Five ways to improve referendums after Brexit

Posted on June 24, 2021 by The Constitution Unit

Five years on from the 2016 Brexit referendum, Alan Renwick and Meg Russell argue that there are lessons to be learned from the past about how we can better organise and conduct referendums in the future, by ensuring better information for voters, enacting up to date elections regulation, seeking greater public input as part of a clearer process, with the endgame and how to get there agreed as far in advance as possible.

23 June marked five years since the Brexit referendum. The subsequent Brexit process was drawn out and fractious, marked by deep division in the country, and heated arguments about the proper roles of parliament, the courts, the devolved administrations, and the public in the UK’s democratic system. Now, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, politics remains far from ‘normal’.

Five years on from June 2016, we should reflect on what lessons can be learnt for using referendums differently and better in the future – not least because further referendums may be on the cards. This applies most obviously in Scotland, over possible independence, but also potentially in Northern Ireland, where the Constitution Unit has recently led a project on the conduct of any future referendum on Irish unification. Both of these issues have risen in prominence partly due to divisions over Brexit.

Drawing on our recent Northern Ireland work, as well as the important report of the Independent Commission on Referendums, which sat during 2017–18, we identify five key lessons.

1. Before embarking on a referendum, the effects of both possible outcomes should be clear

Referendums by their nature require a simple choice between (usually two) options. To enable informed choices by voters, and also to avoid arguments afterwards, the meaning of those options should be as clear as possible. In the case of Brexit, the Leave option was far from fully specified, leading to long and difficult post-referendum wrangles about how to interpret the result. Civil servants were famously forbidden by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, from preparing for a Leave outcome: as the chief official at Defra (one of the departments most affected by Brexit) has explained: ‘It was only on the day of the referendum that any kind of discussions had started about what might happen if the answer was a no’. This approach should never be countenanced again. As far as possible, the full implications of change must be put before the voters. Ideally (as occurred in the referendum on the voting system in 2011), the proposed change should already have been legislated for in detail, with the referendum leading directly to its implementation or repeal.

Continue reading →

Constitutional reformers need to tackle six key questions about the regulation of digital campaigning

Posted on June 18, 2021 by The Constitution Unit

Today marks the second day of the Unit’s conference on the Johnson government’s constitutional reform agenda, for which free tickets remain available. One of today’s speakers, Kate Dommett, argues that the government’s proposals to tackle the challenges posed by digital campaigning are far from comprehensive, leaving many unanswered questions for future governments to address.

Five years on from the Brexit referendum and the Cambridge Analytica scandal that emerged in its wake, the government is poised to publish its Electoral Integrity Bill. Proposing ‘significant changes to the electoral and democratic system’, it could be presumed that Boris Johnson’s government is about to enact an ambitious programme of constitutional change that will update electoral systems to the digital age. Yet, from the details available so far – including a new announcement this week – it seems Johnson’s government is failing to address six critical questions about digital campaigning, leaving considerable room for further reform.

The rise of digital technology in campaigning

The rise of digital campaigning has been a slow and steady phenomenon in UK elections, but in recent years there has been significant attention paid to the need for electoral reform. The current regulation governing electoral campaigning can be found in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendum Act (PPERA) that was passed in 2000. Since then the adoption of websites, social media profiles and, more recently, online advertising by electoral campaigners has raised questions about the suitability of existing legislation. Indeed, a range of parliamentary committees, civil society bodies, academics and even digital companies such as Facebook, have asserted a need for urgent digital campaigning regulation.

Publishing a report devoted to digital campaigning in 2018, the Electoral Commission has been at the forefront of these debates. Its analysis revealed the rapid rise of digital tools in elections, showing increasing amounts are being spent on digital advertising. Updating its statistics to include the last election, Figure 1 (below) shows that spending on digital advertising has increased to around £7.5 million, and now represents a significant proportion of election campaign spend.

*Figure 1: Electoral Commission spending return declarations related to advertising and digital advertising 2014-2019*

Continue reading →

The anatomy of democratic backsliding: could it happen here?

Posted on June 10, 2021 by The Constitution Unit

The term ‘backsliding’ has been coined to describe the phenomenon by which leaders who come to office within a democratic framework, only to attack some of democracy’s core features when in office. Stephan Haggard and Robert R Kaufman outline some of the key features of ‘backsliding’, discuss how and why it can take hold, and whether there are warning signs that such a process could happen in the UK.

During the presidency of Donald Trump, American democracy suffered the most serious challenge it has faced since the country’s Civil War. Trump and his administration inflamed divisions that jeopardise the rights of women and minorities; attacked the press; defied oversight; sought to stack the judiciary and law enforcement agencies with partisan loyalists; challenged the integrity of the electoral system, and ultimately stoked a violent challenge to the democratic transfer of power. These threats were different from conventional forms of democratic reversion, such as the coup d’etat. Instead, they reflected a more insidious process that has come to be known as ‘backsliding,’ in which illiberal leaders rise to power within a democratic framework and attack core features of democracy from within.

Because the United States occupies a unique position at the heart of the international system, backsliding there commanded worldwide attention. But the United States was hardly alone. In a new study, we identified at least 15 other countries in which duly-elected democratic governments recently moved along similar paths. Not all of these paths lead all the way to autocracy; in the United States, democracy survived the Trump era badly damaged but intact. But depending on the metric used, more than half of these cases slid into ‘competitive authoritarian rule’: systems in which elections persisted but were manifestly rigged. Notably, although many of the failed democracies we examined were weakly institutionalised at the outset (for example, Bolivia, Ukraine, and Zambia), others such as Hungary, Poland, and Venezuela were once considered relatively robust democratic regimes.

These cases raise the question of whether similar adverse developments could occur in other seemingly stable democracies. Could they perhaps even happen in the UK?

Continue reading →