# What are the Economic reasons and explanations to make a referendum?

Australia is now conducting a survey on same sex marriage, to decide if they take the vote to the parliament or not. Although it is called a survey, the population is treating it as a referendum. The government could decide on its own to legalize the same-sex marriage, the same way it decides on topics such as immigration laws.

Are there any economic arguments that help a government to decide which topics are polled from the population and which are not?

You can imagine that every citizen $i$ would pay $r_i$ monetary units to have a certain policy changed. This number may also be negative to reflect that some people like the current policy better than the proposed change.
Ideally the government would like to know $\sum r_i$, if its positive or negative. But I am sure there are also a lot of practical political considerations. However polling itself has a significant cost. Let us denote this by $C$. The government probably has some vague idea about $\sum r_i$. E.g. most people don't care about the color of chewing gum wraps, so the $\sum r_i$ for banning silver coloring is likely negligable. In this case a poll to determine the exact value would be wasteful as $$\sum r_i - C < 0.$$ So when you pick something to poll it is probably a salient issue, something that a lot of people know about and have strong opinions about. As I said, I am sure that these considerations are usually secondary to political ones.
• +1. How costly is polling? I assume that online surveys have dramatically decreased $C$, at least the cost of collecting data. – emeryville Sep 19 '17 at 9:40
• @JoaoBotelho I think you perhaps read my answer to hastily? It is a crucial part of it that the people who prefer the status quo are also accounted for via the negative $r_i$ values. – Giskard Sep 19 '17 at 13:05