ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that democratic institutions must face the challenge of how to institutionalize a compromise between the need for citizen engagement in politics and the realistic division of labour between the governors and the governed. The chapter canvasses different mechanisms of plebiscitary or direct democracy and outlines the major arguments for and against plebiscitary and representative forms of democracy. In recent decades, however, political parties and other intermediary institutions that traditionally bridged the gap between the twin evils of too much and too little popular sovereignty have collapsed. These developments have reconfigured the traditional compromise between plebiscitary and representational democracy, and consequently, the fate of liberalism’s balance of the two. Popular voting, now more than ever, serves to delegate governing authority to a powerful executive – granting a legitimacy heretofore reserved for party-mediated representative institutions. Overtly ideological plebiscitary consultations, as seen in a number of recent elections, provide little or no guidance for translating the abstract decision of the people into governance norms. Democracies are now challenged to find alternative electoral arrangements that can provide adequately concrete directives to, and constraints on, those who wield the enormous power of administrative and bureaucratic governance.
