British Politics: Democracy - How has direct democracy been more widely used in the UK in recent years

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Robyn, UK

How has direct democracy been more widely used in the UK in recent years

Direct democracy has been more widely used in the UK in recent years as an attempt to widen political participation.

The most commonly used form of direct democracy today is referendums. It is argued that they are the best way of getting greater popular involvement in politics as they give the public direct and unmediated control over the government’s decision making. However, a weakness in referendums at the moment is that there is no public control over when and where they will be used. This means that the governments could only call referendums on issues that they support and when they are confident of winning. This takes away the initial decision making power that the public should have with referendums. On the other hand, this can be solved by creating ways for citizens to initiate referendums. This gives the public the power to vote certain legislation or to force legislators to consider certain policy proposals.

Another form of direct democracy that has been emphasized more since the 1997 labour government is the use of focus groups and opinion polls. A focus group is a small cross section of people who are used to gain insight into wider public views. They are the views of a small sample of the population which are chosen to speak for the whole of society. Focus groups and opinion polls would be used as a way of gauging political opinion and testing government policies to see how the public would react.

In July 2007 Gordon Brown revealed plans for a much wider use of citizens juries, which are another devise of direct democracy. Unlike referendums and opinion polls, citizen juries operate through deliberation and debate rather than the citizens just being asked to give an opinion. This means that they develop a much more balanced and sensible idea of public opinion. However it is argued that citizens juries are only designed to give the impression that the government is listening without them having to share policy-making power.

I believe that although referendums are a good way of increasing political participation, they defeat the purpose of representative democracy, which is what we have in the UK today. I think that focus groups and opinion polls are an effective way for the government to test public opinion on different policies. However, because it is only a small sample of the population I don’t think they could always represent the opinion of the whole society. I think citizens juries are the best device of direct democracy that is used today because the deliberation and debate allows a representative and unbiased opinion to be formed and is the most interactive way for political participation. As for what is argued about it being designed to give the impression government is listening without them having to share their policy making power, I see this as a good thing. The UK is a representative democracy, therefore we do not want the policy making power. Citizens juries allow the public to give a balanced opinion so that the government and parliament can aim to represent us better.