Prime Minister Harper muses, "This country is hardly overdosed on referendums at the national level," and suggests he might just hold one on the future of the Senate.
I went back to John Ralston Saul's Reflections of a Siamese Twin for its intriguing, slightly counter-intuitive argument: referendums are mostly an anti-democratic device. In a functioning parliamentary democracy, even a few are an overdose. Referendums foster divisive yes-no, either-or polarities over reasoned accomodation. And like polls, they mostly empower those who define the question.
"The history of the referendum over the last two centuries has almost always fallen into two streams. The first has used the mechanism to destroy representative democracy, usually replacing it with Heroic false populism. The second has used the referendum as a way to structure the citizenry into doing what they would never do in the more careful, balanced context of representative democracy." (Reflections, p.248)
Not that Saul will have any influence with Harper (!) But the prime minister is being clever rather than wise again.
