Submitted by Michael Macpherson (not verified) on October 3, 2008 - 7:19am.
You write "the Nazi use of plebiscites has widely discredited direct legislation". We disagree.
There is no justification at all for restricting participatory democracy because of experience with plebiscites held in the Weimar Republic and Nazi period.
From our conference report (re. Germany)
"In the Weimar Republic, there were three popular initiatives and two national referendums (in 1926 and 1929); during the National Socialist period, three plebiscites were held, with biased questions and blatant manipulation of results."
Direct democracy conference London, LSE October 16-17 2004 http://www.iniref.org/conf.html
Direct democracy did not help the National Socialist party to seize power.
In recent years serious scholars have investigated this area. Prof. Otmar Jung (Berlin) studied reasons for exclusion of country-wide direct democracy from the "basic law", passed soon after World War II. He argues that the main aim of the "mothers and father of constitution" was to prevent the left wing from achieving gains via referendum.
The use of plebiscite "from above" by governments or dictators is NOT a procedure which we at I&R – GB recommend. See our case for partial direct democracy in Britain http://www.iniref.org/introduction.html
Citizens' direct democracy
You write "the Nazi use of plebiscites has widely discredited direct legislation". We disagree.
There is no justification at all for restricting participatory democracy because of experience with plebiscites held in the Weimar Republic and Nazi period.
From our conference report (re. Germany)
"In the Weimar Republic, there were three popular initiatives and two national referendums (in 1926 and 1929); during the National Socialist period, three plebiscites were held, with biased questions and blatant manipulation of results."
Direct democracy conference London, LSE October 16-17 2004
http://www.iniref.org/conf.html
Direct democracy did not help the National Socialist party to seize power.
In recent years serious scholars have investigated this area. Prof. Otmar Jung (Berlin) studied reasons for exclusion of country-wide direct democracy from the "basic law", passed soon after World War II. He argues that the main aim of the "mothers and father of constitution" was to prevent the left wing from achieving gains via referendum.
The use of plebiscite "from above" by governments or dictators is NOT a procedure which we at I&R – GB recommend. See our case for partial direct democracy in Britain http://www.iniref.org/introduction.html
Regards,
Michael Macpherson
Founder
I&R ~ GB Citizens' Initiative and Referendum
Campaign for direct democracy in Britain
http://www.iniref.org/
http://www.iniref.org/steps.html Basic presentation
http://www.iniref.org/case.html The case for more democracy