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Making Informed Citizens in Local Direct Democracy. What Part Does Their Government Perform?

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Book cover Local Government and Urban Governance in Europe

Part of the book series: The Urban Book Series ((UBS))

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Abstract

This chapter has two main parts. First, it starts with a short presentation of the well-established theorem of the uninformed voter, and argues that local direct democracy inhibits systemic incentives for a voter to become more open for information, and for a local government to inform the voter. Due to the information asymmetry, local government is required to actively make the local voter better informed to decide competently on a ballot measure. Local government further has to adopt practical standards to fulfill the task, such as appropriate length, comprehensiveness, objectivity, and political neutrality of voter information. Second, this chapter describes three cases of official local voter information, how they are regulated by law and work in practice. The poor regulation and practice of voter information of the City of Vienna gives the party politics and public officials a very free hand to manipulate the task of informing the voter in their own interests. The Austrian City of Bregenz represents a moderate example, whereas the City of Los Angeles has the merit of a high developed approach of voter information. In all cases, the politicization of voter information is ever present. The gap between practical standards and the real information environment can preclude voters making informed decisions at the polls and indirectly through that also on urban governance.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The very narrow understanding of a direct democratic decision is a measure that is initiated and decided by the voters. For purposes of our study, we include when a local council has decided to ask the voters to decide in a binding or consultative referendum. Which form of direct democracy is applied, depends heavily on the local political context and on legal provisions in the city charters.

  2. 2.

    Telephone conversation with the mayoress of Reutte on Wednesday, December 2, 2015 with the author.

  3. 3.

    Municipal legislative bodies are required to file a report with the Secretary of State containing information regarding citizen-generated initiative measures, http://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov//ballot-measures/pdf/county-initiative-2013-2014.pdf.

  4. 4.

    http://ballotpedia.org/City_of_Los_Angeles,_California_elections.

  5. 5.

    The proposition D became e ffective before the date of publication, that is upon June 20, 2013 with Ordinance 182580 Enacting Prop D; http://www.lacityattorney.org/#!medical-marijuana/cgh5.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria

    Werner Pleschberger

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  1. Werner Pleschberger
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Correspondence to Werner Pleschberger .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Carlos Nunes Silva

  2. Dept Human Geography & Demography, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Ján Buček

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Pleschberger, W. (2017). Making Informed Citizens in Local Direct Democracy. What Part Does Their Government Perform?. In: Nunes Silva, C., Buček, J. (eds) Local Government and Urban Governance in Europe. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43979-2_12

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