John G. Matsusaka is a professor at USC and in his book Let the People Rule he offers a series of arguments for direct democracy, specifically the claim that the expanded use of referenda is a powerful solution to the problems of representative democracy and elite dominance. Since this overlaps heavily with arguments that I and others have made it is worth taking a closer look at Matsusaka’s claims.
Let the People Rule focuses primarily on the US and Europe. This is understandable, as many longstanding democracies in these areas did experience various populist shocks and developments from 2016-2020 (when his book was published). Their underlying causes and developments may be related to one another but also fairly different from that seen in Latin America, for instance.
Matsusaka identifies two main explanations for the rise of populism in the older representative democracies of the world, what he calls the economic view and the cultural view. He argues that economic and cultural explanations each have some support but that decline in trust in government is a long running trend which can’t be explained just by appealing to recent economic problems or surges in immigration. True, but recent developments may have accelerated, or supercharged, these slow, long-term trends. For instance, the normalization of trade relations with China and China’s entry to the WTO led to the loss of many good US jobs, particularly in manufacturing. This, combined with the Great Recession, may have been the (big) needle that finally broke the camel’s back. (I make an argument along these lines in What Time Is It?, my newest book).
How can we respond to this loss of legitimacy? Matsusaka claims that we should take the populist claim itself seriously: government has become less responsive to citizens and more responsive to elites. This is caused in part by the growth of a large, complex administrative state. The best solution? Let citizens directly vote on policies via referenda.
In his words, “referendum voters are more thoughtful and sophisticated than most people realize,” (10). Yes, a thousand times yes! Mainstream critiques of referenda found in the media, among politicians, and within academia, are frequently shallow and unconvincing. In so far as Matsusaka is pro-referenda, he doesn’t have to work hard to convince me. I’m less certain that referenda will have all the other salutary impacts that he hopes for. But I strongly support them nevertheless.
Problems with his account of the administrative state
One problem is that while Matsusaka recognizes that the administrative state has become more complex, he doesn’t grapple with the impact of decades of neoliberalism on American communities and industries. Thus, in Chapter One the story about American history that Matsusaka tells sounds fairly right wing. The chapter opens with an Alito quote and its story resembles that told by famous free market thinkers like Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell. No one denies that the American state grew dramatically during the 20th century—but his tone at times suggests that this hurt American democracy. This claim is much less persuasive to me. The many government agencies he envisions were created by acts of Congress. They were standard fair for a representative democracy. They weren’t enacted by some distant tyranny. We might also ask how referenda would apply or help here? Would you hold referenda on whether to create an EPA? On specific regulations? Matsusaka needs more details on the how and why.
In his words, “we have come to call this immense government bureaucracy with lawmaking power the administrative state. It is the central feature of modern government in every advanced democracy.” (18). This is not how I would frame things but I strongly agree with Matsusaka’s lament that Congress has delegated much formal and informal decision-making authority to the executive branch and its agencies. I share much of this concern, regarding trade policy, war-making, and foreign policy in general. (I am currently reading Why Congress by Philip Wallach, which makes this important point in great detail. Wallach, Matsusaka, and I all prefer a powerful representative congress to a strong executive. Where we differ is that Matsusaka and I also prefer the people acting directly to a representative assembly. Wallach has the opposite view.) The challenge for those of us who would like to see Congress reclaim much of its power, institutional identity and prestige, not to mention its spine, is that this multi-decades long development was in effect a deliberate abdication of power by Congress. They gave it away and ultimately they will need to take some of it back. (see p. 25). On a related note, Paul Pierson and Eric Schickler, in their Partisan Nation, explain how the incentives for national political behavior have changed dramatically in recent decades, making such a congressional reclamation project that much more difficult.
Page 22 points out that executive branch enforcement of policy can change dramatically after a change in office, without any corresponding change in public opinion. This is true but strikes me as an unavoidable feature of electoral politics. People run for office on platforms and then attempt to enact them when in office. Small changes in voter turnout lead to big changes in policy, depending on whether the right or left is elected. How is this avoided? It is here that referenda could offer a better alternative: by directly reflecting the desire of citizens on specific issues, referenda could ensure durable policy that doesn’t whiplash between left and right as the parties see-saw in and out of power.
Some key points to summarize Matsusaka: the executive branch is defined by big, distant, faceless agencies; the presidency often acts without consulting with Congress or the people; the courts increasingly make policy; and Congress increasingly either delegates power to the executive branch or votes on policy without consideration for what constituents want. There is plenty of truth to each of these charges.
In summary, Matsusaka’s critique of the administrative state at times sounds more like Sowell, Buchanan, or Alito than a centrist, let alone leftist, critique. There are leftist critiques of bureaucracy, however, from political theorists like Wolin, Brown, and Pateman, as well as other feminists, anarchists, and those concerned with racism or mass incarceration. So, is Matsusaka a right-wing or conservative critic of big government arguing that we should turn to direct democracy as an alternative? It is not at all clear that he is a conservative, let alone a market evangelist. This is because his critique doesn’t really gel with Sowell et al. due to the fact that they want to take key decisions out of the people’s hands and give them to the market, whereas Matsusaka wants to let people directly decide, through the political process, on key issues of governance. He wants to take power out of the federal and state government’s hands and give it to the people. I would argue he’s kind of doing his own thing ideologically, borrowing from both left and right. It makes for an interesting combination.
Why Referenda
Let’s delve more fully into his positive case for direct democracy via referenda. Chapter Five presents evidence that American voters want to participate in referenda. Chapters Seven and Eight then cover the history and use of referenda in various US states and in countries around the world. They are a common, and often salutary, piece in the democratic toolkit. Matsusaka offers as an example the country Uruguay and suggests that part of Uruguay’s success as a thriving democracy is its use of referenda and the connection between popular opinion and government policy.
This last point is important, because although I support referenda in principle and am happy to see their use worldwide, up to this point the book has provided relatively little evidence that referenda will help address the author’s concerns. So, what positive arguments for increased use of referenda does Matsusaka make?
He suggests that, first, we could introduce advisory national referenda in the US. This would not require a constitutional amendment. Binding referenda, transferring lawmaking power to ordinary citizens at the national level, would. So the binding option might be desirable but it would be much harder to achieve. The challenge, of course, is that we don’t know what impact, if any, advisory referenda would have on American politics, laws, and populist sentiments.
Matsusaka argues that “if the people have more control over decisions, they will not feel that policy is controlled by elites.” (136). I’m sure this is broadly speaking true but what impact will advisory referenda have in giving people control? This part is less clear. As purely advisory mechanisms, they will not directly empower people. The broader cultural impact they could have is less certain. It might be big, it might not, depending on how it impacts the relation between citizens and elected officials. Thus, the case for merely advisory referenda feels weak.
Matsusaka is at pains to demonstrate that the use of referenda is not worse than policy-making by conventional elected representatives. He is correct. For instance, he recognizes that, while referenda may not foster or be preceded by good public deliberation, neither is legislation passed by conventional representative bodies. Similar claims that referenda are captured, or at least unduly influenced by money, are also unpersuasive. The standard process of electing representatives is horribly riven with the monetary influence of oligarchs. There is no evidence that referenda would be worse.
In his words, “the bottom line: although voters appear to operate with limited substantive information about government, politics, and policy, this does not necessarily prevent them from voting in a way that reflects their values and interests.” (175). I generally agree with his chapter Fourteen summary on the competence of voters and the value of direct participation. Hélène Landemore offers a similar argument in Politics Without Politicians, discussed below in my previous review. I also make a case for the competence and collective intelligence of the citizenry in Democratic Knowledge: Why There Are No Political Experts and Does Democracy Have a Future?
The biggest strength of Let the People Rule is that Matsusaka demonstrates that the standard arguments against direct democracy, both empirical and theoretical, are deeply flawed. He also provides substantial evidence that, at least in California, referenda are generally much more harmful to corporate interests than laws passed by the legislature. All the empirical evidence suggests that special interests, especially big business, exercise more power over the standard legislative process than over the referenda and initiative process. (Chapter Fifteen). So this standard critique of direct democracy, which I would hear all the time while living in California, is exposed as shallow and ungrounded.
The final chapter presents a nice summary of Let the People Rule: “direct democracy promises to bring policies into greater alignment with majority preferences, to diminish the influence of special interest groups, and to reduce political polarization by allowing the centrist majority to override the partisan extremes.” (236-237). This is, in brief, his case for the positive value of referenda.
Matsusaka concludes by saying that populism is not a passing fad but a response to a real loss of political power among ordinary people. (I generally agree). We must address it rather than hoping it will blow over or clinging to flawed past practices. Th best answer is to give ordinary people more power. Agreed, again. Matsusaka shows how dramatically expanding the use of referenda, where citizens vote directly on proposed legislation, is one way to do this.