Voters’ Decisions in the Nordic EU Referendums of 1994: the Importance of Party Cues

Abstract

Parties play a minor role in most textbook comparisons between representative democracy and direct democracy. Parties are not only absent from the traditional depiction, they are sometimes described as having given up their democratic responsibility in the case of referendums. They leave the responsibility for solving difficult problems to citizens and withdraw from public debate, failing to give citizens the political guidance they badly need. In this portrait, the political scene is left wide open to various political extremists, and referendums are frequently described as rule by the least informed, the inept, and the irresponsible. Ordinary voters are fooled, seduced, and frightened into making incompetent or even disastrous decisions. Even the ‘populist’ refutation of the above argument contends that voters are more competent than usually believed. With the exception of Budge (Budge, 1996), the assumption that parties withdraw from the politics of direct democracy is rarely questioned.