Napoleon was a great fan of referendums

Whenever the legislature got too troublesome Napoleon liked to put issues to the people.

Populist and democratic. Who could object?

But the idea was to turn issues into binary choices of "Thing X" versus "Nothing." With all nuance and alternative stripped away it is easy to attract support for something.

(Kind of like Saddam Hussein's elections. The people had a choice of Saddam or not Saddam, but no other candidates on the ballot. Even if the elections were free and fair it's easier to win such a vote because there's a tendency against voting for the unknown... leaderless chaos.)

I think Napoleon probably played a larger historical role in the long process of expanding human rights than anyone who ever lived. The bad things about him were typical of his times, the good things about him were revolutionary. (Bear in mind that the people against him were hereditary monarchs defending their narrow family control of the world... it's not like he was rampaging through a world of friendly democracies. And bear in mind that the revolutions of 1848 that sparked the communist manifesto were only 33 years after Waterloo! So the armed export of the remnants of the French revolution definately did shake some stuff loose.)

But there's no doubt that he was a dictator... a "unitary executive" who tended to get his way at any cost.

And one way for a dictator to get his way is to go to the "voice of the people" when the established system proves inconvenient.

Funny thing about the common man... let him decide everything directly and you're only a few steps from dictatorship. Representative democracy is far more stable than plebiscite in maintaining democracy.

Anyway, whenever I ponder California's proposition system I am struck that it can have the net effect of thwarting the people. Did "the people" really want to perma-bankrupt their state in the 1970s? Probably not. They were handed a binary choice without nuanced alternative.

"Who could object"?

Someone, apparently.

I've seen stuff here comparing him to Hitler and such.

Comical propaganda, but it left it's mark on history.

:Joke: (A chapter in Alexandre Dumas' THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO about Napoleon is called The Corsican Ogre)