Referendum Policies across Political Systems

Abstract

This article compares the use of referendums across political regimes over time in Europe. It does so on the basis of a new typology that differentiates between policy domains and degrees of abstraction. The analysis shows different patterns in referendum use between authoritarian regimes, countries in transition and democracies. In addition to the variation in policy domains, the findings indicate different institutional features within the polity types: the process of initiation, the turnout in referendums and the rate of approval. The empirical evidence draws on an original dataset of 620 referendums organised at national level in Europe between 1793 and 2017.

Abortion Referendums: Is There a Recipe for Success?

“…Post‐war history of Western Europe shows that, among morality issues, abortion is the topic most subjected to multiple decision‐making arenas and the one that has caused division among the largest number of parties (Studlar, Cagossi, and Duval 2013). Its saliency is reflected in over a dozen national referendums on this policy since the 1970s, largely due to the availability of the procedure in Catholic countries (Silagadze and Gherghina 2020b). It also coincides with the sexual revolution and the second wave of feminism.…”

“…In addition, parliament's highly divisive decisions might not be regarded as fully legitimate until they are contested in a referendum (Björklund 1982; Morel 1993, 2007). There is increasing evidence that referendums are often instrumentalized by political parties and used primarily as an electoral strategy to promote the political agenda of the initiator, increase their popularity, and weaken the position of political opponents (Hollander 2019; Silagadze and Gherghina 2020b). Parties play a central role not only in the campaigning and outcome of the referendum, but also in the subsequent stage of implementation of the people's will—there have been a series of adopted referendums that have never been implemented (Bassanini 2012; Muntean, Pop‐Eleches, and Popescu 2010) or attempts to overturn an inconvenient result, as in the case of Brexit.…”

Calling referendums on domestic policies: how political elites and citizens differ

“…A recent study of national level referendums held in the last two centuries shows that this is empirically the case in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes. In these two types of regimes, the referendums are adopted in 95%, respectively, 80% of cases (Silagadze and Gherghina 2020). Such a rate of adoption suggests the self-reinforcing circle: elite initiate referendums, they mostly win them that encourages them to initiate more.…”

“…In the attempt to overcome the limitations of the three strands of literature mentioned above, the article aims to compare and contrast the causes for these two types of initiators on the same policy area, i.e., domestic policies. These are defined as issues related to constitution, political / electoral system and interior policies (Silagadze and Gherghina 2020). The analysis is conducted at country level using an original data set that covers 461 national level referendums in Europe between 1793 and 2019, initiated either by elites or by citizens.…”

Populists and Referendums in Europe: Dispelling the Myth

“…In Europe, more than 70 per cent of all national level referendums were conducted in democracies. 13 This literature review indicates that populism and referendums can be linked in several ways. Very often, the arguments are theoretical and they have their origin in the ideational core of populism and in the purposes of referendums.…”