Hello, my name's David Rundsenman and this is past, present, future, the History of Ideas

podcast. Today we are resuming our series that we've called fixing democracy about some of the ideas that could,

just possibly, make democracy work better. Today, I'm talking to Professor Alan Renick from

University College London's Constitution Unit about an aspect of democracy that has a pretty

bad name at the moment, the referendum. But we're going to be

talking about some of the ways in which referendums can, and maybe even should, enhance democratic

politics. But don't worry, we will also be talking about some of the ways in which referendums

can go wrong. You can guess which referendum we're talking about.

Alan, my guess is that for a lot of people listening, not just in Britain, but in other parts

of the world, too.

Referendums maybe have a bit of a bad name. I don't know. We can talk about where they stand currently in public consciousness, but particularly in Britain, I think, the referendum

idea has had a rocky, well, let's say decade. But maybe we should start looking at it the other way round, because

there are lots, certainly some, and maybe lots of reasons for thinking the referendums are

useful, sometimes essential devices in democratic politics. What do you think is the ideal case

for referendums? Is there a plausible argument that the referendum is a kind of pure

democracy that cannot be captured through other versions of our modern democratic system?

Are you willing to make that case? Well, I think on one dimension of democracy, you can make

that case, which is that referendums are unmediated,

or at least they appear on the surface to be unmediated mechanisms by which the public can

make a decision on a concrete issue. So, you know, with representative democracy, clearly

the decisions are mediated through our representatives and there are all sorts of

legitimate concerns about how far those representatives are genuinely pursuing the public interest

...