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According to numerous recent cross-national studies of public support for democracy, citizens of both well-established and newer democracies continue to share a strong commitment to the ideals and principles of representative democracy. Paradoxically, however, these same citizens are increasingly 'critical' of and 'dissatisfied' with the performance of their national democratic institutions. One response has been to call for the 're-invention of government' through the use of referendums and ballot initiatives. This article explores what happens when the national referendum was introduced in Portugal in 1998 -a polity that only recently consolidated its transition to democracy. We examine in some depth the context under which the referendum was introduced and its results in terms of electoral behaviour. The main goals are to explain both abstention and vote choice in the 1998 Portuguese referendums, analysing the role of political parties, social structural factors and pressure groups on those phenomena.

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In 1998 Portugal held its first two national referendums since its democratic transition began in 1974. In theory, the referendums on liberalizing access to abortion and instituting a new regional level of governance represented a new opportunity for civil society groups to make their voices heard on important issues of the day, thereby revitalizing the quality of the country’s democracy. Instead, most Portuguese voters stayed at home and the status quo was maintained. Our paper, based on interviews with over forty national, regional and local-level political elites during 1998, offers a general overview of the institutional and political context of both referendums, of the campaigns and the results, and it seeks to explain the role of social structural factors, political parties, and pressure groups in both abstention and voting choices in the referendums. These findings are then used as a springboard for some tentative conclusions about the future of direct democracy in Portugal.