Email petitions? The next step should be a right to send in a Bill

We are a people of petition signers. If we are to believe the Eurobarometer survey 75 per cent of all Brits sign petitions; in France and Germany, by contrast, the figure is only 50 and 51 per cent, respectively. So don’t talk about political apathy here. Turnout in elections might have gone down but the British people are still as engaged in politics as ever. Just consider the recent e-petitions on the 10 Downing Street website; well over one million citizens made themselves heard.

But while we are a nation of engaged citizens there is is nothing that forces the government to take notice. A polite e-mail from Mr Blair is all we can reasonably expect. To some this will not be enough; indeed, some might turn apathetic and cynical.

To be sure, the government has come a long way, and the Labour government has done its fair bit since 1997. Conceding a referendum on the European Constitution is but one example that we have come a long way since the days of the deafness of the poll-tax, and John Major’s refusal to submit the Maastricht Treaty to the voters.

So far but not quite so good. The government has been committed to increasing turnout in particular and public engagement in politics in general. But it has failed to look elsewhere for tried and tested means of increasing public engagement. That’s a pity, because a number of countries have introduced mechanisms which ensure that citizens’ views will be heard and which ensure greater engagement (and hence legitimacy).

As I have argued at length elsewhere there are mechanisms, which can increase turnout and give people a voice. Broadly speaking we can distinguish between two mechanisms:

The Legislative Initiative, which allows the citizens to propose Bills which are then debated — and possibly enacted — by Parliament, and;

The Citizens’ Initiative, which allows citizens to draft a Bill and submit it to a referendum.

In Austria — to take but one example — 100,000 citizens can initiate a so called Volksbegehren. If they can do so within one week, the Nationalrat (the lower house in the Austrian parliament) is obliged to deal with it. An example of these was the Konrad Lorenz Initiative (named after the biologist and Nobel prize winner), which forced the (reluctant) government to pass legislation to protect the environment.

A similar mechanism was introduced in Poland after the fall of communism. In this country the citizens have proposed 39 Bills (twice as many as in Austria), of which five have been enacted by parliament (including one on occupational health for asbestos-sufferers).

Why have the Volksbegehren been successful? Nothing forces the government to adopt a Bill, after all? According to Wolfgang Müller, an Austrian political scientist, legislative initiatives automatically attract more media attention than a normal Bill (i.e. one developed through representative channels).This is because an initiative is a rare event.

The Citizens’ Initiative is somewhat more radical. In 19 American states (most famously California) as well as in New Zealand and some smaller European countries (Latvia, Hungary, Lithuania, Switzerland and Slovenia) citizens can initiate legislation through referendums.

The general effect of these citizens’ initiatives has been a higher turnout. States with the initiative have, on average, a 5 per cent higher turnout than non-initiative states.

While California and Switzerland are interesting examples for the political scientist, New Zealand is perhaps the most interesting example from a British perspective. With a political culture like that of ours and with a political system based on the Westminster model and without a written constitution, the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty is part and parcel of the New Zealand constitution.

Despite this, the Kiwis have a right to initiate citizen-initiated referendums — if they can gather signatures from 10 per cent of the voters. Given that parliament is sovereign these referendums cannot bind parliament. Indeed, parliament ignored a referendum on the reduction of the number of seats in the legislature in 1999. However, they duly implemented an initiative calling for victim support in the same year.

What is interesting is that these provisions are rarely used. They provide a democratic safety-valve — and by forcing the politicians to listen they (paradoxically) strengthen representative democracy.

In the early 1980s politicians spoke of Supply-Side Economics. According to this theory ‘a supply creates its own demand’. What was true for economics seems also to be true for democracy: a greater supply of democracy creates a demand for political participation. By introducing these initiatives democracy would be rejuvenated — and the representatives would be held to account.

Time has come for a revolution in politics; the introduction of supply-side politics. Why wait?

Matt Qvortrup is Professor at the Robert Gordon University and author of  ‘A Comparative Study of Referendums’ (Second edition 2005). His most recent publication in ‘Supply-Side Politics’ (Centre for Policy Studies 2007). His book, ‘The Politics of Participation: From Athens to e-Democracy’ will be published by Manchester University Press in June 2007.