Disadvantages of direct democracy

There’s a great article in the xmas double issue of the Economist on the perils of direct democracy. A useful source of arguments and examples for those covering the UK and US participation in politics modules.

The pros and cons of more extensive use of direct democracy were discussed by both my AS and A2 groups at the end of last term. This article serves to reinforce the conclusion we came to: that the theory of bypassing legislatures and granting the people a greater degree of control over policy making was a nice idea in theory, but the US state level experience showed that it is likely to be hijacked by the same wealthy and well organised groups that have traditionally dominated. Thus it serves merely to entrench elitisim in the US rather than enhance pluralism.

In a UK sense, the consensus my group that I have covered this topic with concluded that they would look forward to the opportunity to have more say over changes to the constitutional apparatus, such as Lords reform, the various EU treaties, etc but agreed that legislators would probably be best placed to look at complex fiscal and social issues since they are the professionals. In order to free up more time for MPs to study issues in more detail, it was agreed that burdensome constituency responsibilities should be transferred away from MPs offices to either independent bodies and/or local government.