Referendum Campaign Regulations in Europe and Latin America

Abstract

Over the last few years, the use of nationwide referendums has become more frequent. This is true not only for Europe but also for Latin America. Indeed, in the case of Europe we have noticed an increasing use of direct democracy mechanisms in Eastern Europe as well as a growing use of referendums on European integration. Regarding Latin America, we can observe an increase of national referendums since the 1990s. As a consequence, there is a growing need to ensure that referendums meet with minimum democratic requirements. In order to define such a referendum standard, the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission adopted the Code of Good Practice on Referendums in March 2007. This chapter gives an overview of the national regulations on referendum campaigns, with a focus on campaign financing and on media access, two aspects of important preliminary conditions for democratic referendums. Beginning with a presentation of the relevant regulation in Switzerland, which surprisingly does not include extensive regulation on referendum campaigns, the chapter then turns to regulation in the member states of the Council of Europe as well as in Latin American states with at least one referendum experience since 1995. Distinguishing both the form and content of regulation, the chapter discusses countries that are typical in terms of campaign financing and media access rules respectively.