Popular Referendum Research Articles

Nation-Building in Kazakhstan: Ethno-Confessional Contexts

The scientific article is devoted to current issues - the study of the development of nation-building and the unique model of interethnic and interfaith relations in Kazakhstan.Aim. To propose a periodization of the main stages of transformational and socio-political processes of nation-building in the Republic of Kazakhstan, at each of which the corresponding regulatory legal acts of their legitimization were adopted.Tasks. To analyze the periods of development of nation-building, changes in the sphere of interethnic relations in the republic over the years of independence, in accordance with the constitutional reform approved in a popular referendum on June 5, 2022. Conduct a political analysis of the transformation into the socio-political practice of the fundamental principle of the Basic Law of the country — “public harmony” and in general in the regulation of interethnic relations.Methods. To substantiate the results of the study, a variety of scientific methods were used, reflecting the peculiarities of the development of national development. Taking into account the specifics of ethno-political and integration processes in the social and regional context, determining their nature, comparative analysis, prolegomens, communication platforms and social networks were used. The methods of crowdsourcing, forsyth, road map are widely used.Results. The management of ethno-professional processes is undoubtedly one of the most important aspects of the functioning of the State and the tasks of society. The competent definition of problem areas allows for the development of preventive measures and the avoidance of both inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic tensions and the minimization of negative impact on the development of State and religious relations. The proposed recommendations will improve the mechanisms and tools of ethno-political management in State national policy, consolidate the model of social harmony and national unity in political documents and legislative practice.Conclusions. The effective Kazakh model of ethno-confessional harmony is based on two main components: popular representation as a reflection of the political integration of Kazakhstanis and coverage of the entire spectrum of legal ethnicities and confessions in socio-political processes. The creation and activities of the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan, during the years of independence, as a key socio-political structure in national politics, acts as an instrument of direct democracy and is, in fact, a people’s representation.

Expropriation as a measure of corporate reform: Learning from the Berlin initiative

A citizens’ movement in Berlin advocates for the expropriation of housing corporations and has won a significant majority in a popular referendum in September 2021. Building on this proposal, this paper develops a general account of expropriation as a measure for corporate reform and thereby contributes to the ongoing debate on the democratic accountability of business corporations. It argues that expropriation is a valuable tool for intervention in a dire situation in some economic sector to enable a re-structuring of the governance of the assets in question. Compared with other tools available, expropriation is a more forward-looking, genuinely political measure that does not depend on the legal assignment of guilt but rather proceeds in a pragmatic and problem-oriented manner. It also allows us to reconsider in how far the market mechanism should be employed in the administration of assets. Objections from private property rights against expropriation fail as corporations generally are privileged, quasi-public institutions that can justifiably be subject to democratic interventions. Expropriation is thus an important addition to the arsenal of corporate reform proposals, especially for those concerned with a broad democratization of the corporation.

Voter Disenchantment in the Aftermath of the 2005 EU Constitutional Referendum in France

In a popular referendum in 2005, French voters rejected their country’s adoption of a proposed EU Constitution. Yet, in seeming defiance of the popular vote, the government subsequently proceeded to implement the core of the legislation without consulting the public again. This article empirically examines the electoral impacts of these events. We build a comprehensive fine-grained dataset of nationwide election results for more than 36,000 metropolitan French municipalities. Employing cross-sectional analysis for all national elections held in the decade after the referendum vote, we find that the strength of a municipality’s rejection of the EU Constitution in 2005 is associated with a lower voter turnout, higher shares of blank votes, and larger gains for anti-system parties in subsequent elections. The findings are robust to various modelling choices and the inclusion of a large array of controls. The results indicate that bypassing a popular vote could entail protracted adverse effects on the quality of democratic participation and deliberation.

Kwestie kulturowe w referendach szwajcarskich w latach 2000-2020

CULTURAL ISSUES IN SWISS REFERENDA BETWEEN 2000 AND 2021 Switzerland is one of few countries where popular referenda are an integral part of political life. These can be held on a variety of issues. Out of 186 proposals voted in the country between 2000 and 2021, this article analyses 17 related to culture in its broadest sense. The chosen examples include both specific issues as well as those fundamental to society, such as the right to abortion or the legal status of same-sex marriage. Typically, votes on cultural issues do not draw much public interest. The turnout rarely exceeds 50%, leaving decisions which affect the whole society to a minority of those eligible to vote. It should be stressed that, in some cases, referenda on cultural issues are a clear example of positivist belief that law is man-made.

Local institutions and public service outsourcing: Managerial professionalism, mayoral strength, and electoral rules

AbstractThis research examines how institutional contexts matter for US municipalities' service outsourcing decisions, deriving data from the ICMA's multiple rounds of surveys concerning local institutions and service delivery choices. We focus on seven pivotal local institutions that address managerial professionalism, mayoral strength, and electoral rules. Moreover, a composite index measuring the general nature of the municipal structure on a political–administrative scale is constructed based on the local institutions examined. The empirical estimations use the existence of initiatives and popular referenda allowing citizen voters to adjust local statutes as instrumental variables for local institutions. We find that municipalities with a council‐manager municipal form, a professional manager, a weak mayor, and nonpartisan and at‐large elections of council members outsource less services. Professional managers can moderate the effects of contextual factors on government outsourcing decisions. Moreover, municipalities with a more political or a less administrative municipal structure outsource a larger portion of services.

Конституционное развитие Республики Беларусь

The paper displays specifics of constitutional evolution of Belarus on various stages of its history. Starting with brief description of constitutional development of Belarus before it became one of the constituent republics of the USSR, the author comments on the Belorussian SSR’s constitutional development under the Soviet rule. Analysis of the 1994 Constitution of independent Belarus depicts the constitutional system with impressively strong presidential powers. The author closely tracks the history of constitutional amendments including those submitted to the popular referendum in February of 2022 and explains how these amendments contributed to accumulation of enormous powers in President Lukashenko’s hands.

The Dynamics of Democratic Breakdown: A Case Study of the American Civil War

Abstract The 2020 election raised fundamental questions about the future of American democracy. Although the Democratic presidential nominee Joseph Biden won a decisive victory in the Electoral College and the popular vote, President Donald Trump refused to accept defeat. For weeks after the election, Trump falsely claimed that Democrats had stolen the election. In an unprecedented step for a defeated incumbent president, he pressured Republican election officials and legislators to help him overturn the election results. Trump’s attacks on American democracy culminated on January 6, 2021, when a pro-Trump mob invaded the United States Capitol Building to disrupt the Electoral Vote Count. In the aftermath of the 2020 election controversy, national polls found that over 90% of Americans believe that American democracy is in danger. Since the election, experts on both ends of the political spectrum have warned of the possibility of a full-fledged democratic breakdown in the United States. This article places America’s political crisis in historical context by examining the only democratic breakdown in the nation’s history: the Civil War. Following Abraham Lincoln’s victory in the 1860 election, eleven southern states seceded from the Union. The conflict that ensued cost over half a million lives and left one-half of the United States in physical and economic ruin. This article makes three main points. First, a dispute over election rules did not cause the Civil War. Instead, the war resulted when the dominant political class in the South—slaveholders—rejected the principle of majority rule. American history thus demonstrates that even in the case of an election of unquestionable integrity, a disgruntled extremist minority might still break the country apart. Second, the slaveholders feared that if they put the issue of secession to a popular referendum, the non-slaveholding majorities in southern states might vote against it. To achieve their goal of destroying the Union, therefore, slaveholders dictated special rules for the secession votes in their states. After Lincoln’s election, southern state legislatures delegated the issue of secession to state conventions. Across the South, slaveholders manipulated the convention election rules to ensure the result they wanted: break-up of the federal union. Third, and finally, northerners viewed the war as a battle for the survival of democracy itself. They recognized that no democratically held election would ever be binding if losers could simply break free and form their own government. Northerners thus rallied around the Lincoln administration and supported the Union war effort through four bloody years of battle. The Union’s victory vindicated democracy as a form of government. The Confederacy’s crushing defeat in 1865 demonstrated that democracies could successfully navigate even the most extreme forms of civil disorder. Most important of all, the Civil War era gave rise to a dramatic expansion in the inclusiveness of American democracy. Ironically, therefore, the United States government emerged stronger in 1865 than it had been when the war began in 1861.

Popular Sovereignty and Constitutional Referendum: Can “The People” be Limited by Human Rights?

AbstractThe rise of referendums has led to the concern that they could lead to liberticide and discriminatory results. This article intends to determine whether the concept of popular sovereignty would immunize constitutional provisions that are passed through a constitutional referendum from any human rights limitation. In answering the question, I formulate a theoretical framework called “constituent-constituted duality,” while also distinguishing “the constituent people,” which is mythical, and “the constituted people,” which is empiric. In the end, this article argues that the only possible form of limitation from the perspective of popular sovereignty is an ex ante limitation. Meanwhile, an ex post facto limitation remains unacceptable from the angle of popular sovereignty, which implies that a judicial review of popularly-enacted constitutional amendments is conceptually illegitimate.

The Pluri-Extractivist State: Regional Autonomy and the Limits of Indigenous Representation in Bolivia's Gran Chaco Province

AbstractOn 20 November 2016, residents of Gran Chaco Province in south-east Bolivia voted by popular referendum to approve a statute that established Gran Chaco as Bolivia's first autonomous region. This article examines regional autonomy in the Chaco as an example of how identities, territory and political power are being remapped at the intersection of an extractivist development model and competing visions of a plurinational state. I chart how regional autonomy, an elite-led project centred on demands for a fixed share of departmental gas royalties, has been institutionalised under the framework of plurinationalism and used to bolster central state power in this gas-rich region. The article considers the historical evolution of this regionalist project, its intersection with broader processes of state formation under the Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement towards Socialism, MAS) government and its implications for the Chaco's Indigenous peoples, who have achieved significant representation within the regional assembly while seeing their own visions of territorial autonomy sidelined by an extractivist development agenda.

Granting Puerto-Rico admission into the Union as a 51st state: prospects under Joe Biden's administration

The political status of Puerto Rico has been discussed in U.S. Congress for decades. The article examines main features of the island and key issues that make the political status topic increasingly relevant. The article analyzes the results of popular referendums and their impact on the political status of the territory. Moreover, the article addresses Joe Biden’s position on the issue, outlines the procedure for admitting a territory to the American Union as a state, and examines the bills that are currently under consideration by Congress. The article also analyzes the factors that prevent Puerto Rico from becoming a state and the prospects of granting statehood to Puerto Rico in the future.

Proletkult Diplomacy. What About Romania in the Last Minutes of Tsardom 1 and the First of People’s Republic of Bulgaria (1945-1947) Foreign Affairs

Abstract The Romanian-Bulgarian relations were assigned the role of satellites belonging first to the Axis, and then to U.S.S.R., following the regulation of the territorial statute of South Dobrudja on September 7th 1940, through the Treaty from Craiova. After the Red Army has entered Bulgaria, on September 8th 1944, an unusual fact has intervened between Bucharest and Sofia, from the perspective of Kremlin’s influence, of course: the priority of Bulgarian political, ideological and diplomatic factors over the Romanian ones, unprecedented fact in the history of almost seven decades of the modern bilateral relations. The lack of human and ideological resources of the Romanian Communist Party has become obvious during the not even declared competition with the Bulgarian Communists and their leader, Georgi Dimitrov. The Communist Bulgaria has become a model that Romanian communists do not only seriously took into account, yet, at least the year King Mihai I has abdicated (1947), they zestfully were also studying and copying, as the case may have been. Being a so-called People’s Republic even since September 1946, following a falsified popular referendum, Bulgaria has undertaken during the next months to coordinate plans of internal and external politics of Romania. In order to finalize a “Bulgarian way” in Romania, the government led by Petru Groza and the media of propaganda, and mainly the press official of the Romanian Communist Party, “Scânteia”, have scrupulously assumed the role of protagonists. And Communist Bulgaria, just like U.S.S.R., has become for more than two years (1946- February 1948) an extremely important and valuable topic of the Romanian public speech, of the Romanian Communists’ confirmation, of establishing the project for instituting the totalitarian regime. The similarity of actions and of institutes’ organization is striking for this short period, and the treaty signed in January 1948 is nothing but the final of a stage extremely abundant in models and suggestions for the Romanian communists.

Wildfire, Environmental Risk and Deliberative Planning in the Locarnese Region of Switzerland.

A survey of residents in the Locarnese region of Canton Ticino, Switzerland was used to examine perceptions of exposure to environmental risk in the context of the deliberative Swiss planning system. There is a growing risk of wildfire in the region, and unless residents' risk perceptions are understood and effectively integrated into decision making, confidence in environmental planning processes could erode. The research analyses how peri-urban residents conceptualise risk, place and environment, and how they perceive their influence over local planning outcomes. Descriptive and inferential statistics reveal high appreciation of lifestyle and amenity values, and support for firefighting services. While respondents recognise the increasing exposure to wildfires and landslides, it was the current level of urban expansion that was seen to be heightening risk at the interface between forests and settlements. Although Swiss deliberative governance arrangements offer citizens opportunities to be involved in decision making through official channels, respondents who were younger, of local background or who were less educated were particularly dissatisfied with their influence over planning. We discuss the implications of these findings for the distinctive Swiss planning system in the context of other countries' ambitions to develop more effective, democratic environmental planning. In particular, the relative ease offered by popular referenda may be creating a disproportionate sense of citizen entitlement to be heard on local planning issues. Dialogues of risk reduction must continue to evolve between the population and government actors to encourage residents to engage more fully with relevant topics of risk for their region.

Catalan Secessionism and Globalization

Catalan Secessionism and Globalization Dr. Edgar Illas (bio) The emergence of Catalan secessionism at the beginning of this century seemed to announce a positive effect of the new global order. Catalan separatism put forward a peaceful procedure based on the celebration of a simple referendum, whereas the classic and modern forms of state formation traditionally involved episodes of violence seen through dynastic conquests, wars of independence, or postcolonial partitions. Popular referendums, as seen in Quebec (1980 and 1995), in Scotland (2014), or New Caledonia (2018), represent a useful instrument to negotiate and redraw borders without the traumas of war and arbitrary impositions. This instrument has become particularly serviceable because globalization promotes the reduction of the size of nation-states. As Alberto Alesina and Enrico Spolaore argued in The Size of Nations, smaller states can adjust to the fluctuations of the global market more effectively. This flexibility has become more desirable than the ideals of self-sufficiency and selfdefense characteristic of large modern states.1 Thus, in the global context, referendums are an attractive method of state formation because they can facilitate a flexibilization of borders while concurrently reinforcing two of the main ideological pillars of globalization: democracy and peace. In short, referendums and popular polls certify that the global order is succeeding in pacifying the planet under the principles of liberal democracy.2 The Catalan case, however, has shown that the method of referendum does not always entail a peaceful process. A Tale of Two Cities: Barcelona and Madrid In contrast with the referendums in Quebec, Scotland, and New Caledonia, which proved that territorial demands can be negotiated without violence, the 2017 referendum in Catalonia marked the beginning of a period of intense repression by the Spanish state, which included police force against the population, imprisonment and forced exile of political leaders, censorship of freedom of speech, and daily deployment of lawfare.3 Why has Spain, in contrast with Canada, the UK, or France, reacted so aggressively against Catalonia's demand for a referendum? A number of political, economic and ideological factors revolving around the competition between Barcelona and Madrid can be adduced to explain the Catalan/Spanish case. The first reason is that this uncompromising reaction should be the natural response of any constituted power when it encounters the threat of a new constituent power that is trying to dispute its territorial integrity. The function of the state is to repress any action that the constitutional order deems as illegal. When a social actor brings forth a demand that cannot [End Page 213] be fulfilled within the current legal order, the state must turn this a-legal event into an illegal act and thus repress it in the name of the law. In other words, when a political event takes place outside the law, a process of struggle begins between a normative order that attempts to reduce the act to an illegal crime, and a generative force that tries to disclose and change the boundaries of the legal order. As Hans Lindahl has explained, a-legality reveals these boundaries as "fault lines:" they are not orderable limits that can be expanded or shifted, but rather irreducible fissures that "must be overstepped, and in being overstepped lead over from one legal collective to another."4 Thus, while the a-legal force of Catalan secessionism aims to create an event that founds a new legal order, the current legality of the Spanish state aims to restrain this force and eliminate the fault line through its sovereign power. Furthermore, the Spanish state has justified this sovereign decision with the principle of universal equality, where wealthier regions such as Catalonia do not and should not have the right to detach themselves from their poorer counterparts.5 This economic aspect points at another, more tangible economic reason behind the Spanish reaction: new market competition between Madrid and Barcelona. The two main cities of Spain had a relatively complementary relationship during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Barcelona, the predominant industrialized area of the peninsula, needed the protectionist measures of the Spanish state for its control of the peninsular market. Madrid, a city in the middle of agrarian and backward Castile, needed the industrial force of...

What Makes a Tax Policy Popular? Predicting Referendum Votes from Policy Text

What kinds of taxation are most politically sustainable in a democracy? The authors answer this question by applying natural language processing and machine learning techniques to a large, new corpus of digitized documents describing municipal tax policies of heterogeneous design that have been directly subjected to popular referendum in the state of California. The authors find that tax policies of different description vary systematically in their popularity with voters. In particular, official textual summaries of tax policy differ along two social dimensions that are associated with voters’ willingness to approve the tax. The authors interpret these dimensions as risk pooling and community orientation and show that measuring these dimensions can modestly improve the ability to predict the popularity of a tax, relative to a conventional regression specification that omits information about qualitative policy design. The authors discuss implications for the study of the sociology of taxation.

La forma di governo in Italia dopo il 1993: mutamenti e nuovi orientamenti

O presente artigo descreve as mudanças na forma de governo na Itália, e as novas tendências que ocorreram nesse sentido, no período posterior a 1993. Este ano - em que ocorreu o referendo popular que revogou a lei eleitoral proporcional que havia regulamentado as eleições na Itália desde os primeiros anos da República - representa um “divisor de águas” na reconstrução da doutrina sobre a forma de governo. Iniciou-se um longo período de transição da forma de governo italiana para uma estrutura diferente à anterior, com uma conotação majoritária. Este artigo também destaca que, a partir de 2013/2014, iniciou-se uma nova fase da forma de governo na Itália (hoje ainda não facilmente classificável), devido à mudança no sistema político determinada pela irrupção do “MoVimento 5 Stelle” e, por outro lado, aos acórdãos do Tribunal Constitucional n ° 1/2014 e n ° 35/2017, que declararam ilegítimas as duas últimas leis eleitorais majoritárias.

The initiative, referendum, and distribution of income: An empirical analysis of Swiss cantons

This study examines how direct democratic institutions affect income distribution before and after taxes. Based on a panel of Swiss cantons from 1945 to 2014, we test the effects of the constitutional reforms of direct democratic instruments. Our findings show that better voter access to the initiative induces policy shifts that significantly decrease top incomes and benefit the upper middle class. For the popular referendum we do not find such effects. The income effects of direct democracy are not a consequence of shifts in fiscal redistribution, but rather result from policy changes affecting pre-tax incomes.

Alfano, Mark. Nietzsche’s Moral Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. 314. $99.99 (cloth).

Alfano, Mark. <i>Nietzsche’s Moral Psychology</i>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. 314. $99.99 (cloth).

What Is a Consultative Referendum? The Democratic Legitimacy of Popular Consultations

We examine the democratic legitimacy of popular referendums asking whether they should be understood as bypassing or complementing representative institutions. To answer this question, we focus on the distinction between legislative referendums and consultative ones, noting that even though referendums of the latter kind are by far more prevalent from an empirical point of view, their specific role in democratic decision-making remains under-theorized in the existing literature. We therefore focus on consultative referendums as a possible way of reconciling the referendum procedure with representative democracy. First, we clarify the specific conception of representative democracy that underscores our study; second, we develop the idea that consultative referendums are to be understood to specify the political mandate of elected representatives; finally, we apply the results of this conceptual work to the case of the Greek bailout and the Brexit referendums, aiming to dispel some lingering misconceptions concerning the normative implications of their results and thereby clarifying the normative significance of our theory.

Falling Foul of Section 44(i): Australian's Dual Citizenship Saga and the Problems of Institutional Inertia and “Drift”

Australia's “dual citizenship” crisis erupted in 2017 when several elected members of the federal parliament discovered that they were ineligible to sit because their dual citizenship status meant that they were in breach of s 44 (i) of the Australian constitution. The controversy has had enormous political consequences, prematurely ending several political careers and confirming that millions of Australians are ineligible to sit in the federal parliament because they hold dual citizenship. It has raised important questions about the contemporary relevance of s 44 (i) for multicultural, trans‐national Australia, given its association with singular, racialized (British‐colonial) notions of identity, allegiance and belonging. Using a historical institutionalist approach, and associated concepts of policy “drift”, I demonstrate the inevitability of the recent controversy, given decades of government inertia and both unintentional and purposeful non‐decision‐making on s 44, despite repeated expert warnings about its risks. I reflect upon the possible interests and ideological biases that have compelled political leaders’ resistance to proposals to decisively fix the constitutional anomaly by holding a popular referendum. I argue these failures have left Australia vulnerable to ongoing political instability and raise considerable concerns about its democratic quality.

Weighted representative democracy

We propose a new system of democratic representation. Any voter can choose any legislator as her representative; thus, different legislators can represent different numbers of voters. Decisions in the legislature are made by weighted majority voting, where the weight of each legislator is determined by the number of voters she represents. We show that, if the size of the electorate is very large, then with very high probability, the decisions obtained in the legislature agree with those which would have been reached by a popular referendum decided by simple majority vote.