaign spending and 50% backing a publicly financed campaign system. The latest update

time, primaries have grown and political conventions have decreased in importance in terms of choosing
presidential nominees. As primaries have grown in influence, numerous

reforms to the process have

been considered or been put into place . For example, both parties now allow Nevada and South
Carolina to hold early primaries to increase the racial, ethnic, and regional diversity of early primary state
electorates. Also, in 2012, the Republican Party introduced rules to discourage states from holding early primaries
to bring more order to the scheduling of primaries. The idea of a national primary has not been widely discussed in
recent years, perhaps out of deference to the political tradition of starting the presidential nominating process in
Iowa and New Hampshire. But, 58% of Americans are supportive of a nationwide primary to replace the current
structure of sequential state primaries run over a several-month period.

Republicans Somewhat More

Likely to Favor Reforms Although there are not large political differences in support for the three reforms
tested most recently, Republicans do show at least slightly more support for each than Democrats. The largest
party difference comes in the percentage favoring a national primary, which 69% of Republicans and 57%
Democrats support. Independents are less likely to favor a national primary and national issue referenda and
slightly more likely to favor a shorter presidential campaign than Republicans.

Poverty
Democratic inclusion is the only way to solve poverty and
limited political engagement
Weeks 14 [Daniel Weeks, former president of Americans for Campaign Reform and a fellow at the Edmond J.
Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University; How to Solve America's Democracy and Poverty Crisis; The Atlantic
Politics Division; 01/10/2014; accessed 07/06/2015; <http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/how-tosolve-americas-democracy-and-poverty-crisis/282983/>.]

people in poverty are at a serious, structural

disadvantage when it comes to making their voices heard and having their interests
represented in Washington. They are far from equal citizens in the public square. A democracy problem
requires a democracy solution. Just as the gains made during the first decade of the War on Poverty
However you slice and dice the numbers,

cannot be separated from another pair of bills Johnson signed into lawthe Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting

the work of combatting systemic poverty today confront the

lack of political equality for all. Fortunately, democratic-process reforms abound. If states
Rights Act of 1965so too must

are the laboratories of democracy, then we need look no further than American states that effectively enable their
citizens to participate in public life for examples to introduce to the nation as a whole. Not surprisingly,

politically inclusive states also experience considerably lower levels of poverty and
higher voter turnout than other states. Some reforms are simply a matter of equal
justice under law. Denying approximately 10 million taxpaying U.S. citizens the right to vote or voting
representation in Congress, because of a prior conviction or the district or territory in which they live, is morally and
constitutionally suspect. To right the first of these wrongs, all states should ensure that voting and other
constitutional rights are restored to people with felony convictions once they have completed their sentence and
reenter society. In no instance should a former felon be permanently disenfranchised under the Constitution. State
legislation or a constitutional challenge or amendment could accomplish this task. Likewise, Congress should pass a
law granting voting representation to Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the territories in the House and Senate. A
constitutional challenge or amendment based on Equal Protection could also accomplish the task.

Warming
Scientists alone cannot solve warming it takes direct
democracy and participation for sustained institutional change
Stewart 13 [Randal G. Stewart, policy scientist with a background in public policy, public affairs and
strategic planning specializing in policy formulation, institutional design, and issue management; Climate Change
in a New Democratic Age: Why we need more, not less, democratic participation pg 15; Perspectives; 12/2013;
accessed 07/06/2015;
<http://whitlam.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/544911/TWI4184_Perspectives_9_2a_LR.pdf>.]

Scientists, economists and environmentalists advocating a reduction in emissions in Australia have

failed to understand people in the digital age . Today, the people are active participants
in democracy, unthinkable in the Age of Representative Democracy just passed. John Keane (2009) calls it
monitory democracy by which he means the rules of representation, democratic
accountability and public participation are applied to a much wider range of settings
than ever before (Keane 2009: 690). Climate Change applies these rules to the role of
experts such as scientists, economists and environmentalists and subjects their deliberations to
unprecedented public scrutiny and even challenges what it means to be an expert .
This paper shows that scientists, economists and environmentalists have responded poorly to this new
age of democracy. They have approached climate change politics and policy on a business
as usual basis. They have treated the people not as self-regarding, curious, information rich, analysts like
themselves but as interest groups. They have tried to manage the people through the politics
of bluster and expertise, not by politics as network governance. They have not taken seriously
peoples ability to find things out for themselves and to analyse what is going on for and by them. The
approach of business as usual applied to climate change has simply raised doubts that have not been addressed.

lack of a commitment to broad participation has had the consequence of making

a sustained institutional change impossible. This paper has demonstrated that, at every
This

stage of the sequencing to a new institution, the epistemic coalition made catastrophic errors. The confused
narrative at critical juncture #1, mostly caused by the scientists conflating climate and weather, weakened
commitment to the collective norm of emissions reduction. The path not taken by economists at critical juncture #2
weakened the ability to disrupt the status quo and created a legacy of bifurcation that is with us today. The misuse
of the democratic technology of participation at critical juncture #3 by environmentalists doomed the legislated
carbon price to repeal. The failure by all these coalition members at critical juncture #4, to properly calculate
increasing and diminishing returns for people, both before and after repeal, means the inertia will continue.

Democracy will save the planet but only if influential, well intended change agents
take time to understand exactly how democracy works. The attitude of experts to
democracy expressed by one scientist (Sydney Morning Herald, 17 June, 2013:9) when arguing that we should leave

that It isnt our job to reconcile the politics of this with the science; we
are simply presenting the facts as we best know them cannot continue.
coal in the ground

Aff Answers

Theory

Perm Do Both Advisory

Perm do both have Congress pass the plan after putting forth
an advisory referendum to the public regardless of the
outcome of the referendum.
Advisory referendums pressure the government to act still a
form of direct democracy. Counterplan links to theory too
Congress would debate the results of all referendums, binding
or not. And, ensures solvency theyll never win 100% chance
the referendum passes
The permutation solves --- Advisory referendums allow direct
democracy while avoiding constitutional rollback.
Duvivier 2006
KK, assoc. prof. @ Univ. of Denver College of Law, THE UNITED STATES AS A DEMOCRATIC IDEAL? INTERNATIONAL
LESSONS IN REFERENDUM DEMOCRACY, Legal Research Paper Series, Working Paper No. 07-13,
http://ssrn.com/abstract= 960319

binding referendums may violate the legislative procedure established in the

Constitution, the Petition Clause appears to implicitly authorize use of advisory
referendums. The First Amendment explicitly provides citizens with the right to petition the government.314
Early cases acknowledged that the right to petition included a right to submit legislative
proposals. These same cases, however, made clear that the right to submit did not
come with a collateral obligation on the part of Congress to act. Nonetheless, in the early
Although

days of the Republic, Congress in fact had in place rules that made consideration mandatory. These internal rules
that required Congress to consider citizen petitions lasted only until 1836. In that year, Congress amended its rules
to prohibit receipt of any petitions addressing the abolition of slavery, effectively putting a gag on the topic.315

the Supreme Court

has indicated that the right to petition does not embody a corresponding right to a
response. In Smith v. Arkansas State Highway Employees Local 1315,317 the Court noted: The First Amendment
Although the constitutionality of the gag rule was never challenged in the courts,316

right to associate and to advocate provides no guarantee that a speech will persuade or that advocacy will be
effective. The public employee surely can associate . . . . But the First Amendment does not impose any affirmative
obligation on the government to listen, to respond or, in this context, to recognize the association and bargain with
it.318 Other cases have made similar pronouncements.319 Even though the right of petition may not include a right
of response, it still embodies more than the free speech right to address elected representatives.320 Although its
placement at the end of the First Amendment might make it appear to be an afterthought, in fact [p]etitioning was
the most important form of political speech the colonists had known, not just because of its expressive character,
but also because of the ways in which it structured politics and the processes of government.321 Consistent with
the Petition Clause, a system that permitted citizens to adopt advisory referendum petitions and submit them to
Congress would pose no threat to representative government.322 A citizen referendum could serve to meet this
petition function as a separate opportunity for citizens to submit to Congress a document with signatures

this advisory right would provide citizens an

opportunity to influence Congress and to participate more directly in their
democracy.
requesting legislative action.323 Moreover,

Intrinsic Perm
Perm: <Plan> and initiate a national level referendum on
<issue of PC based politics disad>. Solves the net benefit,
garners democracy. Obama can push on <aff> and have the
public pass <politics disad>.
<Card about the subject of the politics disad being popular
with the public>

Illegitimate/No legal precedent

No legal precedent current legislation doesnt allow for
national referenda in the United States
Fiat doesnt extend to illegal action must assume some form
of normal means for politics
Steinberg and Freely 5 [Austin J. Freely, Suffolk University, attorney who focuses on criminal and
civil rights law; David L. Steinberg, University of Miami director of debate, former president of CEDA, AFA and NCA
officer, lecturer in communication studies and rhetoric; advisor to Miami Urban Debate League; Argumentation and
Debate: Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decisonmaking pg 271; 13th Edition, Wadsworth; 2005; accessed
07/05/2015; <https://books.google.com/books?id=CC6urxsG4H4C&lpg=PR10&dq=argumentation%20and
%20debate%20critical%20thinking%20for%20reasoned%20decisionmaking&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false>.]

It is generally (but not universally) accepted that negatives have some

ability to assume fiat for implementation of their counterplans. One approach to negative fiat
is to assume that it is reciprocal: If the affirmative can fiat federal government action, so
can the negative. Another is to assume that the negative's fiat ground is based in alternative agents: If the
4.Counterplans and Fiat.

affirmative uses the federal government, the negative can use the states or the United Nations. Remember that

fiat is not a magic wand, that fiat must assume some normal means of
implementation, and that one cannot fiat workability.

Its a voter no way the affirmative can prepare to debate a

counterplan with no literature base. Predictability is the only
way we can ensure debates with sufficient clash for in depth
education

Solvency

Say No
Polls arent trustworthy metrics sample size, obscured
source, leading questions, biased additional information,
limited choices, misleading representations of results,
changing opinion, and tendency to avoid commitment
Messerli 12 [Joe Messerli, degree in Finance from University of Wisconsin, auditor for National Audit; Why
Polls Shouldnt Be Used To Make Decisions; 01/07/2012; accessed 07/03/2015;
<http://www.balancedpolitics.org/editorial-the_case_against_polls.htm>.] *Evidence has been gender modified
Is this a good thing? To a certain extent, yes, it is. After all, a politician is specifically elected to represent a
collection of people. Who would want an official in government who never listens to the people? Polls are a way to

Polls are
inherently bad vehicles for making a decision . Although they should always be taken into
make the voice of the individual citizen heard. Unfortunately, things aren't all that simple.

consideration, polls are a very poor way to determine the correct course of action. Let's examine the reasons

polls

have limited usefulness. Poll Results Aren't Always Reliable Polls can be inaccurate for a
number of reasons: Samples can be too small in size or unrepresentative of the population It's
normally too expensive or time-consuming to survey everyone in population; thus, we must rely on
samples to gauge the opinions of everyone . A reliable, scientific poll questions a large enough
sample of people to ensure statistical accuracy and includes a representative selection of respondents. Thus, a poll
designed to represent American public opinion wouldn't be very reliable if it only included 10 people or included

It's rare that news reports will mention details of the information sample
or how the survey was conducted. Viewers and readers usually just take the poll
results as fact. For example, what if I reported a poll that said 96 percent of Americans are pro-choice? This
only white males.

obviously doesn't reflect American public opinion, but if the source was a survey of the feminist magazine Bitch

A clever or sloppy journalist can obscure the source

and portray public opinion in an inaccurate way . Think about all the polls that are done today and
how easy results can become unrepresentative. Web polls exclude people without web access and
those who don't visit that particular site. Polls also exclude those that don't have the time or
interest to respond. Think about TV polls. Fox generally has more conservative viewers; CNN generally has
more liberal viewers. Thus, their polls results may be skewed to the conservative or liberal side
regardless of the issue. The chances for error or bias are endless. Polls can ask leading
questions Questions can be worded in a way that leads a respondent to an answer that
may or may not reflect his their true feelings. For example, I could ask the question "Do you want to
readers, the results would be understandable.

stop the war in Iraq so the lives of innocent civilians can be spared?" Virtually every American wants to prevent
innocent loss of life, so many respondents may answer yes to this question, even if they think the war is morally
just. But reporters summarizing the results may say "...95 percent of respondents answered yes when asked if they

The questioner can also surround the question with information

that biases the answer. For example, "Seventy percent of homeless shelter residents are single mothers
wanted to stop the war".

and their children. Should the next fiscal budget include an increase in funds to local shelters?" Respondents may

extra information points people in the

direction of one answer. Polls can omit some of the possible answers, leading to eitheror answers that don't reflect reality Answers to poll questions are often more complicated that yes-no
or among a small list of choices. For example, a poll may ask "Do you support a war with Iran?" The only
choices may be yes or no. But many people may say "Yes, but only if they are making nuclear weapons" or
believe the money is better spent on other areas, but the

"Yes, but only if it is sanctioned by the U.N." Another example is a consumer confidence question that asks, "Do you
consider yourself rich or poor?" Many people will want to answer something in between, but that isn't a choice.

People recording survey results may be dishonest or sloppy in recording results Whether
the poll is done in person, by phone, by mail, or by web, a human being usually has to eventually tally & report the

a human is prone to mistakes. If you're tallying

Even if a computer handles the tally, computers
are still programmed by humans. Second, the person may be dishonest and wants to
results. That causes problems for two reasons. One,

thousands of responses, you're bound to make mistakes.

achieve a certain result. For example, assume I'm a passionate advocate for banning the death penalty and am
taking a phone survey. A strong poll result showing the public in favor of a death-penalty ban may convince some
politicians to take action. When taking a poll, it's easy for me to put some extra chalk marks in the anti-death

penalty column even when people are answering pro-death penalty in the phone calls. Eventually, I may just

Poll results can be presented in a misleading way Most

news stories don't present the raw data behind a poll and let you draw your own conclusion.
Instead, the results will be presented in summary format as part of an analysis article. For example,
achieve the poll result that I want.

a poll question may ask "Do you support military action to unseat the Islamic fundamentalist regime of Iran (Yes |
No | Unsure)?" The raw data result may be: 29 percent support, 28 percent oppose, 43 percent unsure. The correct
conclusion to draw from this poll is that the public generally hasn't made up its mind or needs more information.
However, a biased reporter may selectively draw from the results and give the wrong impression. For example, "The
idea of military action against Iran is increasingly unpopular. A recent poll concluded that only 29 percent support
action, handcuffing the hawks of the Bush administration." Even if polls are scientifically accurate and are done by
unbiased, profession polling organizations, there are still other problems that make polls unreliable. Results Change
Daily Depending on the Latest News, Speeches, Moods, Etc. Public opinion follows a cyclical flow depending on the
latest current events and mood of the public. If you took a poll on 9/12/2001 asking what the President's primary
concern should be, over 90 percent of the public would answer the War on Terror. If you asked the same question
now, the War on Terror would likely finish behind the health care, energy prices, and the economy. This is just one
example of how public opinion changes constantly . The presidential approval rating almost always will
spike up in the aftermath of war or after a State of the Union address. After a particularly bad weekend in the Iraq
invasion in which several servicemen were captured, a helicopter crash occurred, and a few dirty Iraqi tactics
resulted in American deaths, polls showed that almost 60 percent of the public thought the initial phase of the war

you can't depend on public

opinion polls to make decisions when opinions are so wide and fleeting . The Toughest
would last over three months (it actually took 3 weeks). It's pretty clear that

Decisions are the Easiest to Put Off Most human beings are notorious procrastinators. Facing challenges or change

When decisions are too difficult to decide, the easiest thing to do is ignore
it, hoping it will go away, or leave it for someone else. All things being equal, people will usually take the
safer decision or the one that results in the least immediate sacrifice . Most public opinion
is never easy.

polls around the world showed a firm anti-Iraq war opinion even among people who thought Saddam would have to
be dealt with sooner or later. The choice came down to whether we deal with the hardship & risk now or do we deal
with it later. Naturally, most people chose later. Politicians are especially prone to putting off tough decisions since it
usually doesn't hurt their campaign to do nothing, but it may destroy their political careers if they make a choice
and it turns out to be wrong. Think of all the other tough decisions facing us. Do we remove affirmative action
policies? A politician may feel the removal is the best thing to do for the country, but any such removal would likely
alienate black voters; thus, he they puts off the decision. Any tough action is going to be vocally opposed by a
portion of the public. The courageous politician is one who will act. Leaders Influence Public Opinion Political leaders
shouldn't depend entirely on polls since they themselves have a significant impact on it. During the Iraq war
debate, Tony Blair faced polls showing almost 85 percent opposed the war without UN approval. However, he
steadfastly stuck to his guns, never wavering in his support. By the time the war had started, 50-60 percent of the
public backed him. Before President Bush gave his UN speech advocating the return of weapons inspectors, only 40
percent of the public backed a war in Iraq. By the start of the war, over 70 percent of Americans supported it. On
the flip side, war opposition continued to increase in countries such as France and Germany. Not coincidentally,
their leaders were vocally opposed to the war. National leaders receive loads of attention. When they persuasively
get their message out, public opinion polls can change dramatically. Clearly, they shouldn't depend on polls given
before a case has been made. The Public May Not Have All the Information that the Government Does It seems selfevident that a person should collect all relevant information before making a decision. That said, how many people
who vote in public opinion polls have all the relevant information? How many have researched the issue and
weighed all arguments for and against? How many have the historical, scientific, political, and economic
background knowledge? How many know of the behind-the-scenes political dealings and classified intelligence? The
answer to these questions is probably very few. Consider the Iraq war debate. Over 40 percent of the American
public couldn't identify Iraq on a world map before the debate started. Most didn't know (and still don't know) the
history of Saddam, the Iran-Iraq War, the first Persian Gulf War, the gassing of the Kurds, the former weapons
inspectors, etc. The government also had plenty of sensitive intelligence information including weapons of mass
destruction, terrorist connections, and Saddam's atrocities. Although a sizeable minority of people devoted the time
to diligently study the issue and come to an intelligent decision, most Americans were basing their decisions on
such things as whether or not they were Republican or Democrat. As the opening quote illustrates, making

Opinions of the Public

Aren't Always the Correct Ones Perhaps the greatest reason decisions shouldn't be
based on public opinion polls is that the general public is often outright wrong . The
decisions based on polls is based on the collective ignorance of the population.

vast majority of Germans supported the Nazis prior to World War II. Were their opinions correct? The vast majority of
colonial Americans thought blacks weren't much different from animals. Prior to the 1970s, the majority of
psychologists thought homosexuality was a psychological disorder; it even was classified in their Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Psychological Disorders. I'm willing to bet that less than 10 percent of Americans would have
answered 'yes' to the question "Is Islamic terrorism a significant threat to national security?" on 9/10/2001. Clearly,

there are too many factors left to chance when a politician depends on public
opinion polls. The 9/11 carnage and the dancing celebration of liberated Iraqis have shown us that we need

leaders who will put their political careers on the line to do what's right. The very definition of a leader is one who

will do what he or she they knows is right, no matter what the election impact. A leader's relevant decision makers
should be his their heart and mind, not his their political consultants and Gallup polls readouts.

No solvency The public says no Special interest groups use

fear tactics to manipulate voters.
Rourke et al. 1992
John, University of Connecticut, Richard Hiskes, and Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh, Direct Democracy and International
Politics, pg. 58-59
A terrifying variant of this general argument made by Magleby is provided by Bachrach, who says his personal

Americans today are inadequately

experienced in making decisions about complicated policies and argues that
referendums are most likely to occur when selfish minorities that have money,
organization, and rhetorical skills enlist the support of large majorities through
"hate" campaigns that play upon the majorities' unreasoned fears . Bachrach contends that
recent domestic referendums on busing, pornography, and abortion illustrate just how
manipulative referendums can be.5 One can easily extend Bachrach's argument to
the realm of foreign policy, saying that today's international-issue referendums are
tools of well-organized and well-financed groups trying to manipulate everyday
voters on issues where their emotions run high and their knowledge is low. Such issues
political theorizing is strongly democratic. He believes that

might include foreign aid, support for the United Nations, escalation of defense expenditures, and undertaking
"winnable" wars.

1AR Say No
---Independently, elite manipulation of the referendum process
destroys direct democracy.
Martin 1996
Brian, Democracy without Elections, Social Anarchism, Number 21, 1995-96, pp. 18-51.
In practice, referendums have been only supplements to a policy process based on elected representatives. But it is
possible to conceive of a vast expansion of the use of referendums, especially by use of computer technology [14].
Some exponents propose a future in which each household television system is hooked up with equipment for direct
electronic voting. The case for and against a referendum proposal would be broadcast, followed by a mass vote.
What could be more democratic? Unfortunately there are some serious flaws in such proposals. These go deeper
than the problems of media manipulation, involvement by big-spending vested interests, and the worries by experts

A major problem is the setting of the

agenda for the referendum. Who decides the questions? Who decides what material is
broadcast for and against a particular question? Who decides the wider context of voting? The
fundamental issue concerning setting of the agenda is not simply bias. It is a
question of participation. Participation in decision-making means not just voting on
predesigned questions, but participation in the formulation of which questions are
put to a vote. This is something which is not easy to organise when a million people are involved, even with the
latest electronics. It is a basic limitation of referendums . The key to this limitation of referendums is
the presentation of a single choice to a large number of voters. Even when some citizens are involved
in developing the question, as in the cases of referendums based on the process of
citizen initiative, most people have no chance to be involved in more than a yes-no
capacity. The opportunity to recast the question in the light of discussion is not available.
and elites that the public will be irresponsible in direct voting.

1AR A2: Polls

---General preferences dont translate into approval.
Magleby 1994
David, prof. at Brigham Young Univ, Direct Legislation in the American States, Referendums Around the World, p.
256

Much of the battle of direct legislation is definition: which side can more effectively
define the issue for voters in ways they will understand and remember . This often means
that the campaign on an initiative focuses on only one part of the actual proposal. It is therefore problematic
to conclude that the vote on a particular initiative or referendum reflects an
understanding of the issue more broadly defined. The American system , reflecting the
antirepresentative views of the Progressives, allows voters to vote on the text of laws rather
than on general policy questions. As a result, voters may prefer a policy but reject
an initiative that embodies that policy.

---Polls dont predict ballot-box results --- Campaigns and

consequences change minds.
Butler & Ranney 1994
David, American Enterprise Institute and Austin, prof. emeritus @ UC Berkeley, Referendums Around the World,
Theory, p. 262
These outcomes militate against the contention that opinion polls offer an economical substitute for referendums.

many people vote

differently when faced with a choice of government in a general election from the
way they vote in a by-election, when only a single seat is at stake and the voters can send a message to
elected leaders without going so far as to remove them from office. Similarly, voters may say one
thing to a pollster when they know what they say will not have any real-life
consequences, but they may well say another at the end of a serious referendum
campaign, when they know that the outcome will control what government does or
refrains from doing.
Opinion polls do offer a continuous measure of public opinion on major issues. But

Delay
Direct democracy causes overwhelming delays
Maduz 2010
Linda, University of Zurich, Center for International and Comparative Studies, Direct Democracy, Living Reviews in
Democracy, http://democracy.livingreviews.org/index.php/lrd/article/viewFile/lrd-2010-1/21
Studies concluding that direct democracy has an overall beneficial effect on a countrys economy are challenged by
scholars, such as Borner and Rentsch (1997) whose research focuses on direct democracys effects on economic
growth. According to their

direct democratic instruments compromise the

conditions that allow an economy to grow successfully. The existence of a direct
democratic system would have a negative impact on a countrys capacity to
innovate and to adapt to changing circumstances; it would give interest groups the power to
slow down reform processes and may even enable them to render a coherent and
consistent strategy impossible. In this perspective, direct democracy is presented as a danger for stable,
foreseeable framework conditions. The primacy of popular sovereignty would lead to
arbitrariness in state actions, and hinder the political system in the setting of clear
priorities. The uncertainty related to such a political system would also negatively
impact on a countrys external relations another factor considered to be vital for the
prosperity of a countrys economy. As a particularly striking example in this context Borner and
theoretical argumentation and empirical findings,

Rentsch cite Switzerlands rejection of entering the European Economic Area in 1992, which, according to them, can
be traced back to the countrys institutional setting, i.e. Switzerlands direct democratic system.

Rollback
Binding referendums are unconstitutional and will be rolledback.
Duvivier 2006
KK, assoc. prof. @ Univ. of Denver College of Law, THE UNITED STATES AS A DEMOCRATIC IDEAL? INTERNATIONAL
LESSONS IN REFERENDUM DEMOCRACY, Legal Research Paper Series, Working Paper No. 07-13,
http://ssrn.com/abstract= 960319
A.

A system that would permit citizens

to pass binding referendums would not pass constitutional muster absent
an amendment to the Constitution. The Constitution provides no express mechanism for these
Constitutional Prohibitions Against Binding Referendums

types of initiatives. Such an approach also conflicts directly with the method of government ensconced in
the Constitution.302 To become law, both the House and the Senate must pass proposed legislation, and
the President must sign it into law. A mandatory referendum presumably would bypass this process and

Past efforts to end-run the Presidents

power to veto legislation have not fared well. In INS v. Chadha,303 the United States
circumvent congressional and presidential approval.

Supreme Court declared that unilateral action by the House of Representatives could not invalidate
decisions by the Executive Branch.304 Such a one-House veto is unconstitutional, the Court reasoned,
because the prescription for legislative action in Art. I, 1, 7, represents the Framers decision that the
legislative power of the Federal Government be exercised in accord with a single, finely wrought and

Similarly, the Supreme Court has invalidated

efforts to diminish Congresss role in the legislative process. In Clinton v. New
exhaustively considered, procedure.305

York,306 the Supreme Court concluded that the Line Item Veto had the legal and practical effect of
allowing the President to repeal portions of legislation without following the constitutional procedure of
vetoing an entire bill.307 Consequently, the Court concluded that the Acts cancellation provisions violate
Article I, 7, of the Constitution.308 Also, because the Line Item Veto Act does not follow the finely
wrought procedure commanded by the Constitution, the Court did not find it necessary to address the
District Courts alternative holding that the Act impermissibly disrupts the balance of powers among the

A mandatory citizen referendum, therefore, likely

would meet the same fate at the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. To the extent
three branches of government.309

such a referendum mandated the adoption of legislation and sidestepped both Congress and the President,
Chadha and Clinton strongly indicate such a measure would not survive constitutional scrutiny.

Referendums fail history of courts overturning depresses

confidence in democratic ideals
Magleby 98 [David B. Magleby; professor of Political Science at Brigham University; Ballot Initiatives and
Intergovernmental Relations in the United States pg 151-152; The State of American Federalism Vol 28 No 1;
Winter 1998; accessed 07/01/2015; <http://mavdisk.mnsu.edu/parsnk/2011-12/Pol680-fall11/POL
%20680%20readings/direct%20democracy-%20wk%209/ballot%20initiatives.pdf>.]

initiatives face another high hurdle prior to implementation: an almost certain

constitutional challenge. State courts are often first involved in adjudicating disputes concerning the
Successful

electoral rules of direct legislation.'6 The Progressives were so distrustful of intermediary institutions that they
minimized the role of elected officials in overseeing the process. Hence, disputes about signature collection and

State
courts also regularly rule on the constitutionality of successful initiatives . State and
federal courts have often overturned a vote of the people on either state or federal
constitutional grounds. The legal challenge to successful initiatives generally arises
immediately after the election and can delay implementation of an initiative for
years. The willingness of the state and federal judiciaries to invalidate initiatives has
generated controversy. In California, the frequency of the state supreme court's rejection of initiatives
verification, ballot title and summary, and subject-matter limitations are routinely referred to state courts.17

played a role in defeating Chief Justice Rose Bird and two associate justices in a judicial retention election in 1986.
Because the federal judiciary is more independent, UCLA law professorJulian N. Eule believes the federaljudiciary
should decide the constitutionality of initiatives.'8 Others contend that fear of defeat injudicial retention
elections means state court judges are less inclined to declare entire initiatives unconstitutional, opting instead to

The willingness of federal courts to overturn state

initiatives on U.S. Constitutional grounds is an important manifestation of
invalidate only parts of the measures.

federalism. This assertion of federal constitutional supremacy over the vote of the
people was expressed forcefully in the landmark 1964 California open-housing initiative
decision. The U.S. Supreme Court and the California Supreme Court agreed that the proposition violated the
equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.20 Chief Justice Warren Burger observed: "It is
irrelevant that the voters rather than a legislative body enact [this law] because the
voters may no more violate the Constitution by enacting a ballot measure than a legislative
body may do so by enacting legislation."21 Federal courts have struck down successful initiatives on the death
penalty, abortion, homosexual rights, term limits, physician-assisted suicide, and illegal immigration. Criticism
of federal judicial review has been expressed in the two most recent Congresses
where legislation passed in the House in 1995 to require that any challenge to a statewide referendum should be
referred to a panel of three judges not one.22 There has even been some skirmishing between appellate and district

A three-judge appellate panel wrote against a federal district judge who

system which permits one judge to block with a
stroke of the pen what 4,736,180 [actually 5, 268,462] state residents voted to enact as law
tests the integrity of our constitutional democracy ."23
courts in the federal system.

enjoined Proposition 209 (affirmative action): "A

1AR Constitutional Rollback

---Cp is unconstitutional & gets rolled back.
Duvivier 2006
KK, assoc. prof. @ Univ. of Denver College of Law, THE UNITED STATES AS A DEMOCRATIC IDEAL? INTERNATIONAL
LESSONS IN REFERENDUM DEMOCRACY, Legal Research Paper Series, Working Paper No. 07-13,
http://ssrn.com/abstract= 960319
Citizen participation in national affairs through referendums has a long tradition in Europe, and the trend toward
allowing participation keeps increasing worldwide. Nevertheless, the United States, once a leader in the concept of
democracy, has fallen behind and now rests as one of only four major democracies in the world that have never

Implementing a system of mandatory citizen-initiated

referendums could not survive constitutional challenge in the United States. The
efforts of the Founding Fathers to devise a government with limited direct
democracy effectively blocked efforts in this direction . Nonetheless, an avenue for direct
held a nationwide referendum.300

democracy remains available. Under the Petition Clause of the First Amendment, the United States could institute,
without amending the Constitution, a system of citizen-initiated nonbinding referendums.301

Delay
History proves national referenda are impossible 108 failed
proposals, too radical, no precedent for amending the
constitution, and unbalances Federal v. State power
Polhill 14 [Dennis Polhill, Senior Fellow in Public Infrastructure at the Independence Institute writing on the
role of democracy in the United States; The Issue of a National Initiative Process; Initiative & Referendum Institute
at the University of Southern California; 2014; accessed 07/07/2015; <http://www.iandrinstitute.org/National
%20I&R.htm>.]

At the Congressional level, between 1895 and 1943, 108 proposals to amend the
U.S. Constitution by adding national I&R were submitted . Seven would have created a general
I&R, that would have allowed for consideration of any issue. The others created I&R for specific issues only or that
had issue-specific prohibitions. For example, Abourezk would not permit the declaring of war, calling up troops, or
amending the constitution and would permit statutory modifications by Congress with a two-thirds majority or

Implementation of national I&R is more complicated in the

U.S. than in other nations due to the unique Constitutional division of
responsibilities between the Federal and State governments . In most countries, governments
simple majority after two years.

are centralized to either a greater or lesser extent. Other variations of national I&R that have been proposed in the
U.S. include: The first proposal for national I&R was in 1895 by Populist Party U.S. Senator William Peffer from
Kansas. It provided for a national vote on an issue when 20% of voters nationwide or 20% of state legislatures
requested it. In 1907 U.S. Representative Elmer Lincoln Fulton from Oklahoma suggested that 8% of the voters in
each of 15 states could put either a constitutional amendment or statute proposal to a national vote or that 5% of
the voters in each of 15 states or their state legislatures could challenge a statute passed by Congress. In 1911

Bristow from Kansas proposed that the Initiative be used to reign in the court. Any
law held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court would go to a vote of the people . This
Senator

was the first proposal for using I&R as the method by which to reconcile conflicts between the equal branches of the

Berger of Wisconsin introduced the most radical

would have abolished the Presidency, the Senate and the Supreme

Federal government. Socialist Party U.S. Representative Victor

proposal ever. It

Court. Five percent of the voters in three-fourths of the state could propose a law or challenge a law passed by
Congress. U.S. Senator Bob La Follette from Wisconsin in 1916 proposed a non-binding national
advisory referendum that would be held when 1% of the voters in 25 states
petitioned. The National approach would require some percentage (usually in the
range of 3%) of voters nationwide to sign a petition . Because elections are managed
by the states and there are no national voter rolls or other election systems, leaving states out of
the process would require changes in election management. Nullification advocates in the 1980s and 1990s
suggested that Federal statutes should go to a nationwide vote when 10% of the voters in 1/3 of the states sign a
petition challenging it. Nullification proposals were in reaction to unfunded mandates and directives imposed
upon the states by Congress. A nullification mechanism would effectively be a national application of the
referendum petition or challenge petition.

Even if Congress did propose an amendment, chances of

passage are low, time consuming, and undercut democracy
Gorham 11 [Will S. Gorham, news researcher and online editor, former staffer in the United States Senate;
Of 11,000 attempts to amend U.S. Constitution, only 27 amendments have passed; Politifact; 08/30/2011;
accessed 07/07/2015; <http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/aug/30/xavier-becerra/11000attempts-amend-us-constitution-only-27-amend/>.]

Amendments can be proposed two ways: in Congress or by a national convention

assembled at the request of the two-thirds of the states legislatures. The national convention approach has
been attempted twice but has never been successful. So the successful amendments have all
originated in Congress. And according to a congressional tally, Becerra is just about right on target:
Congress has considered "approximately 11,372 amendments" from 1789 through
December 31, 2008, the most recent tally available, according to the Statistics and Lists section of the United
States Senate website. Why is it "approximately" 11,372? The site says that's because of a number of factors,

Of those 11,372 proposed

only 27 have been approved by Congress and ratified by the states . Why

including inadequate indexing of legislation in the early years of Congress.

amendments,

amending the Constitution is "an

extremely complicated process" and an amendment "essentially only gets adopted
when theres a broad national consensus on the issue." University of Pennsylvania law
professor Kermit Roosevelt agreed, noting that "the founders wanted the bar set high because
they believed that most issues should be left to the ordinary political process . A
constitutional amendment takes an issue away from the normal process of
democratic politics, quite likely forever. So it makes sense to require an extraordinary consensus to
resolve it permanently." Most proposals arent inspired by a broad national consensus, however. The
motivation for introducing a constitutional amendment is often political . "Every time the
such a low success rate? Senate Historian Donald Ritchie told us that

Supreme Court makes a ruling some member of Congress doesnt like, someone pushes for a constitutional
amendment on the matter," Ritchie told us. For example, the day after the Supreme Court ruled flag burning to be
protected speech in 1989, U.S. Rep. Michael Bilirakis, R-Fla., introduced an amendment outlawing desecration of the
flag. Amendments to ban flag burning have been introduced in every session of Congress since, spanning more
than two decades. Many amendments are introduced many times. An amendment defining marriage as between
one man and one woman has been introduced numerous times in the last decade, including four times in a single
session of Congress. Some are introduced many times but with variations. Following the terrorist attacks of Sept.
11, 2001, members of Congress introduced amendments that would provide for the continuity of Congress in the
event of a sudden mass vacancy in the Capitol. The amendments varied on what constituted that "mass vacancy"
and how replacement lawmakers would be chosen. None of the amendments passed. Back to Becerra. He was
correct that only a tiny percentage of amendments ultimately pass and are ratified . He
said 11,000; the official count puts the number at approximately 11,372. That's close enough to earn a True.

Experts Key
Only experts have the capability to understand rapidly
changing technology relevant to surveillance and understand
intelligence gathering and law enforcement missions with a
comprehensive background
Clarke et. al 13 [Richard A. Clarke, former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection,
and Counter-terrorism for the United States; Michael J. Morell, former deputy director of the Central Intelligence
Agency, serving as acting director twice in 2011 and from 2012-2013; Geoffrey R. Stone, American law professor at
U Chicagos Law School and noted First Amendment scholar.; Cass R. Sunstein, American legal scholar, particularly
in the fields of constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, and law and behavioral economics; Peter
Swire, Nancy J. and Lawrence P. Huang Professor in the Scheller College of Business at the Georgia Institute of
Technology and internationally recognized expert in privacy law; Report and Recommendations of The Presidents
Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies; Liberty and Security in a Changing World pg
120-121; 12/12/2013; accessed 07/07/2015; <https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2013-1212_rg_final_report.pdf>.]

the government should commission a study of the legal and policy

options for assessing the distinction between metadata and other types of information. The study should
include technological experts and persons with a diverse range of perspectives,
including experts about the missions of intelligence and law enforcement agencies
and about privacy and civil liberties . Are there any circumstances in which the government should be
We recommend that

permitted to collect and retain meta-data in which it could not collect and retain other information? One question
concerns the meaning of metadata. In the telephony context, meta-data refers to technical information about
the phone numbers, routing information, duration of the call, time of the call, and so forth. It does not include
information about the contents of the call. In the e-mail context, meta-data refers to the to and from lines in

The assumption
behind the argument that meta-data is meaningfully different from other information is that
the e-mail and technical details about the e-mail, but not the subject line or the content.

the collection of meta-data does not seriously invade individual privacy. As we have seen, however, that assumption

is questionable. In a world of ever more complex technology, it is increasingly

unclear whether the distinction between meta-data and other information carries
much weight.120 The quantity and variety of meta-data have increased. In contrast to the telephone call
records at issue in the 1979 case of Smith v. Maryland, 121 todays mobile phone calls create meta-data about a
persons location. Social networks provide constant updates about who is communicating with whom, and that
information is considered meta-data rather than content. E-mails, texts, voice-over-IP calls, and other forms of
electronic communication have multiplied. For Internet communications in general, the shift to the IPv6 protocol is
well under way. When complete, web communications will include roughly 200 data fields, in addition to the

Although the legal system has been slow to catch up with these
major changes in meta-data, it may well be that, as a practical matter, the
distinction itself should be discarded. The question about how to govern content and
meta-data merits further study. Such a study should draw on the insights of
technologists, due to the central role of changing technology . Economists and
other social scientists should help assess the costs and benefits of alternative approaches. The study should
include diverse persons, with a range of perspectives about the mission of intelligence and
law enforcement agencies and also with expertise with respect to privacy and civil
liberties.
underlying content.

No Turnout
The U.S. has a referendum turn out problem cant gather
enough participation until the 2016 election, and voters will
fail to cast a vote on the referendum, at best a solvency deficit
and at worst a takeout
Le Duc 6 [Lawrence LeDuc, political science professor at the University of Toronto; Referendums and
Deliberative Democracy pg 19-20; prepared for presentation at the International Political Science Association World
Congress; 07/09/2006; accessed 07/06/2015; <http://paperroom.ipsa.org/papers/paper_5268.pdf>.]

Turnout tends to fluctuate more widely in referendums than it does in national elections. In general,
it tends to be lower, but can sometimes rise to much higher levels when a particular issue engages wide
voter interest or when a more intense campaign is waged by interested groups. When turnout is low, the
ability to mobilize ones own supporters counts for more. When it rises, it is generally because the
issue itself is perceived as an important one for most voters, sometimes generating new sources of participation.
Some important referendums in which turnout registered higher than that of a comparable national election are the
1994 EU membership referendum in Norway, both Quebec sovereignty referendums, the 1992 Canadian
constitutional referendum, and the Danish and Swedish referendums on the Euro (table 6). But there are also
several cases in which turnout was very low in comparison with the levels generally obtained in elections. The
Spanish referendum on the EU constitution drew a participation of only 42 percent of the electorate 35 percentage
points lower than in the general election of the pervious year. Turnout in both Irish referendums on the Nice treaty
was very low in comparison with national elections, and the low turnout of only 35 percent of voters in the first
(2001) referendum was widely blamed for the defeat of the treaty. Polls in the run-up to the referendum shown a
majority of the Irish public in support of the treaty. But the combination of low levels of information regarding its
content, a lackluster campaign, and widespread disinterest 20 in the vote combined to defeat it. Turnout is often
also low in Swiss initiative and referendum votes, sometimes even falling below 40 percent. But turnout also tends
to be low in Swiss elections, and referendum participation is frequently higher than electoral participation,
depending on the salience of the particular issue being considered. In the case of the 2002 initiative on UN
membership, for example, turnout was a full 13 percent higher than in the federal assembly election held the
following year. It was also higher than that recorded for any other initiative votes held in 2002, which ranged as low

Turnout is also a
serious problem in many of the initiative and referendum votes held in the U.S.
states. Typically, such items appear on an electoral ballot together with a vote for other
public offices. But the turnout then depends largely on the election in which the vote is
occurring, and not on the propositions per se. Because turnout in U.S. presidential elections tends to
be higher than in off year or state elections, items that appear on a presidential ballot achieve
higher levels of participation . In the two California examples considered here (see table 3), the basic
as 42 percent in the vote on two other items held only three months later (table 2).

turnout of voters in the 2004 presidential election in the state was 57 percent, compared to 36 percent in the 2002

turnout
on U.S. ballot propositions must also be measured in terms of the total vote cast on
the specific item, rather than as a percentage of those going to the polls, since
many voters will fail to vote on some or all of the propositions appearing on the
ballot. A drop-off of as much as ten percent is fairly typical, but for some
propositions it can be much higher. In the 2002 vote for example, the total vote cast on the court
election when seven propositions were on the ballot together with state and Congressional offices. But

consolidation proposal (proposition 48) was 14 percentage points lower than in the election as a whole, meaning
that only 22 percent of the eligible California electorate cast a vote on this item. Although 73 percent voted YES on
proposition 48, it can nevertheless be said that this decision was effectively made by only 16 percent of eligible
California voters.

Precedents
Their evidence creates democracy in the context of long term
referendum use. The counterplan can only fiat one
referendum, not long term referendum use.

Net Benefits

2AC A2: Direct Democracy Impact

---National referendums dont result in direct democracy
(A.) Party politics.
Cox, Their Author, 2012
William John, retired police officer, prosecutor, public interest lawyer, author and political activist, A Peaceful
Political Evolution, http://thevoters.org/

As effective as a national referendum may be to establish government policy, little good will
come of it unless those we elect are forced to pay attention to our interests and to
actually carry out our policies. As it is, presidential candidates say one thing and do
another to the extent they believe they can get away with it, and because of party
politics, we keep getting stuck with having to decide upon the lesser of two evils.

(B.) Low voter turnout.

Landow 2011
Charles, associate director of the Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy Initiative at the Council on Foreign
Relations, Direct Democracy and Its Dangers, http://www.cfr.org/democracy-and-human-rights/direct-democracy-itsdangers/p23763

popular policymaking has significant drawbacks. First, an initiative said to be

approved by "the people" might well be approved by only a small percentage. The
But

recent Swiss initiative on expelling criminals, for example, passed with 52.9 percent of the vote in a referendum

this is a serious
shortcoming -- but it is all the more damaging for popular referendums given the
common assumption that direct democracy conveys the people's views .
with 52.6 percent turnout. Of course, the same thing happens in elections, and

(C.) Discursive barriers.

Hendriks 2009
Carolyn M., Crawford School of Economics and Government @ Australia National University, Securing public
legitimacy for long-term energy reforms, PUBLIC POLICY NETWORK CONFERENCETHE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL
UNIVERSITY, CANBERRA29-30 JANUARY
These proposals offer useful options for how to improve the legitimacy (and accountability)of governing long term

There are, however, some particular challenges with these democratic solutions,
most notably the difficulties in determining and incorporating the views of those
potentially affected by policies, such as futuregenerations. Further, when there are varying degrees of
energy reforms.

affectedness, should those mostaffected have more say, and if so, who determines degree of affectedness?

Perhaps the most serious limitation of these democratic strategies is their feasibility
in any given policy context. In my empirical work of the Netherlands I have found that it is often the
discursive barriers that influence the extent to which democratic matters are taken
into consideration in energy reforms, for example negative ideas on the publics
capacity and willingness to engage in policy issues (Hendriks 2009b).

2AC A2: Direct Democracy First

---Direct democracy has no intrinsic benefit --- Democratic
participation cannot be separated from larger assessment of
aggregate consequences.
Budge 1996
Ian, Prof @ U. of Essex, The New Challenge of Direct Democracy, p. 34

Proponents of participation on the other hand have tended to feel that once the moral case for it
was made - and it is, probably, unanswerable - this was all they had to do. But in a multi-valued world
where stability, order and justice might be argued to be the first concerns of the
State, the effects of unlimited participation on these and other values have to be
weighed up. This is what critics of direct democracy have done when they have
ventured beyond their opening feasibility gambit. And they have a point. If
participation, however valuable in itself, has negative effects on other values, then
it may need to be limited to secure a balance of benefits . Whether this is in fact the case we
shall see in the following chapters.

Democracy
Referendums are tools of the elite which advance
discriminatory and nationalist policies empirics prove
Koinova 14 [Dr. Maria Koinova, Associate Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of
Warwick; Referendums: A Legitimate Democratic Tools or a Mechanism for Nationalist Cooptation[sic]?; Research
on South Eastern Europe; 06/08/2014; accessed 07/06/2015; <http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsee/2014/06/08/referendumsa-legitimate-democratic-tool-or-a-mechanism-for-nationalist-co-optation/>.]

referendums to legitimate policies. But how

democratically legitimate are such policies indeed? As a tool of direct democracy in
contrast to representative democracy referendums are considered highly authoritative because
they allow for an unmediated expression of the popular will . But, as Qvortrup (2014) argues,
referendums are considered legitimate, when the rules of their engagement are
negotiated between the stakeholders in advance, and the referendum is conducted
afterwards. This was definitely not the case in the recent referendums in Ukraine, nor in other historical cases,
This is an indisputably wide range of using

when benign and not-so-benign autocrats threatened domestically or internationally have used referendums to

communist leader Michael Gorbachev resorted

to the use of referendum, as did nationalist leaders of the disintegrating Yugoslavia. I take this discussion
further and focus particularly on the relationship between referendum and liberal
democracy. In the past decade and especially after the economic crisis hit Europe and other parts of the world,
anti-migrant and anti-minority sentiments have been growing, and populist and
ultranationalist parties have been thriving . Operating in political systems with no viable
alternative to democracy, such nationalist and exclusivist groups have been
adapting to the established democratic rules of the game, and seeking to co-opt
them. They have been using the procedure of referendum, or the threat of a referendum, to justify
their nationalist goals. In the processes, they have been undermining liberal democracy .
justify their policies. At the end of the Soviet Union the

Let me demonstrate this argument by way of some examples. In my recently published book Ethnonationalist
Conflict in Postcommunist States (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), I discuss the role of the Macedonian
diaspora, primarily from Australia, which inaugurated a civic referendum together with the Macedonian nationalist
VMRO-DPMNE party in 2004. They wanted to oppose the decentralization reforms aimed at giving more selfgovernment rights to the minority Albanians in Macedonia. The referendum asked voters whether they supported a
proposal to retain the municipal boundaries existing before the Ohrid Framework Agreement which put an end to
the brief 2001 internal warfare between Albanian guerrillas and the Macedonian army. The EU and the US put
enormous efforts to keep the voters away from the polls. The EU launched a massive public campaign linking
nonparticipation in the referendum with commitment to EU integration. The US provided a highly tangible benefit by
recognizing the country with its constitutionally proclaimed name. The referendum went ahead, but gathered only
27% turnout, and eventually failed. Thus, the ruling coalition was further enabled to introduce decentralization
reforms. The EU exerted similar pressure to prevent the conduct of a referendum in Republika Srpska, a constitutive

2011 for the inauguration of a

referendum to reject Bosnias state war crimes court and special prosecutors office established in 2005 by
international decree. This presented one of the most serious crises that Bosnia-Herzegovina experienced
with the EU after the Dayton Peace Accords (1995), since the referendum attempted to roll back the
existing democratic achievements. If the referendum were in fact conducted, it would have resulted in
part of Bosnia-Herzergovina. Milorad Dodik, Republika Srpskas President, called in

heavy EU sanctions towards Republika Srpska, as the High Representative to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Valentin Inzko,
claimed. In my book I also discuss the highly controversial role of the ultra-nationalist party Ataka in Bulgaria,
especially in exacerbating ethnic tensions and attacking Muslims and ethnic Turks. Former Prime Minister Boyko
Borissov, of the populist Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) party, who depended until July
2011 on Atakas parliamentary support for his government, agreed easily to a 2009 proposition of Atakas leader
Volen Siderov to hold a popular referendum on whether Turkish language broadcasts should continue in the
Bulgarian media. This policy had been introduced as an effect of EU conditionality to increase minority
representation in the state media. Only a quick outcry from other Bulgarian parties and the European Parliament
convinced Borissov to withdraw his support for the referendum. Being part of the EU does not preclude parties or
groups from using referendum for exclusivist purposes. In December 2013, less than six months after Croatia joined
the EU, a Catholic citizens group called On Behalf of the Family inaugurated a referendum to ban same-sex
marriage. Unlike in the referendums in previously discussed countries, this one was conducted and succeeded.
Much to the dismay of EU officials, but not to local politicians, 65% of Croatians voted to change the constitutional
definition of marriage to be considered a living union of a woman and a man. On the pages of the Guardian
Horvat argued: Anti-minority moves in Croatia are symptomatic of a Europe-wide slide back to the worst

nightmares of the 20th century. For him Croatia is not an outlier, but is getting close to other countries in Western
and Eastern Europe, where anti-minority sentiments are growing rapidly. In Greece, for example, there was a recent
proposal to hold a referendum to ban the erecting of a mosque in Athens, although Athens has been heavily

most of the current

discussion on referendums is focused on whether and when referendums become
legitimate. While this discussion is fruitful from the perspective of a procedural democracy,
scholars and practitioners need to delve deeper into how such referendums affect
liberal democracy. They can be co-opted by various groups to advance nationalist
and exclusivist political agendas. In a world of growing anti-minority sentiments, we
need more than less of this discussion.
criticized of being the only capital in Europe that has no mosque. In conclusion,

California proves selfish and unorganized referendum government is

easily controlled by the rich, disenfranchising minority, poor, and
disabled people
Reynolds 88 [Pamela Reynolds, award winning writer for the Boston Globe; Referendum Trend Hurts
Government; Orlando Sentinel; 11/06/1988; accessed 07/07/2015; <http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1988-1106/news/0080150059_1_ballot-measures-local-government-shasta-county>.] Concede the counterplan sets a
precedent and win that referenda are bad. *Card has been modified for ableist language
Residents of the rural county of 137,000 people, located about 125 miles north of Sacramento, had been given an

they could keep their libraries open by approving a flat $24-ayear special ''per- parcel'' tax to be levied on each homeowner, or they could watch their 10 libraries
option at the ballot box. Either

shut down for good. The county simply couldn't keep the libraries open any longer without new revenue.

By a
margin of 55 percent, Shasta County residents voted to shelve the libraries . ''Bring your
own books,'' Michael Johnson, Shasta County administrative officer, wryly jokes these days. California
legislators, however, are not laughing. They are appalled by what they say is a gloomy new
trend in the Golden State: government by referendum. In communities throughout California, from
Sacramento County to Los Angeles, voters are sorting through a plethora of referenda on their
ballots. According to observers, this latest political reality raises grave questions about the
nature of democracy, the future of local government, the willingness of middle-class voters
to support social services from which they do not benefit . The referendum has become a way
of life in California, and it is precisely this fact that worries lawmakers and academics. ''It's a terrible way to
run our government'' said John McClure, a city councilman in Rialto, Calif. ''It raises very serious
questions of equity,'' said Peter Detwiler, consultant to the California Senate Local Government Committee in
Sacramento. While some say that the growth of the referendum is both desirable and beneficial,
leading as it may to a more democratic system in which American citizens are allowed an even
greater capacity to tinker with the great engine of government, others dread the type of society such
haphazard governing is likely to produce . Many fear it is likely to create a society where
selfishness reigns, where busy citizens, earnest but uninformed, are forced to vote
on a list of highly technical issues. In referendum politics, government is likely to be seized
by a highly organized, well-financed ''initiative industry'' composed of advertising firms, pollsters,
Apparently, voters felt the extra $24 could be spent on better things, perhaps a night at the movies.

lawyers and direct-mail advertisers who charge hefty fees to help groups or individuals sponsor and pass their ballot

Minorities, the poor, the handicapped disabled, are likely to be left out of the
process altogether, since many in these groups lack the funds to push an initiative
onto the ballot. ''I think we want to treat this as some idyllic process,'' said David Magleby, professor of
political science at Brigham Young University and the author of a book on ballot measures. ''But this is very
much an upper-middle- class process, '' he said. Government by referendum has settled on many
measures.

states around the country, including Colorado, Ohio, Michigan, Oregon, Washington and, to some degree,
Massachusetts. But it is especially the way of life in California in the wake of Proposition 13, the famous 10-year-old
voter initiative that rolled back property-tax assessments. Proposition 13 required that revenue-hungry communities
send every tax-increase proposal to the voters for approval by a two-thirds margin. Therefore,

Californians no

longer have the luxury of letting legislators they've elected do most of the
governing. Rather, citizens, piecemeal, must legislate on their own .

Capitalism
Referendums cede power to rich political elites who control the
issue more than they could in representative democracy
Magleby 98 [David B. Magleby; professor of Political Science at Brigham University; Ballot Initiatives and
Intergovernmental Relations in the United States pg 148-149; The State of American Federalism Vol 28 No 1;
Winter 1998; accessed 07/01/2015; <http://mavdisk.mnsu.edu/parsnk/2011-12/Pol680-fall11/POL
%20680%20readings/direct%20democracy-%20wk%209/ballot%20initiatives.pdf>.]

the initiative empowers those who use the

process to take their issue directly to the voters of the locality or state. The opportunity to
bypass the institutions of representative democracy is seen by those who use the process as an
advantage. Direct legislation is often faster than the legislative process, and the proponents
of the issue control the wording of the issue. Agenda-setting by initiative means that proponents
need to meet the minimum signature requirement which , in most states, requires either a
large number of highly motivated volunteers or ample funds to hire signature
collectors. Since there is difficulty qualifying for the ballot, the initiative is less and less a grassroots phenomenon and more and more dominated by large and well organized
interests. While the authors of initiatives control the wording of their propositions, the campaign serves to define
what the issue means for voters. Initiative campaigns are largely fought in thirty- and sixty-second
commercials using attention-getting advertisements that motivate people either to
care about a problem and vote for the proposition, or to create doubts about the initiative and
scare voters into voting "no."5 Not surprisingly, the issue as defined by the opponents is not at all what
the proponents desire or intended. Well organized and well funded opposition campaigns win
about two-thirds of the time.6 Agenda-setting and campaign management in initiatives
is thus primarily organized by elites but must involve mass audiences in qualifying for the ballot and
winning on election day. The mass-politics side of initiatives is largely carried out by paid
consultants and organized by elites. As the process has become more visible and more central to the
politics of a dozen or more states, an initiative industry that specializes in such services as
petition circulation, polling, media management, direct mail, and legal advice has grown
accordingly.7 Those who use this tool include citizens who can link their concerns to other organized groups like
Compared to agenda-setting in other contexts,

the sponsors of recent California initiatives on immigration and affirmative action, governors or legislators who want
to take their issue directly to the voters or enhance their own standing, and interest groups.

Politics
Links to politics, and EU proves politicians debate the
substance of referenda before they are put to a vote
Kirk 15 [Ashley Kirk, data analyst and reporter, Masters in Interactive Journalism at City University London;
EU referendum: MPs clash over voting franchise and reforms in debate; City AM News and Politics; 06/09/2015;
accessed 07/07/2-15; <http://www.cityam.com/217535/eu-referendum-mps-clash-over-voting-franchise-andreforms-debate>.]

Members of Parliament filled the House of Commons to debate the government's proposed
EU referendum, as parties clashed over the future of the UK and the EU . Foreign secretary
Phillip Hammond introduced the EU Referendum Bill, calling it a "simple but vital
piece of legislation". He said that the EU is often seen as "something done to [British citizens], not for
them". "EU's democratic mandate is wafer thin" He pointed to the lowest ever turnout in last year's
European referendum, where it dropped to 13 per cent in some EU countries. He said the
Conservatives would deliver on their promise to give voters an in-out referendum ,

claiming that the way the EU has changed since the last referendum in 1975 had "eroded the democratic mandate
for our membership to the point where it is wafer thin and demands to be renewed". While the bill had support from

Former Tory chancellor and

pro-European Ken Clarke said he would not vote for the Referendum Bill . He said: The
the main opposition, the government faced unrest from its backbenchers.

idea that we somehow advance our future prosperity[sic] by withdrawing from the biggest, organised trading bloc in
the world, at the same time the Conservative Party being an advocate of free trade wherever can be obtained, will

Carswell was also vocal during the debate, while supporting

the referendum. "The answers lie in cooperation" Hilary Benn, shadow foreign secretary, said that
Labour supported the referendum, but also supported Britain's membership of the EU. He said the referendum
presented a "clear and simple question", but one whose "answer will a profound
impact" on the country. Benn mocked Cameron on his perceived u-turn about whether ministers
should be given the freedom to campaign for British withdrawal of the EU. On jobs, economic
be an absurdity. Ukip MP Douglas

growth, climate change and terrorism, Benn said, "the answers lie in cooperation" and "work[ing] with others".

Court rollbacks get the government involved - <go to the

rollback debate>

Poverty
Nonunique net benefit - violence, crime, and poverty are
decreasing as democracy grows worldwide
Jose 14 [Coleen Jose, multimedia journalist and documentary photographer based in New York City writing on
international news and U.S. foreign policy; Good news: The world is becoming more democratic than ever; Mic;
11/04/2014; accessed 07/06/2015; <http://mic.com/articles/103294/good-news-the-world-is-becoming-moredemocratic-than-ever>.] Concedes that democracy solves the impacts the neg reads

we are becoming less violent and more tolerant , and poverty around
the world is declining. The conclusions seem far-fetched considering the daily news of airstrikes,
natural disasters and images of loss from the conflict in Iraq, Syria or the Central African Republic, but
Roser argues that kind of thinking is far too micro in what is a very macro discussion . "It is not
Evidence also shows

possible to understand how the world is changing by following the daily news," Roser wrote. "Disasters happen in an

progress is a slow process that does not make the headlines ." In the past
200 years of governmental changes, democracies have grown dramatically. "Democracy is
contagious and brings about more democracy because it is very successful, " Roser told
instant, but

Mic. "Thinking about the future, maybe the most promising development is that the young generation around world
is much better educated than before." Why is the world becoming more democratic? As the
narrative and pattern of history has shown from the French Revolution to the Arab Spring a common

grievance of the masses can topple autocratic rule . One of the catalysts for the spike in
democratic regimes is growing economic inequality. "In nondemocratic societies, the poor
are excluded from political power, but pose a revolutionary threat , especially during
periods of crisis," wrote political scientists Daren Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. " The rich will try to
prevent revolution by making concessions to the poor, for example, in the form of income
redistribution," yet the elite can also resist and in doing so create an environment for
their downfall. The latest example of the death knell for one autocratic rule unraveled in Burkina Faso last
week. A similar pattern of inequality was observed when the West African country's President Blaise Compaor
attempted to amend the constitution to extend his 27-year rule, and tens of thousands of Burkinab protested

Another factor leading up to resistance is simply one's ability to

purchase food. Data scientists at the New England Complex Systems Institute presented examples when high
across the country in response.

food prices led to mass uprising, Mic reported. Yaneer Bar-Yam of the NECSI "charted the rise of the Food and
Agriculture Organization Food Price Index a UN measure that maps food costs over time and saw that
whenever that figure rose above 210, riots broke out around the world." Bar-Yam's hypothesis became reality during
the 2008 economic collapse and the Tunisian protests in 2011. He also predicted the Arab Spring weeks before it

no matter what the causes are, more democracy

across the world is undoubtedly a good thing . "Taking all these and more long-run trends into
account paints a very positive picture of how the world is changing," Roser told Mic. " If you look at this over
the long run, then we see the change from a world where everyone but a few
enlightenment thinkers thought that democracy is impossible to a world in which
half the world population lives in democracies ." Talk about change we can believe in.
reached a tipping point in Egypt. But almost

Mongolia proves democracy alone wont solve poverty, and

collapses public confidence
Tuya 13 [Nyamosor Tuya, foreign and domestic policy expert on international affairs, former democracy
activist; Democracy and Poverty: A Lesson from Mongolia; Brookings Institute; 04/2013; accessed 07/07/2015;
<http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2013/04/09-mongolia-tuya>.]

The case of Mongolia on poverty and democracy is instructive . The country started
transitioning to democracy over twenty years ago and, for almost as long, the rate of
poverty has stood at 30 percent and above . In the 1990s, much of it could be attributed to the

disruptions caused by changes in its political and economic system. Harsh weather has been an intermittent factor,

no significant progress has been registered in later years, when the economy has
grown at an annual average of 9 percent in the past decade. The latest available figure (2011) shows that
poverty still stands at 29.8 percent, despite the double-digit economic growth in the
past two years. The gap between poor and rich has continued to grow , and infrastructure has
too. But

languished in a chronically decrepit state. Corruption, on the other hand, has continued to increase. Between 1999
and 2011, while the economy was growing, the countrys corruption ranking has managed to drop from a place
where it was comfortably ahead of some of its fellow post-communist countries in Europe to a dismal 120th place

implications for democracy

were grave: most reforms stalled, vote buying became a serious concern, and public
trust in the institutions of democracy was shaken . In a survey conducted in June 2012, over 80
percent of respondents believed that government policies were always or often
failing to solve their concerns, chief among them unemployment and poverty.
out of some 180 countries surveyed by Transparency International. The

Warming
Direct democracy fails to address the scientific level of
policymaking surrounding global warming no solvency
Holden 2 [Barry Holden, senior lecturer in politics at the University of Reading and co-director of the Centre
for the Study of Global Change and Governance, editor of and contributor to The Ethical Dimension of Global
Change.; Democracy and Global Warning pg 88-90; Political Theory and Contemporary Politics; 2002; accessed
07/06/2015; <https://books.google.com/books?
hl=en&lr=&id=1GiVxFAaATMC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=democracy+and+global+warming&ots=i1KSRPkseg&sig=PeN
Y_s6cBItDPuAjxcaEouQvkRU#v=onepage&q=democracy%20and%20global%20warming&f=false>.]

decisions about global warming are properly the concern of

scientists rather than the mass of the people is Platos critical distinction between knowledge and opinion. It was
the dependence of government upon opinion that was the object of classical critiques
Underlying the contention that

of Athenian democracy by Plato in The Republic, on the grounds that knowledge (epirtme'), not opinion (doxa),
should steer the ship of state' (Weale.1999: 14). In today's world science is frequently seen as providing episte'm.

traditional arguments against democracy derive from

the idea of guardianship'. As Dahl puts it: A perennial alternative to democracy is government by
guardians. . . . Ordinary people, these critics insist, are clearly not qualified to govern
themselves. The assumption by democrats that ordinary people are qualified. they say, ought to be replaced by
the opposing proposition that rulership should be entrusted to a minority of persons who are
specially qualified to govern by reason of their superior knowledge and virtue. Most beautifully and
Stemming from Plato, then, the central

enduringly presented by Plato in The Republic, the idea of guardianship has exerted a powerful pull throughout

central criticism of democracy has been

that as government is a matter for those with knowledge and virtue the ordinary
people are net qualified to rule. As Dahl says (1999: 65), {m]uch of the persuasiveness of the idea [of
human history. (Dahl, 1999: 52) Down the ages, then, the

guardianship] stems from its negative view of the moral and intellectual competence of ordinary people'. We have
already seen that the guardianship argument was central to ecoauthoritarianism', with Ophul's justification of his
anti- democratic stance [being] basically the traditional argument of the ship of state" requiring the best pilots,
and the dangers of rule by the ignorant" when faced with such a complex and complicated issue as socialenvironmental dilemmas' (Barry, 1999: 195). And, of course, the global warming problem amounts to, or poses, a -

key
arguments against the involvement of ordinary people in policy-making concerning
global warming. Initially I shall focus on knowledge regarding the phenomenon of global
warming itself, rather than on knowledge relating to the social-environmental
dilemmas it poses. The former raises issues that deserve some separate consideration, especially regarding
the nature and role of scientific knowledge. However, the full complexity of the global warming
problem does, of course, involve both the nature of the phenomenon and the possible
responses to it by society, or societies. Clearly, then, knowledge relating to both is necessm'y, and I shall
if not the - major social-environmental dilemma of our time. We have here, then, the grounds for

take up the latter below, in this and later chapters (remembering that it includes matters such as the workings of
the international syStem). I am at this point, too, primarily concerned with (to use Dahl's terms) the intellectual
rather than the moral competence of the ordinary people. Originally the two could not be separated since the
original idea of guardianship centred on moral knowledge knowledge of moral truths. In modern thought, however,

a critical distinction in modern discourse especially salient in the case of science - between knowledge and moral evaluation ,
separation is quite common. This flows from

according to which it is denied that there can be moral knowledge'. Now, it is true that this distinction and denial
are often challenged. And criticisms of guardianship continue to be made that focus upon moral know- ledge. But
these can still be applied to knowledge of other kinds. As Harrison (1993: 160) says in his critique of Platonic
guardianship arguments, 'the same points as were made [about moral knowledge] go through for other kinds of

knowledge'. Since the essential points concern knowledge as such, it is to non-moral knowledge
that they must be applied if this is the only kind of knowledge there is. But even if we go along with the modern
invalidation of moral knowledge', and the concomitant assertion of a distinction between intellectual and moral
competence, we should more that when we come to the social-environmental dilemmas' posed by global warming
there is a blurring of this distinction. There is an important dimension to the question of the competence of the

It
concerns the capacity of ordinary people to curb their avarice and to think and act
in ways which involve sacrificing their short-term interests . To those who doubt that the
people have this capacity, this is partly a matter of lack of knowledge - knowledge of the nature and
ordinary people to engage with the global warming problem which cuts across, or overlaps, this distinction.

But it is also a
matter of lack of will - the will to sacrifice short-term interests even where adverse long-term
importance of adverse long-term consequences of anions that further short-term interests.

consequences are known? Such lack of will can be seen as a moral defect. And even if balancing short- and longterm self-interest is not a moral matter, and hence the lack of a will to avoid long-term damage to one's own
interests is not a moral defect, there are other dimensions. The long- term consequences in question may be
adverse for other people instead of, or as well as, oneself. And

in the case of global warming such

other people' includes future generations. Clearly here moral questions are involved; but these will

be considered later and for the moment I shall concentrate on the issue of knowledge. What I am concerned with at
this point, then, is the argument that decision-making regarding the global warming problem should be in the hands
of experts - those who have knowledge of the nature and causes of global warming - rather than in the hands of the
ignorant mass of the people.3 We shall see below that the argument has various Other asPeCts, implications and
assumptions, but these undoubtedly also draw strength from its general form, which, as I have already remarked, is
that of the guardianship attack on democracy. In my critical assessment, then, I shall take up the democrats
general critique of guardianship and consider its applicability to the particular argument regarding global warming.

only an elite has appropriate

knowledge (epislme) and that because of this it, and not the ignorant masses. should
govern. This idea rests on the notion that there is a special set of objective truths of which members of the
The central idea in the general guardianship argument is the notion that

relevant elite have superior knowledge.