ast week's jockeying over the Legislature's failure to vote on the annual crop of initiative petitions provided a glimpse of what threatens to be a serious problem in Massachusetts and potentially a national calamity.
That word is not too strong for the damage that would be done to our representative democracy and our society if proposals are advanced to conduct national policy by referendum. Already, Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan have hinted at such proposals.
Many of the ill-effects of government by referendum are already abundantly visible in California and Oregon, which have to a considerable degree neutered their state legislatures through over-reliance on direct democracy.
Government by referendum does ''let the people speak,'' as its advocates claim, but it gives them a vocabulary of only two words: yes and no.
In Massachusetts, too, the problems are apparent, as eight proposed initiative petitions move toward the November ballot, along with one constitutional amendment slated for 2002. One of the most-discussed items promises to improve health care, but it would do so with a three-pronged approach, each complex. Voters who like one or two of the elements cannot choose. They have no opportunity for debate or amendment.
Still, the trend is toward increasing use of the device. And, as columnist David Broder points out in a his new book, ''Democracy Derailed,'' the proportion of ballot questions that pass has risen to about 50 percent - the highest ever.
This trend is a direct threat to the ideal of representative democracy embraced so passionately by the nation's founders. Clearly, voters don't think their elected officials are representing their interests well enough, if at all. The paradox, however, is that the legislators whose own power is directly targeted by the movement have often responded with disdain and with behavior in their chambers that is nothing short of suicidal.
How else to explain the Massachusetts House's late-night budget session, in which special-interest amendments were adopted at 4 or 5 in the morning, with no rollcalls and no previous hearing or debate? In fact, one reason for the late session was that the leadership has held very few formal sessions this year, so scores of items that should have been considered as separate bills ended up as budget amendments. In an atmosphere where an iron-fisted leadership thinks open floor debate is too much democracy, voters can hardly be blamed for looking to other ways of making their voices heard.
Nationally, the threat is even greater, for several reasons. Any method of passing legislation by popular vote would decimate the careful balance of the federal system, in which individual citizens have an equal voice in the House, while small states are protected from the tyranny of the majority by disproportionate representation in the Senate.
Another problem is that public opinion - often ''a factious spirit'' in James Madison's words - can change quickly. Will policy flip-flop every few days, as public sentiment wavers?
Most important, though, is that the entire rationale for public policy referendums is turning on its head in many states and would surely be upside down if implemented nationally. That rationale is that, when representatives will not do what citizens clearly want, voters have a right to mount grass-roots campaigns to take matters into their own hands. The Proposition 21/2 property tax limit, it must be said, was an example.
But increasingly, monied special interests have learned they can buy the advertising campaigns and other mechanisms to prevail in referendum campaigns, and this would surely be most true at the national level. With the stakes so high, a national referendum would only shift the arena of special-interest money from Congress to the streets.
Perot has only called for an ''electronic town hall'' in which voters could guide their elected officials. But Congress and the president already pay too much attention to public opinion polls. Governing is a job for representatives, not for citizens with quick trigger-fingers on their computers.
