| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 法律學研究所 === 94 === Recommendations for Procedural Reform of Referendum: A Perspective of Deliberative Democracy
Abstract
Among the critiques to referendum, what is really doubted is not direct citizen decision-making, but the uninformed voters, low turnout, poor public debate, and government-dominated agenda settings. Therefore, this article suggests the ideal of deliberative democracy as the perspective of procedural reform. Deliberative democracy, which believes free and equal informed citizens, with reasonable communication in pursuit of consensus of common good, could not only be the salvation of disadvantage of referendum, but also the enhancement of its functions. Deliberative democracy could still fulfill the normative requirement of due process of law.
To realize the ideal of deliberative democracy, several institutional experiments have been suggested, such as consensus conference, deliberative democracy, deliberation day ,and citizen assembly of B. C. Though there is difference, all of them try to practice the deliberative ideas of reciprocity, publicity, inclusiveness, liberty and equality. Citizen involvement, small scale discussion, diversity of view, discourses, equal participation are common characters. This experiment could give us some inspiration for how to “deliberatize” referendum procedure: the way to harmonize of large scale democracy and face-to-face deliberation, transferring agenda control to citizens, and transforming deliberation into decision making.
Finally, this article makes recommendations for domestic referendum rules, including
(1) lower the substantive and procedure gates ;
(2) verify the tube of citizen petition and early citizen participation in the stage of ballots drafting;
(3) enhance discourse in the stage of discussion;
(4) general majority rule of decision making;
(5) binding effects of result and limit the amendment by representative government;
(6) identical judicial review standards with representative legislation;
Just as participatory democracy believes developing civic virtue with enlarged participation, the article expects procedural reform, as a way of practice, could be the trigger of active citizen deliberation.
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