Voting on vaccinations: The political legitimacy of referendums on science‐related questions

In this paper, I ask whether a referendum is more legitimate than parliamentary voting as a procedure to reach a collective decision on the question of mandatory vaccinations. Since I define both procedures as applications of binary majority rule, I start by exploring the political legitimacy of such rule. There are two main legitimising arguments for it: an instrumental one and a procedural one. After an illustration of their respective limitations, I defend a hybrid account of legitimacy that makes use of both. My main claim is that which of these should be used to ground the legitimacy of a procedure depends crucially on the empirical content of the question at stake. However, I contend that only a procedural argument could make a referendum more legitimate than parliamentary voting. Thus, the answer to my research question depends on the empirical status of the issue of mandatory vaccinations. I describe it as a complex issue, the answer to which depends on both empirical and non-empirical components. Under a premise-based approach, a referendum would be more legitimate only for the non-empirical components. Under a conclusion-based one, it would be more legitimate only if an overall assessment conferred more relevance to the non-empirical components.