The Strategic Use of Referendums: Power, Legitimacy, and Democracy

Extract

The Strategic Use of Referendums: Power, Legitimacy, and Democracy. By Mark Clarence Walker. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 166p. $49.95.

This book portrays the referendum as a consequence of elite bargaining. Mark Walker describes this electoral device as one that arises from an executive–legislative struggle where competing groups attempt to gain political legitimacy from the masses, even in nondemocratic states. Political elites thus use the referendum to settle disputes that appear irresolvable in the traditional chambers of the power, or, as E. E. Schattschneider indicated in The Semi-Sovereign People (1960), to expand the scope of the conflict to enhance one's political advantage. The referendum process is thus subject to manipulation—by the choice of wording, the timing of the vote, the subject matter, and even the interpretation of the results.