[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_de...
Politicians faced with inconsistent referendum results (not budget neutral) aren’t even able to deliver. If people got a chance to vote for lower taxes and increased government spending, they would. But who will deliver? A party that promises both those things would be considered crazy/populist (hopefully) and lose the election.
And why do you think the same people would vote differently for some crazy idea directly or via the party promoting that same thing?
Again, referendums doesn't magically make politics and politicians disappear. It's a rather terrible instrument for governingf.
> why do you think the same people would vote differently for some crazy idea directly or via the party promoting that same thing?
The crazy idea isn't "Tax X". The idea is that parties create budgets and the budgets must be balanced. That is: you might have one party saying "We'd add tax X and fund program Y" and another party saying "We don't want spending proram Y because we don't want to raise taxes".
The "crazy idea" isn't Tax X or program Y. The crazy idea would be to have the cake and eat it: to have the increased spending and not the increased tax. Now, you can of course solve this in referendums too. You can ask people "Do you want program Y, funded by Tax X" and people can say yes or no. The problem with this is, that it snowballs very quickly. Every expenditure ties into everything else because a state budget is extremely complex. A program might be a useless waste unless another program is also funded. And a tax might not cover an expense unless something else also happens (and so on and so forth). In the end, to get something that is possible (consistent) you would often get one big direct democracy vote: which budget do you want A or B or C? Which is fine! But who would create those options?
The least bad solution to that that i know of is: let people freely suggest these. Let them organize in groups and people can vote for their ideas as consistent sets of ideas such as "budgets".
Direct democracy doesn’t do that so isn’t viable for all decisions. Personally I think it’s useful in so few situations that it’s best left alone.
Which is a very succinct description of why “direct democracy” (or overuse of referendums) is, simply put, not a good idea.
A vote on tax X versus tax Y? Fine. But voting yes or no on taxes? Next thing you’ll see a vote on an expense separate from the funding…