ABSTRACT
Are citizens competent enough to decide on important political matters, or are they overtly manipulated by the media and political elites, incapable of making sound choices? Recent referendums – in Columbia concerning the peace treaty between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in Italy dealing with constitutional reform, and particularly the Brexit vote in Britain – have put the question of citizens’ capacity to make enlightened political choices through direct democracy mechanisms at the forefront. This chapter tackles this crucial issue by asking how referendums and more broadly direct democratic procedures can foster citizens’ participation, interest in politics and political sophistication. A wide literature aims at evaluating the democratic effects of referendums for the citizenry. It has known a recent deliberative turn, political scientists trying to assess the effects of direct democratic procedures on the deliberative system and the quality of democracy more broadly. This requires, however, focusing on what precedes the electoral act in itself, namely referendum campaigns that might spur civic competence and participation. First, the state of the art of the literature on the consequences of referendums on citizens’ competence is discussed. Three effects are emphasized – on civic participation, political knowledge and trust – even though the literature presents mixed results. The chapter then turns to a specific case – the French 2005 European Constitutional Treaty referendum – as a perfect ground to analyse in detail the learning dynamics happening during referendum campaigns. The results drawn from this case study are then discussed in comparison to other referendum campaigns, to assess more precisely the dynamic tension between learning, trust and cognitive shortcuts in voting behaviours. The chapter concludes by evoking the recent scholarship on democratic devices trying to bring together deliberative and direct democracy, and the theoretical and methodological insights that can be drawn from them.
