Exploring the referendum practices of eight European states, this book unpacks the intricacies of the institutional and procedural settings of referendum authorization to reach an equilibrium between ...the exercise of popular sovereignty and the protection of rule of law. The book also examines how, by authorizing certain issues and refusing others, state institutions can exercise considerable control over the whole referendum process.
Referendums have become an undeniably important, and perhaps inescapable, peacemaking tool in contemporary peace processes. As such, understanding the ways in which referendum outcomes are shaped by ...peace negotiations is vital. Drawing upon two case studies, Amaral presents an empirically rich comparative analysis of the Annan Plan in Cyprus and the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. She examines the negotiations, offering new interview material with key political and civil figures involved in the peace negotiations and referendum campaigns in both cases. Amaral argues that referendums are unsuitable for traditional secretive and exclusionist peace negotiations that fail to engage and educate the public. They rather require inclusive negotiations that involve a broad spectrum of political stakeholders and civil society at the early stages of the process. This peacemaking approach can allow referendums to positively shape societies in conflict and be a crucial step toward lasting peace.
What can we learn about our society and the need to listen to each other in order to make sense of Brexit within a wider world? This accessible book addresses the causes and implications of Brexit, ...exploring the anger against political elites as people felt estranged from a political process that no longer expressed their will.
With the rise of direct-democratic instruments, the relationship between popular sovereignty and the rule of law is set to become one of the defining political issues of our time. This important and ...timely book provides an in-depth analysis of the limits imposed on referendums and citizens' initiatives, as well as of systems of reviewing compliance with these limits, in 11 European states.
This book presents a comprehensive analysis of a remarkable and unexpected outcome of the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence.
Despite defeat in the Scottish referendum, the two leading parties ...in the Yes campaign - the Scottish National Party and Scottish Green Party - experienced an extraordinary surge in membership. The book explains these events, examining the relationship between political parties and social movements, and it assesses the long-term consequences of the surge. Based on surveys of members and interviews with party and movement actors since the referendum, the book analyses the members' involvement in the 2014 referendum, their motives for joining a party, their backgrounds and political attitudes, and their behaviour as party members. A key component of the book is how the surge changed the parties - socio-demographically, ideologically and organisationally.
This book will appeal to scholars, students and observers of electoral politics, political participation, social and political movements, and political parties and their members, and more broadly to those interested in the debate on Scottish independence, British politics and comparative politics.
Frederick J. Boehmke’s book makes explicit the many consequences—intended and unintended—of having direct legislation possible in a state. Many studies of the initiative process argue that it is a ...flawed process that rewards wealthy interests. While evidence to support this conclusion is often drawn from a number of high-profile, high-expenditure initiative campaigns, ballot campaigns are merely one consequence of the initiative process. The ability to propose legislation directly to the people fundamentally changes the process through which citizens are represented by organized interest groups, benefiting typically underrepresented interests. To demonstrate this, the author models the incentives that the initiative process creates for interests to organize and for how they communicate their preferences to policy makers. Interests that represent a broader range of the public are found to gain the most from the option to propose initiatives, implying that the set of organized interests in initiative states should reflect this advantage. Ironically, an effect of direct legislation is to potentially increase the effectiveness of special interest lobbying in state legislatures—in a sense, the opposite of the direct control that gives direct legislation its theoretical appeal. Yet, the clear effect is one of empowering voices that traditionally had very little effect in the legislative process. If greater representation is the goal of direct legislation, it is a clear success, even though that success does not really come in the act of ballot initiatives itself.
Referendums commonly offer a binary choice between supporting and rejecting proposed legislation. Binary designs benefit from simplicity and guarantee a majority result, but also provoke voting ...biases and interpretation challenges. Referendum designs offering multiple policy alternatives provide a different approach which could alleviate binary referendum challenges whilst maintaining the aggregative benefits. Offering more than two options, however, raises new challenges in designing the referendum process and obtaining majority results. This article uses survey data collected on a corrective referendum held in the Netherlands in 2018 to compare the challenges faced by binary and multi-option referendum designs respectively. The analysis demonstrates how the multi-option design empowers voters in expressing their preferences and delivers more detailed and constructive referendum results. Building on the survey data, the article subsequently discusses the challenges of extending choice and concludes that alternative voting methods can mitigate some of these challenges.
Demands for public input on Olympic bids have made local referenda an increasingly common feature of the Olympic bid process. This case study advances our knowledge about the factors that lead local ...residents to support or oppose an Olympic bid by presenting the results of a representative survey of local residents at the time of an Olympic bid plebiscite in Calgary, Canada. Building on past research, five correlates of Olympic bid voting behavior are identified: socio-demographic characteristics, local civic identity, political partisanship, attitudes towards government spending, and local political leadership. While all five factors are related to support or opposition to the Olympic bid, civic identity and fiscal conservativism were particularly powerful predictors of preferences. The data suggest that pro-Olympic and anti-Olympic coalitions have an unusual character which challenge those involved in Olympic advocacy.
