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Do we want the people of Europe better informed about the EU? If so, let’s give them a say.
Written by Libertas   
Tuesday, 16 October 2007

OpenDemocracy’s Matthias Benz writes (here ) about the impact that referenda have on memberstates.

In a paper published in the journal Public Choice, Alois Stutzer and I systematically investigated how referenda in several European countries affected citizens’ information about the EU in the 1990s …..

….. Our results indicate that people in countries which had a referendum were “objectively” better informed about the EU (according to 10 questions about the EU in the 1996 Eurobarometer) as well as feeling “subjectively” better informed about the EU after a referendum …..

….. As a second empirical test, we also looked at voter information in Switzerland, where the extent of citizens’ political-participation rights differs substantially among the 26 Swiss cantons. Again, we found that citizens living in more direct democratic jurisdictions are objectively better informed about politics 

A referenda increases the demand citizens have for information about the EU, and would result in them being better informed about the goings on (and relevance) of the European Union.
 
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