Introduction

Referendums are now common in ‘conflict societies’—societies where a widespread and concerted campaign of violence between groups recently occurred, is occurring, or is liable to occur. In the ideal case, a peace referendum can secure consent for a new formal peace settlement among warring groups and provide the settlement with a popular mandate. In practice, however, settlements, once attained, may struggle to endure. Some may collapse entirely. Against this background we introduced what we call the ‘Deliberative Peace Referendum’, or ‘DPR’. A DPR is a purpose-designed deliberative referendum held under conditions of conflict. As this chapter recognizes, designing a referendum to be more deliberative is a challenge under any circumstances. It may be hardest of all amid armed intercommunal conflict.

Indigenous-Settler Conflicts

In this chapter we look at the possibility of using deliberative peace referendums in the context of indigenous-settler conflicts, in which the root of the conflicts lie in historical acts by which colonizing powers asserted their own sovereignty over or in place of that of existing peoples in the same territory. Not all indigenous-settler states experience overt conflict, but those that do sometimes share certain characteristics, such as experiences of dispossession, assimilation and subalterneity. This presents an especially formidable obstacle to public-value deliberation. Adequate deliberative peace referendum design may require a preliminary period in which comprehensive and detailed changes to policies and laws are used to address political and economic inequalities—and a delay in the running of the referendum for years, or even decades. We must also consider whether an additional feature of indigenous-settler societies (apart from structural inequalities that are not, in any case, unique to these societies) will significantly impede deliberation in the course of a peace referendum. Several authors have explored the sharp divergences between the empirical, normative and epistemic views (including views about group sovereignty itself) of indigenous and settler populations. Hence indigenous-settler conflicts will be among the conflict subtypes that most significantly challenge our conception of deliberative peacemaking within the deliberative peace referendum.

Designing a Deliberative Peace Referendum

This chapter outlines the generic Deliberative Peace Referendum model. We introduce key innovations such as a modestly coercive referendum ballot design that encourages public-reason based deliberation. We also point to more established institutional options (eg, mini-publics) and where these may fit the referendum process. The generic Deliberative Peace Referendum model is amendable to modification, especially in light of the various types of conflict in which it may apply.

Settlement Endurance

This chapter focuses on the question of settlement endurance—a question that overlaps with but is importantly distinct from the question of settlement achievement (as discussed in Chapter 2). We argue that even a brief popular act of entrenchment may solidify in the form of a lasting constitutional settlement. However, the process by which this act occurs is crucial. We particularly focus on deliberative peace referendums. One claim in this chapter will be that these referendums, by drawing on institutional supports for deliberation, may expose a broad but latent constitutional agreement that may already have existed at the popular (but not the elite) level in a conflict society. The referendum may also clarify the reasons on which an agreement is based, and hence deepen the sense of legitimacy that attaches to it.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter reprises the book’s content and offers several key lessons. It also proffers predictions about where future work may take studies of deliberative design for peace referendums. Referendums are now part of very many peacemaking efforts. We expect referendums to continue to be used this way. But when this occurs, the success of peace referendums—particularly their capacities to achieve and secure the endurance of constitutional peace settlements—may turn largely on whether institutional supports for deliberation are in place.

Settlement Achievement

This chapter focuses on the first of two principal rationales supporting the use of peace referendums, namely settlement achievement. The chapter starts by locating the argument of the book in the public reason tradition, and specifically in the work of John Rawls. The chapter identifies how public values often feature in crucial, if generally under-appreciated, ways in peace agreements—not just as lofty aspirations but as powerful normative constraints on the content of particular constitutional clauses. The chapter then defends the claim that non-elites may be as, or even more, adept than some classes of elites (such as governmental, ethnic, or secessionist leaders) at deliberating about those values. We accept that constitutional settlements often contain a great deal of institutional detail; and we also accept that elites are usually better placed to deliberate about that detail. Yet we explain why the comparative advantage may rest with non-elites when it comes to deliberating about general public values. All of this is contingent on robust deliberative institutional supports being in place, both through the course of the referendum campaign and at the final vote.

Group Secession

This chapter looks at Deliberative Peace Referendums in the context of secession—that is, where the members of a territorially concentrated group seek legal and political separation from a larger sovereign state of which the group has been an integral part. They typically do so with the aim of establishing a new sovereign state that enjoys international legal status on a par with other states in the international system. As we will see, secession is essentially unilateral: the decision to secede from the existing state rests ultimately with the seceding group. Consequently, the idea that secession referendums should be based on concurrent consent among more than one group will be out of place. Yet while the consent of the existing state may not be formally required, the degree to which the seceding group seeks to include others in its deliberations may make an important difference to how the legitimacy of the referendum is perceived—domestically, regionally, and internationally. In secession conflicts, therefore, Deliberative Peace Referendum design must reflect both the unilateral nature of the decision and the need to reach out to individuals in the existing state, the wider region, and international community. To this end, we consider (among other matters) both the structure of the ballot and the potential role of mini-publics. However, before doing so, we first discuss a prior question. Various legal and political philosophers disagree about when secession is justified. Some argue that secession cannot be sensibly justified on self-determination grounds. By corollary, they argue that the referendum should play no part in our thinking about secession conflicts. Against this view, we argue that the right to self-determination is an important public value of the sort that Rawls describes. Like all such values, it needs to be weighed in the balance against other, competing public values—which is to say that it can and should be tested through a Deliberative Peace Referendum

Group-Sovereignty Conflict

This chapter explores conflicts that centre on group sovereignty. In such conflicts, two or more identity-based groups compete for political dominion within a specific territory. We introduce group sovereignty in broad terms as a concept in political and constitutional theory. We also offer some initial suggestions for the design of a deliberative peace referendum to take account of group sovereignty elements in conflict. We contend that this element cannot be ignored or wished away, but must be accommodated—for instance, by means of a rule of ‘concurrent consent’ in the referendum. Such a rule requires a majority vote within each of the distinct groups in conflict. A critical question raised, however, is the degree to which deliberation is feasible when we give group identity (the root cause of many deliberative pathologies) a robust role in the deliberative peace referendum.