In the Newsletter of the Royal Economic Society (RES) I now have this memo: “Brexits deep roots in confusion on democracy and statistics”, see http://www.res.org.uk/view/art1Oct18Comment.html
Apparently “political science on electoral systems” (including referenda) still is locked in the humanities, thus pre-science, or pseudo-science, like astrology, alchemy and homeopathy. See above memo for the link to the proof in the paper (2018a) there.
This diagnosis is a game-changer. There was much discussion in the past about electoral systems and referenda, but now the evidence must be re-evaluated again, because of contamination by pseudo-science. This not only affects Brexit but also notions of democracy in the USA or France.
My proposal is to create a “buddy system” with pairs of empirical scientists and scholars from this problematic field of “political science on electoral systems”. Often scientists show no interest in notions of democracy, while the “political scientists on electoral systems” obviously have collected basic information: the world would benefit from the joining of minds and approaches. See Elizabeth II: “Why did nobody notice it?” in 2008 and Brexit 2018 | Boycott Holland
Mathematica can play a good role here, see my book “Voting Theory for Democracy” (VTFD) for single seat elections and see the RES Newsletter memo for links to statistics and multiple seat elections. See Voting Theory for Democracy | Zenodo