REFERENDUMS are supposed to get citizens engaged in politics and make governments responsive. If they worked, Europeans ought to be feeling particularly satisfied with their democracies. For referendums are on the rise. Not counting Switzerland, which has always run lots of them, big plebiscites are three times more common in Europe now than they were in the 1970s (see article). Britain is preparing one on withdrawing from the European Union. Dutch campaigners have just won a referendum against the EU-Ukraine association agreement, and plan to take on EU trade treaties with Canada and America. Italians are to vote on changing their constitution, and Hungarians on the EU’s refugee-sharing scheme. Despite this direct democracy, Europeans are alienated from politics and furious with their governments. Referendum-mania has not slowed the rise of populist, Eurosceptic parties which attack the establishment as corrupt and out of touch. Plebiscites meant to settle thorny issues instead often aggravate them: after Scotland’s independence referendum failed in 2014, membership of the Scottish National Party quadrupled, suggesting another confrontation is coming.

Referendums, it turns out, are a tricky instrument. They can bring the alienated back into politics, especially where the issues being voted on are local and clear. On rare occasions they can settle once-in-a-generation national questions, such as whether a country should be part of a larger union. But, much of the time, plebiscites lead to bad politics and bad policy.

The most problematic are those on propositions that voters do not understand or subjects which are beyond governments’ control. In 2015 Alexis Tsipras, prime minister of Greece, called a referendum on the bail-out offered by his country’s creditors. His citizens—many of whom did not realise that refusal meant default—voted no. Mr Tsipras had to take the deal anyway, exacerbating the public’s cynicism about politics.

Plebiscites that ask a country’s voters what they think of a policy set by other countries often disappoint. The Dutch rejected the EU-Ukraine agreement, but may be stuck with much of it unless the EU’s other 27 members agree to changes. Switzerland does domestic referendums well, but is in hot water over one that restricts immigration from the EU. That requires changes to its trade deal with the EU; Brussels will not budge.

Because referendums treat each issue in isolation, they allow voters to ignore the trade-offs inherent in policy choices and can thus render government incoherent. California, which has had referendums for a century, has been crippled by voters’ simultaneous demands for high spending and low taxes. A second danger is that fringe groups or vested interests use referendums to exercise outsize influence, particularly if few signatures are needed to call one and voter turnout is low.

Votey McVoteface

These dangers can be mitigated. Requiring minimum turnouts can guard against the tyranny of the few. (Italy’s 50% threshold is about right.) But the bigger point is that plebiscites are a worse form of democracy than representative government. James Madison was right when he wrote that democracies in which citizens voted directly on laws would be torn apart by factions. The founders of democratic states created parliaments for a reason.

Today’s fashion for plebiscites has similarities to the optimism of the early internet age, when everyone thought that more communication meant better democracy. Social-media echo chambers and armies of trolls hired by repressive governments have cured that illusion. More scepticism is warranted about referendums, too. Fewer would be better.