How many referendums is too many?

If only the British had run a few referendums before Brexit. Maybe then they would have realised - like the Irish did after voting against the Lisbon Treaty in 2008 before accepting it the following year – that it’s okay to change your mind.

Maybe, too, if Britons had the experience of a Referendum Commission, which has even-handedly provided the electorate with information on 22 constitutional ballots here since 1998, then they wouldn’t have been frantically Googling “What is the EU?” in the hours after the Brexit referendum result was announced.

Now before you think, here’s The Irish Times slagging off the Brits again, today’s Unthinkable column is rather advancing the hypothesis that the UK’s recent democratic record is made to look bad by Ireland’s relatively stunning success. That’s the view of Prof Aileen Kavanagh, professor of constitutional governance at Trinity College Dublin, who this week gave her inaugural lecture at the university.

“The main point I want to get across is that the Irish experience of practice with referendums is a huge achievement that should not be taken for granted,” she says. Returning to Ireland having worked in UK universities for 20 years, she has encountered a degree of “scepticism” towards praising the Irish political system – “I can feel it, I can taste it!”

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However, she says we shouldn’t lose sight of gains that have been made, including experience of electoral campaigns targeted at the median voter – the “movable middle” – rather than extremes. “It’s not luck, it’s acquired experience with these referendums over time and it’s an extraordinary achievement.”

Kavanagh, who is director of TriCON - the Trinity Centre for Constitutional Governance -, explains further:

Ireland a democratic world-leader; how so?

Aileen Kavanagh: “If you think about democracy in the current moment worldwide, you have widespread democratic decay in many countries, you have newly formed democracies regressing into populist, authoritarian regimes and you have widespread disenchantment with democracy in the most established democracies in the world. If you look at that global context, Ireland is a counter-example.

“The turnout at elections is relatively high. Believe it or not, trust in politicians is relatively high, though they receive the usual knocks. But the main message is that the referendum process in Ireland, and particularly the recent innovations with citizens assemblies and the Constitutional Convention, is truly remarkable.

“There aren’t many countries across the world that are putting these divisive moral issues to referendum, getting the kind of quality of debate and civil discourse that you see in the Irish referendums and even producing rights-protecting outcomes. This is truly remarkable.”

Has living outside Ireland informed your view?

“Yes, I’m viewing it in global perspective. I should also say the marriage equality referendum, which was an enormous success in terms of process, standard of deliberation, turnout, voter registration and so on; that was virtually contemporaneous with the Brexit referendum, which was an abject lesson in how not to run a referendum.

“I saw at first hand this swirl of misinformation, mutual distrust, the politics of hate. It was like people did not realise what a referendum is, how serious it is, how long lasting the outcome is.

“I think in Ireland there is a kind of referendum culture, a constitutional literacy, that has developed over time where, whatever side you’re on, Irish people are primed to know this is a serious issue, we’re going to have a major deliberation, it’s going to be on the airwaves, it also going to be discussed at the kitchen table and in the pub, over coffee… up and down the country. That quality of deliberation is what you need to run a good referendum.”

[ Fintan O’Toole: Abortion result shows democracy can rise above hysteria and hate ]

Is it partly a numbers game? The more referendums held, the better a country gets at them?

“It’s absolutely true that there is a cumulative expertise and experience over time, and each time everyone – the people, politicians, the civil society actors, the campaigners and so on - learn from previous experience.

“[One] of the lessons we have learned over time is - and it might seem obvious - you’ve got to put a proper question. You have got to put a question that has two sides and that can produce an answer the politicians can then read.”

There is a plethora of referendums in the offing – on housing, on gender equality, on extending franchise in presidential elections, on biodiversity, and even on keeping water services in public ownership. Is there a risk of referendum overkill?

“We’re not seeing that happening. Yes, there are lots of calls for referendums. Lots of groups are saying we want a referendum on this or that. But what’s interesting is that the political actors are not rushing to referendums every second.

“Say, for example, the housing issue. What they have done is to set up a Housing Commission… They are drawing on deep international and national research about housing policy, the pros and cons of constitutionalising a right to housing, whether there is some alternative like a statement of policy aspiration and so on. They are also engaging in a public consultation, engaging with all the stakeholders, and they will produce a substantial report to Government and in due course the Government will consider that, and if they think they can come up with a meaningful question to put to people, they will do so.

“But you see it’s a slow consultative, deliberative process… What we are not seeing is a government trigger-happy to put in place referendums.”

What lessons are there here for a possible Border poll?

“A key lesson I would say from the Irish experience is that before you put that question you need to have worked out what the consequences would be, what the question should be, and people need to have adequate information on both sides of the equation. If there is misinformation or lack of information or insecurity on what the future may hold, as you saw with Brexit, then you have a kind of vacuum… it leads to mutual resentment, scaremongering and so on.

“So the key lesson from the Irish experience is that, if a Border poll was held, the ground would have to be laid with deep research.… trying to work out real nuts and bolts issues like business engagement, contract law, property law; how would you align these legal systems.”

[ Fintan O’Toole: The 2004 referendum on citizenship was a disgrace to Irish democracy ]

The US constitution is virtually impossible to change compared to the Irish one. Is there a happy medium in terms of how many amendments to make?

“Absolutely. All written constitutions need to strike a balance between stability and flexibility.

“The American constitution is thought to be one of the hardest constitutions in the world to amend, mostly for political reasons, and that causes huge problems. Change has to come from somewhere and in the US it comes through the supreme court rather than through elections and referendums and that is obviously deeply problematic.

“To my mind the Irish constitution strikes a healthier balance here… You have to make sure the Irish system doesn’t become a victim of its own success in the sense of reaching for referendums too quickly but, as I said, this doesn’t seem to be occurring. Success can generate a feeling that we should do more but we should treat the referendum process as a scarce resource that we need to deploy with care.”