Last weekend saw tens of thousands of Australians rally in support of a referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. The Voice would be a representative body comprised of Indigenous Australians ...empowered to make representations to Parliament and the federal government on matters that relate to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Its animating objective is to guarantee that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples can have a say in the development of law and policy that affects them. The Voice is not a silver bullet. But if the referendum fails, basic problems concerning the relationship of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the State will remain unaddressed. Indigenous Australians will also continue to struggle to have their interests considered in the processes of governance.
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.
This article shows that key to understanding the referendum outcome are factors such as a profoundly eurosceptic public, high levels of citizen uncertainty, divided mainstream political parties on ...the EU and lack of unity within the ‘Leave’ campaign. The Brexit referendum is more than just about domestic issues and government approval. Utilitarian concerns related to economic evaluations of EU integration coupled with support of or opposition to EU freedom of movement are very likely to influence vote choice. Those campaigns that focus on rational utilitarian arguments about the costs and benefits related to EU membership as a whole but also to EU freedom of movement are expected to swing voters.
About 25% of Switzerland’s permanent population do not possess the red passport necessary to vote due to one of the most restrictive citizenship law’s in the Western world. The Democracy Initiative ...is trying to change this. While unlikely to succeed, they are nonetheless starting an important conversation about how to fix Switzerland’s semi-democracy.
The 2016 referendum marked a watershed moment in the history of the United Kingdom. The public vote to leave the European Union (EU)—for a ‘Brexit’—brought an end to the country’s membership of the ...EU and set it on a fundamentally different course. Recent academic research on the vote for Brexit points to the importance of immigration as a key driver, although how immigration influenced the vote remains unclear. In this article, we draw on aggregate-level data and individual-level survey data from the British Election Study (BES) to explore how immigration shaped public support for Brexit. Our findings suggest that, specifically, increases in the rate of immigration at the local level and sentiments regarding control over immigration were key predictors of the vote for Brexit, even after accounting for factors stressed by established theories of Eurosceptic voting. Our findings suggest that a large reservoir of support for leaving the EU, and perhaps anti-immigration populism more widely, will remain in Britain, so long as immigration remains a salient issue.
In Direct Democracy or Representative Government? John Haskell describes the dangers and uncovers the logical flaws of politics-by-plebiscite as practiced in California and other states. Haskell ...makes the case that the populist impulse for direct democracy is as much or more a part of American political culture as the republican restraint embodied in the Constitution. In non-technical language Haskell uses recent discoveries in the social sciences to refute the populist position that direct democracy is the truest form of democracy. He builds on this to make a strong case for representative institutions relevant to a new century when the temptations for instant democracy by initiative and referendum or even over the Internet are greater than ever. He writes that checks and balances and separated powers are all the more essential because of our populist tradition.
The ballot initiative, a form of direct democracy practiced across the country, is often held up as a model of implementing the people's will and, therefore, achieving democracy's most fundamental ...aim. But with direct popular control over policymaking comes a cost: limited deliberative processes to develop proposals. I call this cost the deliberative deficit. Focusing on California's experience, a state with one of the most salient and consequential direct-democratic processes, this Note discusses the need to look beyond traditional institutions to effectively address the ballot initiative's deliberative deficit. After showing why the judiciary, legislature, and the direct-democratic process itself cannot do so, I suggest creating an independent advisory commission (Commission) to review initiatives. This Commission would make specific recommendations to an initiative's drafters so they can more effectively achieve their stated policy goals and mitigate unintended second-order effects. The Commission would not evaluate the initiative's core normative aims, leaving that assessment to voters. Though not a complete panacea, the Commission is a starting point. It is an example of the kind of thinking and new institutional development needed to address the deliberative deficit.
We investigate the impact of the outcome of the EU referendum (Brexit) on various sectors of the British economy over the period June-July 2016. Using the event study methodology, we assess the ...effects of Brexit, relative to what had been anticipated, as measured by abnormal returns (ARs). The results show that the banking and travel and leisure sectors were affected negatively, with a cumulative AR of −15.37% for the banking sector. We observe that Brexit has a mixed effect on ARs with apparent sector-by-sector differences.
Introduction. The article formulates proposals to improve the effectiveness of legal regulation of the institute of local referendum and involvement of citizens in the implementation of local ...self-government on the basis of comparative legal analysis of the legal regulation of local referendum in the European Union and Ukraine.
Summary of the main research results. In EU countries, unlike national referendums, local referendums are held on the territory of a subject of the federation, autonomous entity, or administrative-territorial unit. Such referendums address issues of local importance. The procedure for legislative consolidation of the local referendum in the EU countries is possible at three levels: constitutional, national legislation, and local. In Ukraine, the normative regulation of local referendums is carried out at two levels: constitutional and legislative levels. Currently, holding local referendums in Ukraine is impossible due to the lack of a special law in this area. The main types of referendums are characterized.
Conclusions. As a result of the analysis, it is proposed that in order to improve the effectiveness of legal regulation of the institute of the local referendum and eliminate the "legal vacuum" in this area, it is necessary to adopt a separate Law "On Local Referendum".
Draft Law No. 5512 "On Local Referendum", which was registered in the Parliament on May 19, 2021, needs to be improved, namely, to regulate the possibility of holding a local referendum both at the municipal (local) level and at the regional level, that is, at the level of the region, district and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea to address issues of common interest to these communities; not all local referendums should be mandatory; the division of local referendums into mandatory and consultative ones may depend on the quorum of participation, for example, if the turnout is 50% percent or more - mandatory, consultative - if the turnout is less than 50%; to solve the problem of financing local referendums, to provide a mechanism for partial compensation of expenses from the state budget
There are many myths about referendums. The most common one is that voters are inherently sceptical and tend to vote no when given the opportunity. This article analyses some of the commonly held ...‘truths’ about referendums on EU matters. Based on a statistical analysis of all forty‐three EU‐related referendums since 1972, it shows that governments tend to lose referendums if they have been in office for a long time, that emotive words on the ballot paper are correlated with a high yes vote and that a high turnout is correlated with a vote against European integration, but campaign spending is inconsequential. Based solely on statistical evidence from the previous forty‐three referendums, the opponents of EU membership will win the Brexit referendum.
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