Referendums, a brief history:

year;    state    question;    outcome;    consequence.  

1988; Yugoslavia; maintain the state; vetoed by Slovenia; impasse.  

1990 (pre war); Slovenia; secession; 89% yes; war.  

1991; USSR; maintain the state; 78% yes; the opposite - the break-up of the Soviet Union.  

1991 (pre-war); two ballots, one in Croatia and one in the Krajina; secession and no secession; Orthodox and Catholic boycotts but 93% and 90% yes; war.  

1991 (pre-war); Kosovo; independence; Orthodox boycott but 99% yes; not recognised by EU for 8 years, then war.  

1991 (post-war); Nagorno-Karabakh; independence; Azeris in exile but 99% yes; no peace.  

1992; (pre-war); Bosnia, secession, Orthodox boycott but 99% yes, war.  

1992; (post-war), South Ossetia, independence, yes, more war.  

1999; (post-war), Abhazia, independence, Georgians in exile but 97% yes; no peace.   

2006; two more polls in South Ossetia; the Ossetians boycott one and the Georgians the other; another war.  

Oh and by the way: 

1972; Northern Ireland; the border; Catholic boycott but 97% yes; more 'troubles'.

The referendum is a blunt instrument.  In effect, it often disenfranchises those who might otherwise want to vote for compromise - the Yugoslavs, for example.  It is divisive, that or it exacerbates existing divisions.  It is inconclusive: in Russia - in Chechnya Tatarstan etc, - referendums are not allowed, for such ballots could lead to 'the break-up of the Federation.  (They call it matryoshka nationalism' : just as inside every Russian doll, matryoshka, there is another smaller one; so too, in every majority, there is a minority: UK, Ireland, Northern Ireland...) 

The question in Crimea does not have to be either/or.  A multi-option referendum could allow for compromise.  Newfoundland had a three-option constitutional ballot in 1949; Singapore also had three in 1962; twenty years later, Guam had six.

(See also 2014-5.) 

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