Most democracies, as we understand by the term today, operate according to a system of "representative democracy" – that is, citizens elect representatives who then debate and decide upon issues, ostensibly on their behalf. Former UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage. The Brexit referendum was called partly due to pressure from Eurosceptics within Britain's Conservative Party worried by the rise of UKIP. Credit:Frank Augstein Switzerland, however, is one of the few countries in the world to implement a system of direct democracy, where citizens can petition to hold referendums on different policies. Switzerland, where the practice of the referendum originated as long ago as the late 13th century, is sometimes hailed as the most democratic country in the world because of its frequent consultation with the electorate. It was from the Swiss that the framers of the Australian constitution borrowed the idea as the sole means of constitutional change. But the Swiss model is far from perfect as a democratic ideal. Swiss democracy has tyrannised a very significant minority as recently as 1959 when voters declined to give women the vote. It was not until 1971 that they were finally enfranchised, the last bastion of female exclusion in the Western world. And in 2009, a majority of Swiss voters decided to restrict the rights of a minority group by banning the construction of minarets in Switzerland (despite there being a grand total of just four minarets in the country at the time the ban was enacted). Critics of the referendum and plebiscite argue that voters are more likely to be driven by transient whims than by careful deliberation, or that they are not sufficiently informed to make decisions on complicated or technical issues – such as was the case with the Brexit vote in Britain. Critics also point to the effect of propaganda, advocacy by strong personalities, intimidation and scare campaigns as well as expensive advertising and public relations campaigns.

Like democracy itself, the referendum had decidedly pejorative connotations in the 19th century, commonly associated in the public mind (at least in the English-speaking world) with Napoleon and his referendums in post-revolutionary France – the first national referendums. At first, Napoleon employed the device to secure support for new constitutions, and subsequently to tighten his grip on power. As he spread his control over much of Europe, he also initiated referendums in several other countries, Switzerland among them, designed to win approval for new imposed constitutions. Former NSW premier Bob Askin called a referendum on New England seceding from the state after a promise in 1965. Credit:Fairfax Media With Napoleon having set the example, use of the referendum at the national level gradually spread in the late 19th and early 20th century, but this had little to do with democratic advance. On the contrary, the device was more often than not employed to legitimise authoritarian regimes, or to win approval for unpopular measures. The referendum was to be further tarnished by its use by dictators, such as Nazi Germany's Adolf Hitler and fascist Italy's Benito Mussolini who saw in the plebiscite a convenient means of disguising oppressive policies as blatant populism. Both leaders also resorted to referendum-style "elections" to further legitimise their authority – Mussolini in 1943 and Hitler in 1936. Other dictators seized on it too – Francisco Franco in Spain in 1947, Park Chung-hee in South Korea in 1972 and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines in 1973. Margaret Thatcher was a critic of referendums. Credit:AP

In non-authoritarian states, the referendum also began to gain ground during the course of the 20th century, mainly through the rise of populist political ideas, most notably in the United States at the local and state level (the US has no provision for a national referendum); its usefulness to governments of all stripes for winning approval of diverse measures; and as a means of determining the status of territories, as occurred after World War I in such places as Silesia and Schleswig. In the 1990s, the referendum gained further ground with its option by a number of former Communist-bloc countries in eastern Europe, but it reached a global peak of sorts in 2016 when voters rejected Colombia's peace deal with the FARC rebels; separated Britain from the European Union; endorsed a constitution in Thailand that drastically curtailed democracy; and, in Hungary, backed the government's anti-EU plan to restrict refugees, but without the necessary turnout for a valid result. Adolf Hitler used a referendum-style "election" to legitimise his power in 1936. Credit:AP Each of these far-reaching moves was determined by a process of national referendum – but with dubious outcomes that confounded government processes, eroded rights and set in train a series of unintended consequences and political crises. Each of the examples demonstrated why many political scientists consider referendums messy and dangerous, and with a highly ambiguous relationship with accepted practices of democracy. Britain's former prime minister Margaret Thatcher had strong views on the referendum as she did on most issues, quoting with approval the words of one of her predecessors, Labor's Clement Attlee, who called the referendums "a device for dictators," arguing that they reduced complicated issues down to simplistic "yes/no" questions and allowed elected representatives to abrogate the responsibility for which they had been elected.

Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco, left, gestures during a speech on the balcony of the Oriente Palace in Madrid. Listening on is Juan Carlos de Borbon, who was crowned king after Franco's death. Franco seized on the referendum to further his own ends. Credit:AP Unlike an election, with its party policies and broad positions sketched out, voters face a formidable problem in any referendum, especially one as complex as Brexit. The process requires them to distil difficult and contested policy choices down to a simple yes or no, and determine by a simple majority the outcome of decisions so complex that even experts might spend years struggling to understand them. Politicians, as well as other interested parties, will often seek to reframe the referendum into simplistic, straightforward narratives. The result is that voters become less concerned about the actual policy question than about contests between abstract values, or between which narrative voters find more appealing. The English philosopher, Anthony Grayling, writing in The New European, argued that the Brexit referendum ran entirely counter to representative democracy, and was in fact a subversion of democracy. He wrote: "The whole point of representative democracy is that its forms prevent the political system from descending into crude majoritarianism ('the tyranny of the majority' over minorities is a danger that systems of representative democracy are designed to prevent) or, worse, ochlocracy or mob rule…Representative democracy is a filter that guards against descent into forms of populism. It consists in a due process intended to allow for all factors to be taken into account, and for mature deliberation to select the best way forward on the basis of those factors." Criticism also came from Harvard economist, Kenneth Rogoff, formerly chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, who wrote that the idea that somehow any decision reached any time by majority rule is necessarily democratic is a perversion of the term. "This isn't democracy; it is Russian roulette for republics," he wrote.

While advocates of direct democracy argue that referendums offer a way to engage otherwise apathetic voters – especially as support worldwide for established political parties is in decline – the fact is that increasingly referendums are being used for other, less salubrious, reasons. Some, including the anti-immigration referendum in Hungary, have been called to challenge or subvert EU policies. The year before, in Greece, an embattled Alexis Tsipras, Greece's prime minister, called a referendum with only eight days' notice on the Greek economic bail-out conditions. Elsewhere, the rapid rise of populist single-issue parties has seen referendums used as a way of challenging EU-wide treaties – for example, in the Netherlands on the EU's trade deal with Ukraine, although the Netherlands is little affected by it. Even in Britain, the Brexit vote called by former prime minister David Cameron was partly due to pressure from Eurosceptics within his own Conservative Party worried by the rise of the UK Independence Party. The referendum – ostensibly a way of taking power out of the hands of elected representatives and giving it to the people – is by no means above the political fray; indeed, it is riddled with politics. It can be used just as much to subvert the popular will as it can to implement it. Take for example a promise made in 1965 by the then-Leader of the Opposition in NSW, Bob Askin, to hold a referendum on the issue of New England seceding and becoming a new state. Askin was duly elected, breaking the 24-year stranglehold of Labor, and was reminded of his pledge.

The trouble with the promise was that sentiment in the New England region was running high in favour of going it alone, and while Askin did not want to go back on a pledge that had helped him win government he also did not want to become known as the leader who lost the north. So, the wily Askin let the New Englanders have their vote, as promised. But a new state needed a port, so, helpfully, Askin, after a commission of inquiry, offered the secessionists Newcastle, knowing full well that its inclusion in the voting area would more than offset the pro-secession numbers – and especially as Labor was campaigning heavily for a no vote. So, on 29 April 1967, voters in northern NSW went to the polls, with the secession proposals only narrowly defeated, 54 per cent voting no. As Askin had hoped, the very high no vote in the Labor strongholds of Newcastle and the Lower Hunter offset the majority yes vote elsewhere, although the no margin was not high. Some towns, such as Inverell, were more than 80 per cent in favour of leaving NSW. The people got their vote, but politics won in the end. The referendum can be used by politicians not wanting to be seen taking difficult decisions, even when it is within their power to take those decisions. It provides a convenient "blame the people, not us" excuse. This is what the Turnbull government appears to be doing with its determination to press ahead with a potentially divisive plebiscite on marriage equality. Australians, as is well known, have an established track record in opposing change: just eight out of 44 referendums since Federation have resulted in a yes vote. The consulting firm PwC estimates that the proposed plebiscite could cost $525 million, including $158 million to conduct the voting and $66 million for campaigning costs.