"Brexit" sounds so cute, a breakfast cereal, perhaps? Maybe the deciding two Brits out of a hundred voted for it on that basis, or because they vote yes on any proposition put on the ballot by the Conservative Party. All of which underlines the profound misunderstanding of democracy that guided Prime Minister Cameron's decision to have Britain vote on whether to disengage from the myriad formal political connections that tie (once great) Britain to its continental neighbors, a vote he engineered even though he advocated no on the proposition. The referendum is technically advisory but the promise was that the vote would be a binding instruction to Parliament.
Shame on him in particular for ignoring the instruction of a famous 18th-century member of Parliament and philosopher Edmund Burke who set out a lasting, conservative and correct statement of the duty of a political representative that was also available to guide our constitutional fathers.
As advised by Burke, any member of Parliament (or congressman or Alaska legislator) is elected to vote how he (or now, she) sees the issues and assesses the correct course of action rather than mirroring the opinions of the constituency. This advice is not based on the arrogance of elites but on the fact that a legislator has spent (or should have spent), hours studying any particular issue of importance so that the implications of actual facts can be weighed and an informed conclusion reached in debate with other legislators, similarly informed. In contrast, all but a very few constituents have, at best, the barest understanding of facts and consequences of most issues.
Listen to how many of our Alaska legislators who, having been inundated with the facts about Alaska's economy, whine that they will support the majority of their constituents' views regardless of their knowledge of the clear, if rough path to long-term state solvency.
Mr. Cameron could at least have offered a more accurate proposition. How would the Brexit vote have come out if the proposition was, "Do you want to leave the European Union and Scotland?" So shame on Mr. Cameron and shame on Alaska legislators who still chose to ignore facts and their plain duty.
Direct democracy only works with a well-informed public. That's why democracy through the town meeting works well but referenda at higher levels of organization, without limit, are an invitation to disaster. California's prosperity, including its educational system, was crushed by a referendum against raising property taxes.
No mention of initiative or referendum is found in the American Constitution. The invention of "direct democracy" came about as a popular reaction in the late 19th century's "Gilded Age," to the excesses of political control by the super-rich. (Sound familiar?)
Alaska's constitutional framers were well aware of the importance of initiative and referendum as a check on legislative inaction but also of their dangers. The initiative is barred from use in financial matters and local or special legislation, limitations that the Alaska Supreme Court has read broadly. Still, as this writer advocated in a book anticipating the decennial vote on whether a convention is necessary, more could be done. Initiatives are commonly written privately, and are not subject to a public hearing process or other critical review.
Which brings us again to the question: "What on earth did Prime Minister Cameron think he was doing by throwing together this referendum question, advisory but promised to be binding? His silent, private answer, guided by hubris, is that he believed with his advocacy against the proposition, it would go down to defeat and his political party would benefit in a pending election from his success.
Is this vote going to lead to lasting damage? Quite clearly so. Particularly after Scotland's exit from Great Britain, a revival of Northern Ireland separatism and possible regional discontents expressed in Wales and even Cornwall, Great Britain is reduced to a beleaguered England.
A greater loss is Great Britain's missed role as a leader in the continuing effort to adapt to the irresistible emergence of the global society. The American federalist model, in an expanded and more complex format can be applied to global organization. Keeping the peace needs the cooperative attention of the top global leadership that once included Great Britain.