Posted by Ilya Somin:
Exploiting Political Ignorance in Europe:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_07_15-2007_07_21.shtml#1184624543
In 2005, European political elites were disappointed by the rejection
of the proposed [1]European Constitution in referenda in France and
the Netherlands. Today, European leaders are working on a way to
reverse that result. How? By exploiting political ignorance. As the
[2]EU Observer explains (hat tip: [3]Daniel J. Mitchell):
The new EU reform treaty text was deliberately made unreadable for
citizens to avoid calls for referendum, one of the central figures
in the treaty drafting process has said. Speaking at a meeting of
the Centre for European Reform in London on Thursday (12 July)
former Italian prime minister Giuliano Amato said: �They [EU
leaders] decided that the document should be unreadable. If it is
unreadable, it is not constitutional, that was the sort of
perception�. ��Mr Amato, who is now minister of the interior in
Italy, has been a central figure in all stages of the year-long
process of writing a new constitution for Europe....
Following two years of �reflection� [after the Constitution's
defeat in 2005], Mr Amato headed the 16-strong group of politicians
which prepared a simplified version of the document. Unofficially
known as the �Amato Group� the group stripped the rejected
constitution of its constitutional elements - including the article
on the EU�s symbols. But the main elements of the original
constitution were kept in.
The article explains that the Amato Group hoped that an unreadable
document labeled as a "treaty" rather than a Constitution would not be
perceived as something "new" by voters, and therefore would not be
required to go through referenda that might lead to its rejection (as
happened in 2005). In other words, theGroup's strategy for getting the
Constitution accepted by voters is to 1) change some of the verbiage
so that it will no longer look like a Constitution (while keeping the
substantive provisions the same), and 2) make the document as
"unreadable" as possible, thus ensuring that voters won't understand
what it will actually do if enacted.
Obviously, such a strategy is unlikely to work with a well-informed
electorate. Even if voters in such a hypothetical electorate didn't
understand the fine points of proposed legal changes, they would at
least know enough not to be fooled by cosmetic changes in
nomenclature, and to be suspicious of documents deliberately drafted
so as to be "unreadable." In reality, however, most voters fall far
short of this ideal. As I have explained in great detail elsewhere
(e.g. - here and here), they have strong incentives to be rationally
ignorant about politics and to do a poor job of evaluating the
political information they do know (see e.g. [4]here and [5]here).
The EU Observer quotes one of the Amato Group's critics who denounced
them for showing "a total contempt for voters." The Group may well be
guilty of that. But, given the reality of rational political
ignorance, its ploy might work, and its "contempt" may turn out to be
justified.
UPDATE: Most of my work on ignorance is based on US data. However, the
more limited European data we have don't paint a picture much
different from the widespread political ignorance that exists in this
country. For example, [6]this paper by British political scientists
shows that the overwhelming majority of British voters do not know the
relative positions of the country's major political parties on key
issues. [7]This article finds similar patterns of apathy and political
ignorance among European and American youth. [8]This 1999 article
found that some 2/3 of Western Europeans have little or no knowledge
of basic foreign policy issues. The Amato Group is therefore on safe
ground in counting on European political ignorance to help promote
their agenda.
References
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Constitution
2. http://euobserver.com/9/24481
3.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/07/16/a-perverse-burst-of-honesty-from-europe/
4. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=916963
5. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2372
6. http://www.crest.ox.ac.uk/papers/p87.pdf
7. http://abs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/50/9/1195
8. http://ijpor.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/12/2/113.pdf
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