Ian Buruma calls for fewer referendums and more democracy

Ian Buruma, author and professor at Bard College in New York, writes that fewer referendums would be a boon for Europe: "Switzerland has four mosques with minarets and a population of 350,000 nominal Muslims, mostly Europeans from Bosnia and Kosovo, of which about 13 percent regularly go to prayer. Not a huge problem, one might have thought. ...  Are the Swiss more bigoted than other Europeans? Probably not. ... But if the Swiss and other Europeans were self-assured about their own identities, their Muslim fellow-citizens probably would not strike such fear in their hearts. And that might be the problem. ... It would surely help if we had fewer referendums. For, contrary to what some believe, they do not strengthen democracy. They weaken it by undermining our elected representatives, whose job is to exercise their good judgment rather than voice the gut feelings of an anxious, angry people."

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