- I have always thought that 50% plus one is a lousy decision-making rule for big decisions. For many reasons:
- The drunk frat boy vote. Ok, not this time, but instead we have some folks, don't know how many, who may have not been voting sincerely.
- Turnout, turnout, turnout. More on this below, but having major historical events potentially being affected rain is not great.
- More importantly: tyranny of the temporary majority.* The UK has already borne tremendous costs and is likely to incur much more despite the fact that the country is essentially ambivalent about leaving. For major decisions, I have always believed that qualified majorities are necessary. Sure, that gums up the works, and paralysis can be problematic. But paralysis looks mighty good today compared to Brexit.
- Referenda suck.
- The founders of the US opposed direct democracy for a reason: "unchecked, democratic communities were subject to "the turbulency and weakness of unruly passions".
- We are only now learning about the details of the process, the complications and all that. Only after the event?
- Reminds me of my time in California where much policy was decided by propositions. And those were mostly shitshows. Yes, that is the technical political science term. How do we decide the best car insurance scheme? Vote against the propositions endorsed by the car insurance industry and the trial lawyers. California tied itself up in knots due to popular votes on tax policy. At least in California, the government gave out booklets explaining each proposition, its estimated costs, and who was on which side and their arguments. Brexit? Not so much.
- The age splits on the vote and on turnout are appalling but not surprising. Those under 50 voted against Brexit, those over voted for it. Any student of democracy knows that the young don't turn out, but the older folks do. Which is why government spending, such as health care dollars, often is focused on the last few years of life. Politicians respond to those who show up. In a referendum, the outcome is determined by turnout (again, that stupid 50%+1), and this is the turnout for Brexit by age:
- Yeah. Not great, Bob. We can and should blame the young for poorly asserting their interests. We can and should blame the old for screwing over the young. Heaps of blame to be shared although, sorry but you cannot really blame Obama for this one.
- The leadership on all sides in the UK is, um, wow, um, a train wreck. Who comes out of this looking like they knew what they were doing, were representing their constituents and their country well? Lots of craven behavior with folks running away from their stances (did we say that 350 million pounds were going to the EU? Oops, our bad!).
- Yes, the EU has a democratic deficit--hard to do any research related to the EU without running into heaps of articles on this. But one of the most likely outcomes for the UK (or UK minus Scotland) is to have to live with/by the EU's dictates but with no power to influence them--the Norway model as it is called. Having some kind of association with the EU that reduces the costs of the transition and provides access to markets means accepting regulations written in Brussels but with no members in the EU parliament, no Brits serving as commissioners, and no UK folks on the Council of Ministers. So, whatever "taxation/regulation without representation" folks might have thought been problematic before is going to be far worse now. Well done.
* This is probably the attitude that makes me most American despite 14 years in Canada--concern about tyranny of the majority.