Plebiscites Quotes
The manifesto was designed to stop the practice of one country annexing part of another either by conquest or by purchase from the previous dominant power. Nations would trade and sell colonies or provinces to each other without any thought whatsoever to the wishes of the populations of those territories.
This quotation illustrates the "winner take all" conceopt of many political cultures that call themselves and think of theselves as a democracy. But a true democracy does not allow a tyranny of the majority--especially a very narrow minority.
One of the ideas to implement the Partition of India to create a Muslim Pakistan was to have plebiscites in many provinces to vote on whether the Province should remain with India or be a part of Pakistan. The Punjab was the largest of the mixed religion areas in question but the Punjab governor was opposed to the idea as most of the voters were illiterate and the Pro Pakistan forces would couch the alternatives in stark religious terms to the Muslim voters who will not realize that they could remain as Muslims in India just as they were at the time. In a number of areas—Kashmir being the most notable—there were a majority of Muslims yet enough of them preferred to remain with India than be part of Pakistan as they were Islamic moderates and did not want to be part of a Muslim Pakistan that might pressure them or force them to a more rigid form of Islam. Also many valued democracy and religious freedom. Some doubted Pakistan's likelihood of thriving in its own and preferred the stability of India.
Although Queen Victoria was modern and liberal in many respects, the idea of self-determination by majority vote was unthinkable and certainly undesirable for her. She was not opposed to lands and peoples changing empires and peoples per se. It was how the decision was made that was critical to her. Sovereigns had been buying, selling, and trading lands and peoples for centuries. And after wars, the winners would also reallocate the kingdoms of the loser. But the idea of a democratic plebiscite making the decision was unacceptable. To her and many others of the day, power struggles between factions, politicians, and sovereigns themselves would cause them to inflame the passions of the people and/or bribe the people to vote to change their allegiance. She saw popular but possibly unscrupulous politicians “blackmailing” kings and queens and if payments from the treasury would not be made, the politician would stir up a movement to transfer allegiance to another sovereign who might well be willing to pay.
The “it” was the Vietnam War issue. However, when he and others did assess public opinion, the country was split. However, over time public support for the Vietnam war waned, and we did withdraw.
Prior to WWI there had been several plebiscites in Austria with the people overwhelming voting to become part of Germany. But after the War, the victorious allies prohibited any more plebiscites as they did not want militaristic Germany to become larger or more powerful. This was a sore point, and one of Adolf Hitler’s first WWII foreign actions was marching into Austria and incorporating it.
“The Wisdom of Crowds” is a digital information theory‘ that a very large number of people might make a better quality decision that a few experts in an area. Bruni was a critic of this notion.
The State Constitutional ratification convention for Constitutional amendments is
The Islandic impeachment process requires that the voters make the final decision as to the charges against the President. However, unlike some American “recall” states, the voters may not initiate a plebiscite; it must be initiated by the legislature with a ¾ majority.
Chief legal officer of a Dutch town. He wanted to have a plebiscite in each town on major issues before the assembly so as to instruct the representative as to how to vote. The graphic is a painting of Adriaan van Zeebergh and his board of the Teylers Stichting.
