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.
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.
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.
Gay Rights at the Ballot Box examines how the tactics of LGBT activists have evolved, unraveling the complex relationship between ballot measure campaigns and the broader goals of the LGBT movement. ...Amy L. Stone draws on archival research and interviews with LGBT activists to provide a detailed account of the campaigns to stop such ballot measures from passing into law.
Referenda on important public policy questions have come to play a central role in policy making in many states. Referenda, or ballot propositions, have resulted in limits on taxation and limits on ...the number of terms of elected officials, and have dealt with bilingual education, campaign finances, and affirmative action, in states all over the country.
Shaun Bowler and Todd Donovan present a searching and original examination of how voters make decisions in direct referenda. The authors ask if voters have some information about the issue easily at their disposal and if they make choices that seem sensible given their interests and the information they have. Looking at the way voters respond to different kinds of questions, the authors suggest that while direct democracy has its failings, the flaws do not necessarily lie with citizens being "duped," nor with voters approving propositions they do not want or do not understand at some basic level.
As cynicism about government has increased many have sought to take policy questions out of the hands of elected officials and put the questions directly before the voters for decision. And yet many are skeptical about the ability of voters to make intelligent decisions about complex policy issues. This important book demonstrates that voters are capable of responding thoughtfully to referenda questions.
This book will appeal to students of contemporary American politics and electoral politics.
Shaun Bowler is Associate Professor of Political Science, University of California at Irvine. Todd Donovan is Associate Professor of Political Science, Western Washington University.
Consultative referendums may provide crucial information about public opinion but have received little attention in the literature compared with their binding counterparts. In this article, we ...analyse 221 Norwegian local consultative referendums on municipal amalgamation using the Venice Commission’s code on referendums. Much of the referendum literature suggests that consultative referendums are in fact binding. The municipal councils followed the outcomes of the referendums in most cases, but 14% chose to go against it. While the overall impression is that the outcomes of consultative referendums are seen as binding, the data indicate that ballot design may affect voters’ choice as well as council decisions. Although many democratic standards were met, the wording of questions and alternatives on the ballot paper were problematic in a number of cases – reducing the democratic value of the citizens’ advice.
This article addresses a critical gap in the literature on winner–loser effects that consists of the lack of attention for highly contentious constitutional referenda. It uses unique multi-wave panel ...data of over 13,000 people that is unrivalled in size and richness. We estimate causal effects of the referendum on rarely studied but crucial public perceptions of the fairness of the way a referendum is conducted. These perceptions pertain to the highly contentious 2016 European Union (Brexit) referendum in the United Kingdom, which is an ideal-type example of a wider class of referenda for which similar outcomes can be expected. We use difference-in-differences methods and find winner–loser effects of a magnitude far greater than ever observed for general elections. Moreover, we find that these effects not only persist, but even grow over time. The findings have profound implications for the use of such referenda.
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