Critical Analysis of Mendelson's and Parkins' "Introducing Direct Democracy in Canada"

In the article titled Introducing Direct Democracy in Canada, Mendelsohn and Parkin attempted proving to the readers that the holding of more referendums would improve Canadian democracy, as it would involve the general public in the making of policies and decisions that directly affected their lives. They state that the Canadian executive is given an enormous amount of power when he comes into office, which does not give others-outside of his "inner circle"-an opportunity to influence public policy. The reforms needed to fix this issue, according to Mendelsohn and Parkin, are referendums. However, although they write that referendums are a great way to get the public involved, they also state that there are severe consequences that can occur if they are not used under the right conditions.

Mendelsohn and Parkin's central idea is that referendums are needed in order to strengthen the democratic nature of Canada. If these referendums were used appropriately, they would have a number of important uses: protect minority interests so that majority does not always rule, develop a fair political process in which people have an equal chance of speaking their minds and raising their concerns in order to influence public views, provide access to information that the citizens will need in order to be informed and make decisions that work in their best interests, and hold political accountability so that voters would know who to blame if something was to go wrong.

They present consequences that could potentially occur in the case that referendums were not used correctly. An example would be voters who are not given the opportunity to listen to the different sides of a given issue and who go ahead and cast a vote not having really thought about it. The latter would directly go against the very nature and purpose of...