Search results for "direct democracy"
showing 10 items of 13 documents
How representative are referendums? Evidence from 20 years of Swiss referendums
2017
Direct democracy allows citizens to reverse decisions made by legislatures and even initiate new laws which parliaments are unwilling to pass, thereby, as its proponents argue, leading to more representative policies than would have obtained under a purely representative democracy. Yet, turnout in referendums is usually lower than in parliamentary elections and tends to be skewed towards citizens of high socio-economic status. Consequently, critics of direct democracy argue that referendum outcomes may not be representative of the preferences of the population at large. We test this assertion using a compilation of post-referendum surveys encompassing 148 national referendums held in Switze…
Obywatelska inicjatywa ustawodawcza na przykładzie Szwajcarii
2018
Obywatelska inicjatywa ustawodawcza daje możliwość współdecydowania o najważniejszych kwestiach w państwie. W artykule przedstawiono pojęcie inicjatywy ludowej oraz jej podział ze względu na formę, zasięg terytorialny, przedmiot inicjatywy oraz stopień pośrednictwa. Opisano również procedurę obywatelskiej inicjatywy ustawodawczej w sprawie częściowej oraz całkowitej zmiany konstytucji w Szwajcarii. Wskazano praktykę stosowania tej formy demokracji bezpośredniej na każdym szczeblu administracji publicznej Konfederacji Szwajcarskiej.
After the Referendum
2015
During the years 2011–2014, Latvia experienced a significant increase in the adoption and use of militant democracy measures—constitutional amendments, refusals of party registration, restrictions on referendums and popular initiatives. These events, triggered by a widely attended referendum on the introduction of Russian as the second state language, highlighted the problematic relations between democracy and nation-building in Latvia. Despite earlier expectations that the original militancy of Latvian democracy would decrease with the gradual integration of the Russophone minority, recent developments show that the defence of a particular type of nation-building has become an integral pa…
Una nueva forma de hacer política: dar la voz a la militancia ¿realidad o mera apariencia?
2020
Political parties have been accused of being controlled by an elite or caste that has looked more for their own interests than for general interests. A new way of doing politics and new parties has appeared whose stated objective has been to return the voice to the militancy, assuming that it had been kidnapped by the inbreeding elites of the parties. This paper analyses whether the parties, whose power has traditionally been built from top to bottom, have assumed this change that would mean that power flows from the bottom up or has simply taken a cosmetic operation that apparently responds to this new way of doing policy, although the power is still in the hands of a minority. Summary:1. …
From the Blogosphere into Real Politics: The Use of ICT by the Five Star Movement
2014
Research on ICT and the public discourse often focuses on how ICT can be used to increase citizen participation in political decision-making processes. The Italian Five Star Movement (5SM) represents a novel approach to using ICT to include citizens, and a big challenge for the traditional political actors. The 5SM was initiated outside the established political systems, with the use of Internet tools as cornerstones to promote political actions based on the directly expressed will of citizens. In this paper, based on an exploratory case study approach and informed by the introduction of E-Democracy models, we investigate the role of ICT in various phases of the 5SM, from its birth through …
Partiti, Movimenti, democrazia diretta e divieto di mandato imperativo
2018
The paper focuses on the limits of direct democracy and on the fundamental importance of the prohibition of imperative mandate as a guarantee against parliamentary omnipotence.
Is money where the fun ends? Material interests and individuals’ preference for direct democracy
2020
Abstract Are people’s attitudes towards referendums as a decision-making procedure predominantly driven by their material self-interest, or do individuals also value direct democracy as such, regardless of the material payoffs associated with anticipated policy outcomes? To answer this question, we use a survey data set that offers information on respondents’ support for referendums as a procedure to decide on tax policy, their income levels, socio-economic characteristics, and, most importantly, their expectation about the majority’s support for higher taxes. We find that the support of low-income individuals for referendums increases substantially if they expect a clear population majorit…
Conceptualizing and Measuring the Quality of Democracy: The Citizens' Perspective
2018
In recent years, several measurements of the quality of democracy have been developed (e.g. Democracy Barometer, Varieties of Democracy Project). These objective measurements focus on institutional and procedural characteristics of democracy. This article starts from the premise that in order to fully understand the quality of democracy such objective measurements have to be complemented by subjective measurements based on the perspective of citizens. The aim of the article is to conceptualize and measure the subjective quality of democracy. First, a conceptualization of the subjective quality of democracy is developed consisting of citizens’ support for three normative models of democracy …
La “democrazia diretta” e la sua comunicazione visuale
2021
This text explains the current call for direct (or pure) democracy as a consequence of the pervasive weight of visual culture in the contemporary world.
The Temptation of Populism in David Cameron’s Leadership Style
2015
DOI: 10.1057/9781137439246\₁0; International audience; It may seem unusual to associate the widely-used concept of populism with the leadership of the British Prime Minister, David Cameron. Populism is, however, open to various interpretations and definitions and so easy to manipulate that it could apply to almost anything. Moreover, populism has so often been used to describe movements and groups critical of representative democracy, generating a ‘malaise’ (Mény and Surel, 2002: 21) or a ‘threat’ to democracy (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2012), that it is has become difficult to conceive it as a new political practice in the hands of democratic governments. To accept what would appear to be a co…