Is direct democracy dangerous?

As many of our readers already know, we are supporters of participatory or direct democracy. We have expressed this in our calls for term limits for members of Congress and in our calls for more referendums submitted to voters for their actions. We were therefore interested to read in the May 21 issue of The Economist an article entitled "Referendumania" in which they criticize the growing number of referendums "spreading across Europe." We were surprised by their position, as the magazine usually presents a balance of views to their international readers, and especially surprised by their concluding paragraph: "Direct democracy is fine for things that don't matter, such as the Eurovision song contest. But it is no way to run a country, let alone a continent."

Read the article and see what you think about direct democracy.