For some reason, I once studied Russian politics. Not all that communist lark, mind you. No no, it was after the Berlin Wall came down and Gorbachev got freaky with glasnost that the party really started. Plummeting life expectancies, parliamentary coups, Boris Yeltsin's vodka-fuelled 1994 world tour. Fun times.

In the early 1990s, it fell to the government of Yegor Gaidar - who was nearly killed after allegedly being poisoned in Kildare in November 2006, funnily enough - to arrest the post-Soviet economic fallout. In his role as finance minister and then briefly as prime minister, Gaidar diced with two strategies. The first was to put in place long-term, progressive structures that would provide future stability but would make him wholly unpopular in the process. The other, far more juicy option, was to let go of the reigns altogether - remove all price controls, privatise all industry and throw the Russian market into the Moskva River. As Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky will gleefully testify, he chose the latter.

Brian Cowen has his own strategies to mull over. The rejection of the Lisbon Treaty was a political milestone he neither wanted or needed, and he's starting to face up to that reality. But he has not been helped by the appalling attitude adopted by some within the European Commission, most notably Jose Manuel Barroso, following the failure of the Irish Government to secure a ratification. The democratic matter of fact that Lisbon is now dead has been ignored in favour bargaining and showy largesse. This column voted Yes and is in favour of the Treaty's proposed reforms. But watching the will of the Irish people belittled and undermined by stealth in Brussels should turn the stomach of any Irish voter.

Democracy's beauty is its unpredictability. Voting has become one of the most personal acts of social expression a man or woman can make in this country. It is not their intended function, but the TD has become the pathway to achievement; a vessel through which you or I can catch the ear of Government. In a general election, the deciding factor for ordinary people is their personal judgement of the man or woman seeking their vote.

This trait doesn't transplant well into EU referenda, well, not if you're a member of the European Commission. Lisbon, and the dud EU Constitution that went before it, took seven years to craft. Seven years of negotiating voting weights and subsidy concessions. Seven years of effort, gone in less than seven hours of counting. All because the personal judgements of the Irish people were negative. You can see why they're miffed.

But as The Economist rightly pointed out this week, what kind of democratic institution can the EU call itself if the only popular verdict it is willing to accept is Yes? It already seems that despite a plethora of promises to the contrary, the Irish people are likely to be asked to vote on Lisbon again, possibly as soon as next Spring. By that stage, sore points like a smaller Commission and corporate tax homogeneity will be publicly discarded, as if the Taoiseach and Minister for Foreign Affairs have wrestled Brussels into making concessions. But should the Yes side prevail and Lisbon come into effect by 2010, who can say that these prickly reforms won't return in the future, nonchalantly tied to some new accession treaty?

There were no popular campaigns or secret ballots in City Hall this Monday. There were no institutional reforms on the table. There was just a straight vote to elect the 812th Mayor of Limerick City. Popular consensus - and this newspaper - assumed that Fine Gael councillor Kevin Kiely had the necessary support to secure the post.

Dramatically, Independent Cllr John Gilligan was elected, causing this columnist to almost crash his car when he heard the news the following morning. Whether Cllr Gilligan of Cllr Kiely would make the better Mayor is not the point. This was just pure, vivacious democracy, albeit within the confines of a council chamber. Its beauty, once again, was its unpredictability.

The Taoiseach has been asked, in not so many words, to again try and coax the desired response from the Irish electorate by Brussels. Should Mr Cowen agree to this? It is likely that, informally at least, he already has. But a note of caution should be clear and shrill. No democratically elected Government, in this country or any other, will survive if it assumes that it knows better than its people.

Yegor Gaidar was an economy wonk, but he flew too close to vested interests and the Russian economy nearly collapsed. The Taoiseach needs to assess the bigger picture, and realise that he does not yet hold a personal mandate to govern. If he is railroaded into slighting the Irish No, he may not secure one in 2012. Yegor Gaidar wooed the oligarchs and ended up poisoned in Maynooth. Brian Cowen should hope to do better.