The Brexit vote has thrown different conceptions of democracy into sharp relief. Some are horrified at the conduct of the referendum campaign; others see the result as the revealed will of the people. Luke Temple uses tweets from the March for Europe event on the 3rd September to show how these views clash. He concludes that the pro-EU movement needs a clear aim if it’s to make any headway. Without defining their political activism, they risk deepening divisions in the UK.
Marching against democracy
The tweet on the right sums up the sentiment that the March for Europe was an anti-democratic event. The owner of the account re-tweeted a statement from the Liberal Democrats, which said that a ‘United Britain’ should be a part of the European Union (and a picture of people waving ‘In’ signs). At face value, this suggests overturning Brexit. ‘Today we march against democracy’ concluded the tweeter. In a similar vein, another tweet said:“What do we want?” “Democracy” “When do we want it?” “When the result goes our way” #marchforEurope”.
Other users shared a screenshot of the referendum leaflet sent out by government to highlight what they considered a key phrase:“The government will implement what you decide.” A large proportion of the twitter ‘conversation’ appeared to echo similar feelings. For them, the electoral procedures of democracy are paramount.
This aligns with minimalist theories of democracy, such as that outlined by Schumpeter in his 1942 work Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Schumpeter’s bare-bones, procedural definition sees democracy as primarily a system “for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s votes”. Beyond this input from voters, Schumpeter had little time for notions of ‘the will of the people’ or the ‘common good’.
So for those with a minimalist view, a mass demonstration is, if not frowned upon, then something of a waste of energy. Yet such protests do have the potential to become problematic if seen as attempting to overturn a vote (more on which in a moment).
Criticisms of Schumpeter’s electoral-centric perspective generally present something along the lines that it is “as spare a notion of democracy as one could posit without draining the term of meaning”. Carole Pateman criticised Schumpeterian democracy because “it is the participation of the minority elite that is crucial and the non-participation of the apathetic, ordinary man lacking in the feeling of political efficacy, that is regarded as the main bulwark against instability.” Pateman’s analysis took to task Schumpeter’s view that the masses should be seen (during an election), but not heard the rest of the time.
And so broader understandings of democracy go far beyond voting. Indeed, it is considered a human right that people can voice their opinion through protest and freedom of association. Therefore, for those taking to the streets last Saturday, their marching was for democracy.
Marching for democracy
To the left is a well-liked and re-tweeted photo showing a marcher calling for parliamentary democracy. Here, democratic procedure is important, but it is the deliberative procedures of parliament that are crucial, and seemingly lacking. Perhaps most fascinating is the statement underneath however – ‘not mob rule’. It doesn’t take much to read into this a criticism of a democratic procedure (a referendum) that relied simply on (the tyranny of) a majority vote.
But interestingly, contradictory statements on the legitimacy of voting and ‘majorities’ were also present at the London demonstration. For instance, one slogan on a flag (retweeted a number of times) was that 63 per cent of people did not vote to leave Europe – a percentage produced by adding non-voters to Remainers. One tweet said: “Not to mention this unelected PM is of a party that doesn’t have a majority of the popular vote #marchforeurope”. Leaving aside the fact that a Prime Minister is not voted for, and that a single party hasn‘t won a majority vote since 1931, here the legitimacy of electoral numbers is again key. Isn’t this a call for the ‘mob rule’ just dismissed on a fellow marcher’s placard?
A tweet arguing directly against anti-democratic criticism focused very much on voice and participation: So #marchforEurope is a march against democracy, eh?…That same democracy that allows people to freely voice their views, eg in a march? Here then, democratic participation is clearly understood as far exceeding the Schumpeterian view.
A final prominent argument raised by tweeters supporting the march concerned the referendum itself not being democratic because voters were misled and lied to: democracy is undermined if those voting are ill-informed. A selection of placards suggested this, including messages such as: “No goodbyes based on lies”, “Referenda – loved by liars & the gullible”, “Hey Hey Boris J. How many lies have you told today?” and rather explicitly “A referendum won by lies and ignorance is not democracy”. Therefore, something needed to be done. But what?
How ill-defined participation becomes divisive
Clearly, differing conceptualisations of democracy clashed over the #marchforeurope. But as this final tweet legitimately asks: if the result of what many see as a democratic procedure was not to be overturned, what, exactly, was the march for? Why was the protest named for ‘Europe’, yet not the EU? Beyond a pro-European vision, did it have political demands? Contradictory slogans and placards suggested no clear message.
In his speech on the day, Owen Jones was very clear – he argued there was no overturning the result, but there would be a push to hold politicians to account and to drive out xenophobia and racism. Yet for the vast majority of people, who experience politics only at a glance, this short speech is subsumed and easily lost within a much broader, ill-defined, and potentially antagonistic political action that can be construed not as targeting the elite and the ‘powers that be’, but instead an enormous swathe of the voting public.
In this country a recent political narrative against inequality, coined by the Occupy movement, tried to unite the 99 per cent against an elite 1 per cent. Now we’re seeing the 48 per cent against the rest. This isn’t sustainable. The terms of the Brexit referendum were harmfully ill-defined. But politicised responses need to learn from this, not continue the trend. Without strongly defined demands and political messages, a demonstration of this kind too easily allows itself to become defined by others projecting onto it. And when the political act can be understood as wishing to overturn their vote, the 52 per cent are unlikely to see anything positive; if they claim to see anti-democratic posturing, there is little to assure them otherwise.
Now, these tweets aren’t representative and organisers can’t vet every placard and tweet, but they must be expected to try and build a coherent narrative around such a mass political act. Image control is important, otherwise an act of democratic political participation might just do more harm than good.
Please note: a version of this post first appeared on the Democratic Audit blog.
Luke Temple is about to complete a PhD on citizen support for democratic governance at the University of Sheffield and is a Research Associate at the Department of Politics there.
Many Remainers believe the referendum to have been essentially fraudulent. Thousands of British citizens living overseas were not allowed to vote in it, even people who can vote in UK local elections. The timing guaranteed it would be difficult for students to register. EU nationals living in Britain could not vote in a decision that materially affects their livelihoods. The Leave campaign made entirely false claims and continued to do so despite being warned by the Electoral Commission. The ‘win’ barrier was set far too low for such a complicated constitutional issue, which should have required a two-thirds majority.
The march, however, was designed simply to protest – to show the Government that there are many people who vehemently disagree with the result and to show the powers that be in Europe that not everyone in Britain wants to leave and there are many Brits who remain passionate about the European project.
There can be no democracy without honesty and accountability. How many people voted Leave for a) anti immigration reasons, b) a protest against austerity which had little to do with the EU or c) it was implied that there would be substantial extra funding for the NHS etc? Also many people didn’t have a vote including 16-17 year olds, British migrants of 15 years standing, long term EU residents in the UK (although Commonwealth resident sdid).
Given the tightness of the vote, and given that less than 25% of people voted for the government which delivered the referendum, then it wasn’t a democratic and honest process. It should not be anything other than advisory. Yes, the government should take note of people’s concerns about austerity and immigration. But destroying ourselves by leaving the EU is not the way to go about it.
Parliament decided to hold a referendum therefore the parliamentary democracy the remoaners are baying for has been enacted, we had a binding referendum and the majority of voters voted to leave, despite remain attempting to claim all the abstentions as being to remain that is not the democratic process. The simple thing is we had a democratically and legally binding referendum now we expect the government to carry out the wishes of the people it gave the decision to, not the minority who want to continue to remain in a corruption ridden democratically deficient club.
It was not a legally binding referendum – clearly stated before and since that is was an advisory referendum The government could choose to respond to the result in the best way for the country and that includes making a decision to remain. Cameron stated that he would accept the referendum result but this was still not a legal requirement and could and can be overturned.
Barry
You got three things wrong.
1.We are not moaning; we are pointing out the self harm we have done. Self harm not realised by most of the leave voters.
2. It is not legally binding.
3. It is similar to a club, agreed, but it is not corruption ridden or democratically deficient.
Fortunately most of us favour democracy but the best way of organising it is the difficult part. And another difficulty is that running a country is difficult.
Imagine that the governing party was having a lot of trouble with its MP’s disagreeing over taxation. So the PM decides to have a referendum. He’ll keep it simple; two choices. Choice A is that the government will decide taxation level. Choice B is 10% tax for everyone who works. What do the voters do. The supporters of B say how fair their system is. No more stupid politicians intervening. Supporters of A say that if you choose B there will be problems. The present system is working well enough. Many voters think, “I am paying more than 10%, I’ll vote for B.” Choice B wins and the government says that the will of the people must be respected. Privately they are saying to themselves, “what are we going to do? There’s not enough money to run the country!” B supporters will be saying, “Look everything is fine. People are happy!”. The government will be saying, “We haven’t even enough money to run a 7 day health service now. Next year we will have even less. They won’t be happy when they realise that private health care is going to be essential!”
It seems to me that the best way to run a democratic system is to have general elections every so often and on each occasion the public will make a judgement on how the government did and vote them another go or vote the other lot(s) in. Additionally propaganda needs to be curbed in an intelligent way. When I was a youngster the better newspapers made a distinction between reporting and opinion. It seems quite possible to democratically decide rules for the press and broadcasters to follow that would not curb their freedom to do their job but would curb what has been going on.
Quite obviously the organisers should have been organising around the ideals of democratic consensus as opposed to majoritarian democracy.
Otherwise, and in my view a second best option, democratic propotionality in that resources are split according to the proportionality of the vote. In the case of the Brexit vote this would require a decentralisation that reflects the vote in that regions of the country that voted to remain would continue to align with eu treaties and rules as well as pay the required eu contributions as a council tax surcharge whilst the regions that voted for Brexit would not.
However this option is complicated since the problematic of majoritarian democracy would still exist even at the level of regions. Hence why this is a second best option compared to democratic consensus.