Author
Abstract
There has been significant attention paid to explaining and understanding the impact of the UK’s vote to leave the EU on UK politics and its constitution. There has also been criticism of the political campaigning, from both the “leave” and “remain” sides, and of people’s understanding of what they were voting for. There has been limited discussion, though, of how to improve the quality of campaign deliberation, which is fundamental to the legitimacy of both representative and direct democratic processes. Using the UK’s vote on EU membership as a case study, this article examines the importance of the law to regulate and improve deliberation prior to direct public votes on specific policy issues. It also considers options for changes to the law and for its implementation, using the current provisions about false statements in electoral law as a starting point. The article argues that the quality of deliberation during UK referendum campaigns needs to improve and that legal regulation should be developed. There are, however, significant challenges in drafting legislation that appropriately defines and limits the use of misleading statements, and at the same time avoids excessive restriction of free speech, or an excessively political role for regulatory bodies and the courts. Given the nature of political campaigning and the challenges in reducing the use of misleading statements by political actors through legal regulation, increased deliberative opportunities for citizens are proposed as a complementary, perhaps more effective means to positively enhance deliberation in political campaigns. Whatever approach is taken, direct democracy needs to be combined effectively with representative democracy, based on a common underlying principle of the importance of deliberation, and not treated as a separate part of a state’s democracy.
Suggested Citation
James Organ, 2019.
"Legal Regulation of Campaign Deliberation: Lessons from Brexit,"
Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 7(2), pages 268-277.
Handle:
RePEc:cog:poango:v7:y:2019:i:2:p:268-277
DOI: 10.17645/pag.v7i2.1942
Download full text from publisher
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v7:y:2019:i:2:p:268-277. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.