Are Referendums Democratic? An Insight into the Scottish Referendum 2014 and the EU Referendum 2016

Abstract

In view of the increased use of referendums in contemporary politics and the several cases where their use came out to be problematic in many democracies, it is vital to address the extent to which such devices can be democratically legitimate. This research thesis attempts to investigate the democratic legitimacy of recent referendum practices, focusing mainly on the cases of the Scottish Independence Referendum (2014) and the EU Referendum (2016). Following the tremendous shift towards these devices of direct democracy, it is fundamental to assess the democratic legitimacy of their outcomes. In this respect, this thesis elaborates on a comprehensive historical literature review that forged our theoretical framework. Additionally, it explores the diverse democratic conceptions and theories, where we have been able to identify the common good as the essence of democratic legitimacy. Accordingly, our analysis of referendums was constructed based upon the deliberative democratic theory as it is the most appealing towards promoting the common good. Following a combination of several analytical methods, we have been able to first identify several deliberative shortcomings in referendum use, which have been further assessed in the analysis of the case studies. Our findings revealed that the absence of some deliberative elements during a referendum process can undermine the democratic legitimacy of its outcomes.