"Referendum" seems to be the word on everybody's lips. Europe's future cohesion is under threat from possible plebiscites at either end of the continent. In the United Kingdom, sources close to newly re-elected Prime Minister David Cameron have revealed that he would like to hold his promised in-out referendum on EU membership as soon as possible, maybe as early as 2016. In Greece, after weeks of hints from government ministers that a national referendum on its eurozone membership might be a good thing, a change of direction occurred as Interior Minister Nikos Voutsis said in a statement that the government is planning neither a referendum nor elections. While these potential referendums both concern a country's potential exit from the European Union, they are also both cautionary tales. Each has gained a life of its own, with the potential to go beyond the original political intent of their respective creators.

In Britain the conversation around the referendum has already been underway for two years. Cameron originally made the referendum promise as a gambit with which to head off the rising challenge of the Euroskeptic UKIP and its sympathizers within his own party's ranks. Euroskeptics have seized on the issue of immigration following an influx of Eastern Europeans into the United Kingdom during the last decade and have conflated the two in voters' minds. Cameron promised to hold a referendum by the end of 2017 if the Conservatives were in power. With a coalition in power at the time, a Tory majority looked unlikely, but that is what emerged from last week's elections.

The referendum promise was linked to a planned renegotiation of Britain's relationship with the European Union, with Cameron offering the British people the opportunity to pass judgment on the results of these negotiations, which are about to start. Cameron, knowing that leaving Europe would be detrimental to the United Kingdom both economically and strategically, nevertheless intended to use a referendum promise to kill two birds with one stone. It would puncture threats to the right of his party while gaining leverage at the negotiating table with the Europeans, who would be aware that a British exit might ensue if they were not sufficiently forthcoming with concessions such as allowing the United Kingdom more opt-outs and increased protection from immigrant flows.

Two years on, Cameron now finds himself in sole control of the country, with his Europhile former coalition partners the Liberal Democrats licking their wounds after an electoral collapse. This means two things. First, he is now committed to holding a referendum. Second, without the Liberal Democrats balancing out the Euroskeptic wing of his party, the Euroskeptics can use their increased influence to make more demands in the renegotiation, making it harder to spin any resultant gains to the public as a significant victory. Cameron is in danger of having inadvertently created a monster that could wrench the United Kingdom out of the European Union.

Now the prime minister is working to make the whole process take place as swiftly as possible. This is for two reasons, the first purely economic. International businesses view the United Kingdom and particularly London as a convenient staging post for accessing the European market. Consequently, the possibility of a British exit will inhibit these firms from further investing in the country until the issue is settled, so the sooner it can be settled the better. The second reason is that a speedier process will be more likely to produce an "in" vote. The longer Cameron waits, the more the Euroskeptics' power is likely to grow as his election victory fades into memory. Also, the polls show that the populace is currently leaning toward staying in the union. Any delay would give voters the opportunity to change their minds.

In Greece, the Syriza party has also been using the threat of referendum as a weapon, but as in the United Kingdom they have found that it is a weapon with a tendency to backfire. When Syriza was elected in January of this year, the Greek people granted the party a mandate to push back hard against Greece's creditors. However, with Syriza claiming to be great Europhiles and with polls consistently showing that the Greek people did not want to leave Europe, there evidently was a limit to Syriza's threats.

As the talks have escalated and the brinkmanship has pushed both sides to extremes, Syriza began talking up the possibility of a referendum or early elections, hypothetically empowering the government to re-enter negotiations with the loaded gun of a eurozone exit laying on the table. The problem with this strategy arises if the Greek public, instead of empowering Syriza to take Greece out of Europe in a worst-case scenario, were to vote instead to keep Greece within the European Union at any price. In such a scenario, Syriza would find itself sitting at the poker table with Germany with no cards to play.

This week, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble appears to have called Syriza's bluff. Ever since a Greek referendum was first mooted by then-Prime Minister George Papandreou in 2011, Europe's leaders have resisted the idea strongly for fear of empowering a Greek popular revolt on the subject. Thus it was surprising when Schaeuble publicly stated on Monday that perhaps a Greek referendum might actually be a good idea. This was followed by a day of intense Syriza party talks, after which Voutsis released his statement ruling out a referendum or early elections. The weapon of the Greek people's preference, which had been pointing at Berlin, seems to have turned and is now pointing at Syriza, and it is Athens that has had to backpedal.

The battle is long and broken into several segments. With the current bailout set to end in June and talks needed over what will follow, there will be plenty of opportunities for the Greek public to lose patience with Europe and for their mood to darken. But it appears that the democratic weapon of the Greek people's wishes has been wrested from Syriza's grasp for the time being.

Liberal democracy is about the empowerment of the people, making politicians accountable to their publics through regular elections and open discourse. Every now and then, a politician decides to try to use public opinion to their advantage. Cameron gambled that obstacles would emerge that would hinder his referendum promise. Syriza gambled that the public would come around to its way of thinking. Both used their electorates as a threat, and both have come to rue those choices.