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Theoretical works suggest that populist attitudes are associated with demands for direct democracy in the form of referendums. However, it remains unclear how populist attitudes relate to other direct-democratic instruments such as citizens' initiatives. We therefore examine whether populist attitudes affect the attitudes toward the Citizens' Agenda Initiative (CI) in Finland with the help of the national election study from 2019 (n = 1598). We study (1) whether populist attitudes are associated with positive attitudes towards the CI (2) whether populist attitudes increase the use of the CI, and (3) the interplay between anti-elitism, anti-immigration, and anti-pluralism as driving forces behind attitudes towards and using the CI. The results suggest that anti-elitism has a negative link to satisfaction with the CI, and anti-pluralism is associated with lower likelihood of using the CI. Hence there is little to suggest that populist attitudes are strong drivers of involvement in this kind of direct-democratic participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do citizens support holding a referendum? In this article, we argue that citizens are instrumental by using heuristics and cues from parties, independent experts, and the population to decide whether to hold a referendum. We further expect that populist and non-populist citizens differ in how they respond to these cues. Using pre-registered survey experiments in Austria and Germany, we find that citizens' support depends mainly on their attitudes towards the respective policy and the opinion of their preferred party, while the views of experts and the public play only a subordinate role. Crucially, we find no systematic differences between populist and non-populist citizens, suggesting that even populists' support for holding a referendum depends mainly on instrumental rather than normative considerations. This study provides comprehensive insights into the causal mechanisms of support for direct democracy and their implications for liberal and representative democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Populism is often associated with direct democracy. However, empirical support for this connection remains limited. Analysing a unique dataset on national referendums across 29 countries, this study challenges the presumption that populists are more inclined to advocate for referendums. Surprisingly, populists exhibit this tendency primarily when in opposition. Despite the increasing inclusion of populist parties in coalition governments, their impact on facilitating national-level direct democracy is more complex than anticipated. Utilising V-DEM data over 30 years, we find that populists prima facie enhance the use of direct democracy. However, this effect is contingent on contextual factors, such as party system institutionalisation and the democracy's age, indicating a nuanced relationship between populism and direct democratic practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the relationship between populism in power and the expansion of mechanisms of direct democracy (MDDs) in Latin America. We hypothesise that the introduction of new or additional MDDs is more likely under populist than non-populist presidents due to core populist ideas. We then add a conditional explanation to this ideational argument grounded in a strategic calculus and hypothesise that the expansion of MDDs is even more likely if the political context in which populist presidents are embedded provides strategic incentives to promote MDDs. We test these hypotheses by means of logistic and Poisson regression analyses using a newly compiled data set covering information on the introduction and reform of MDDs in 18 Latin American countries from 1980 to 2018. Our results indicate that expansion of MDDs is, indeed, more likely promoted by populist presidents and that this association is conditioned by the degree of presidential approval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizens are embedded in legal systems in which the authority of different experts is normally given preference over citizens' opinions about medical marijuana and other medical issues. Yet, citizens may reject expert authority if they consider themselves to be competent based on their knowledge or social position. Thus, we are led to ask: In the context of direct democracy, what forms of expert authority—if any—does a historically privileged subset of citizens recognize when reasoning about medical marijuana? Our analysis is based on rich‐qualitative data that analyzes how white male citizens reason about a medical marijuana ballot initiative in Arizona. By using a comprehensive content coding of citizens' arguments about the ballot initiative, we analyze how this privileged subset of citizens reasons about following or ignoring various authorities on the issue of medical marijuana. The article uses an exploratory abductive analysis of secondary semi‐structured interview data to understand citizens' reasoning on this issue and to expand theories of expert authority in direct democratic settings. We find a variety of different ways in which white male citizens accept or reject expert medical authority on medical marijuana in the context of Arizona Proposition 203 (2010). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many, direct democracy is said to increase political interest. To date, however, empirical findings regarding this relationship remain inconclusive. In this article, we claim that this inconclusiveness can be partly ascribed to the diverse effects that direct democracy has on individuals. In other words, direct democracy influences political interest, but how and to what degree depends on an individual's personality traits. Running hierarchical regression models with survey data from random samples of eligible American and Swiss voters, we arrive at the following three conclusions: First, in both countries, the use of direct democracy is not directly connected to political interest. Second, the Big Five personality traits affect the interest in politics. Third, neuroticism, in particular, alters the relationship between direct democracy and political interest, suggesting that a certain personality type is likely to be more sensitive to popular votes, and a vibrant democratic environment can help to inspire interest in politics for people who, because of their personality, tend to be detached from it. Quite intriguingly, these relationships hold irrespective of the country and research period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to demonstrate that bottom-up popular vote processes (the optional referendum and citizens' initiative) focused on ordinary legislation can help to improve democratic self-government by uniquely facilitating the development and expression of various forms of political agency. Most significantly, it is argued that such popular vote processes can be designed in ways that endow them with significant deliberative credentials. Methodologically, the paper employs Mark E. Warren's problem-based approach to democratic theory, which provides the conceptual tools necessary to advance a) a novel case for recovering popular vote processes as a valid institutional toolkit for exploration by democratic theory and b) an empirically informed set of best practices that can provide critical resources for normatively scrutinizing existing institutionalizations of bottom-up popular vote processes across the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractMaintaining or increasing tax-based allocations is a strategic imperative for many public park and recreation agencies. Some agencies have the capacity to do so by sponsoring ballot initiatives proposing property tax increases in support of operational and capital expenses. In this manuscript we investigate the role of beliefs about the economy in shaping perceptions of such “greenspace ballot initiatives.” Specifically, we examine whether attitudes toward, and support for, greenspace ballot initiatives vary according to an individual’s willingness to buy—operationalized as their consumer confidence. Our results indicate that—independent of income—voters with higher levels of consumer confidence feel more positively toward ballot initiatives that would raise their property taxes to support public parks and recreation, and are more likely to vote in favor of them. We conclude by discussing potential implications for decision makers and future research efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the popularity of the populist radical right increases, questions arise. Where are these parties successful? Does the geographic distribution of their support change along with changes in their primary issues? This article analyzes spatial aspects in the support of populist radical right parties in Slovakia and Czechia and their change over time. The spatial distribution was examined using spatial autocorrelation.The results showed that these parties have strong support in "left-behind" regions and peripheral rural regions and weak support in the surroundings of largest cities. The distribution of support for parties also changed more significantly when the parties changed the presented main issues. In Slovakia there was visible spatial competition between the traditional populist radical right party, the Slovak National Party (SNS), and newer and adaptable party, the People's Party Our Slovakia (ĽSNS). ĽSNS succeeded in areas with traditionally strong support for SNS thanks to changes in its main electoral themes. In Czechia, the distribution of support between Dawn and Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) has changed. Dawn had a support distribution similar to the populist party Public Affairs, which shared ideas of direct democracy. SPD's support distribution was closer to areas traditionally supporting the populist radical right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a review of the book "Populism in Central America. The missing piece to understand a global phenomenon" by María Esperanza Casullo and Harry Brown Araúz. The authors analyze the phenomenon of populism in countries such as Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. They also explore different theoretical approaches to understand populism and highlight the importance of discourse and language in the region. The text analyzes the phenomenon of populism in Central America, highlighting the political violence and coups orchestrated by the political and economic elites of the country. The role of the United States in the region's political instability is also mentioned. It is pointed out that populism in Central America has been less radical than in Latin America due to the lack of transformative capacity of populist leaders in economic and social matters. In addition, topics for future research are proposed, such as the role of social networks in the construction of communicative relationships between leaders and followers, the historical relationship between the United States and the political elites of the region, and the relationship between direct democracy and populism. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Pravnik is the property of Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of State & Law and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Empirical literature regarding which actors support the most participatory democracy is surprisingly scarce. Discussing the core ideological features of populist and post-materialist-centred parties, we expect that these parties emphasise participatory democracy more than their competitors. Additionally, populist parties should embody a monist demand for greater participatory democracy, while post-materialist-centred (PMC) parties should advocate a pluralist understanding of it. Drawing on party electoral manifestos, we verify these assumptions in several national elections across Europe. Our findings show mixed support for the theoretical expectations. Both post-materialist and populist parties support participatory democracy more than other parties, and their principles diverge. More precisely, our data confirm that PMC parties advocate a pluralist understanding of participatory democracy. Yet populist parties show a fuzzier picture. While populist radical right parties exhibit a monist profile, radical left populist parties are much more in line with post-materialist arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political participation is socially distorted: Socio-economic resources affecting the probability of individuals becoming politically active question the principle of political equality. Such inequality in participation based on social stratification is well documented for elections, while research on inequality in referendum participation is still scarce. Based on the observation that such inequality varies between referendums, this paper explores referendum-specific contextual factors that may affect socially distorted referendum participation. We leverage information from an original dataset covering 1788 districts in 35 German municipalities for 68 local referendums held between 2000 and 2019. The results of our multilevel models indicate that concurrent first-order elections boost referendum turnout and decrease social stratification, while the closeness of the decision increases turnout but does not affect stratification bias. Moreover, we find a curvilinear relationship between turnout and stratification, with stratification only diminishing from participation levels above 40–50%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though the federal government impacts private forest management across the United States through legislation such as the Clean Water Act, state-level regulations applied to private forest landowners vary remarkably. Despite this diversity of policies, little is known about how variations in regulatory intensity (defined here as number of forestry regulations) correlate with state-level political and socioeconomic characteristics. In this study, we use a quantitative approach to explore the intensity of regulation on forest practices impacting private landowners across all 50 states. We quantified intensity by tabulating the number of regulated forest practices, then used a quasi-Poisson regression to estimate the relationship between regulatory intensity and state-level characteristics, including forestland ownership types, the economic importance of the forest industry, and measures of state environmentalism. Results indicated a positive association between regulatory intensity and the percent of private corporate land, environmental voting records of elected officials, and direct democracy. Foresters and landowners may learn from these relationships, consider how to influence different policies, and build or achieve greater levels of public trust. This study starts to help us explain why state-level forestry policies differ, not just how they differ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Political Sciences is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934 led many American Indian tribes to adopt formal constitutional texts to govern life on reservations. Over the following decade, dozens of tribes ratified their constitutions in hopes that they would start a new age of tribal self-governance. Given the opportunities for constitutional design subject to constrains, we develop a theory of constitutional choice on reservations. Tribal constitutions varied substantially in content and structure. We evaluate the constitutional choices tribes made regarding four areas: membership requirements, direct democracy, restrictions placed on officials, and protection of private property. Our theory yields several hypotheses that we test against data on 117 tribal constitutions, most of which were ratified in the aftermath of the IRA. The results provide evidence for the validity of our hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Which kinds of grievances garner support from the public on online platforms? Focusing on national online petitioning, one of the forms of direct democracy in contemporary politics, we examine the content and characteristics of petitions that succeeded in attracting public attention and support. Using our comprehensive data on online petitions that were submitted to the executive office between 2017 and 2022 in South Korea, our analysis yields three important findings. First, a mix of post-materialist topics such as human rights and gender equality and materialist topics such as safety and environment turn out to be salient among petitions that meet the signature threshold. Second, online petitions the contents of which reveal either moral emotions or Confucian attitudes are more likely to gain public support compared to others. Third, keywords that are related to moral claims asking for the apprehension of perpetrators on behalf of victims, such as 'victim,' 'perpetrator,' 'kid,' and 'punishment,' appear most frequently inside the petitions that cross the signature threshold. Such findings provide implications for understanding both the potentials and limitations of national online petitioning in contemporary democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the Kantian and Rousseauvian solutions to the conflict between autonomy and authority. First, I discuss how the categorical imperatives (CI) are the supreme source of the legitimate authority of a limited number of political laws. By extending the synthetic a priori nature of the CI, I demonstrate how Rousseau's General Will (GW) can justify political laws in a broader sense. I also refer to the theory of H.L.A. Hart and John Rawls to show that all political laws are binding if they are within the limits of injustice and have some moral foundation. I discussed the limits of authority of on debatable laws such as banning abortion. I analyzed the possibility of GW by using Condorcet's theorem. I conclude that GW cannot fully justify political laws based on majoritarian direct democracy, owing to problematic assumptions, although it may be an improvement to the current legislative procedure of the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, several social movements in western democracies argue that traditional representative democracy has failed to adequately represent the will of the "people", and instead support direct democracy as the only political system to restore the will of the majority. We analyze under what conditions the policy – a vector of decisions on every issue – implemented by the winner of a bipartisan electoral competition coincides with the policy that citizens would choose by means of direct democracy. We find necessary and sufficient conditions for this equivalence to hold, implying that, as long as at least one of them is not fulfilled, a divergence of outcomes between direct and representative democracy arises. The first condition requires that the outcome of majority voting issue-by-issue is the Condorcet winner relative to the voters' preference profile over the set of policies. The second requires that either that outcome is the preferred policy for at least one of the candidates, or that candidates' preferred policies differ on every single issue. We reinterpret some findings in the literature in the light of our model and present them as potential reasons why the equivalence between direct and representative democracy may fail. • We find necessary and sufficient conditions for the coincidence of policies implemented under direct and representative democracy. • Loosely divided electorates and highly polarized politicians favor such a coincidence. • The bundling of issues by politicians does not jeopardize the coincidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does landholding inequality undermine democratization? Recent contributions have challenged the argument that landholding elites oppose suffrage extension if geographically fixed assets are unequally distributed. We advance research on this long-standing question by exploiting exogenous variance to reinvestigate the relationship. Using multiple instruments, we find that landholding inequality decreases support for suffrage extension. By focusing on traditional patterns of social control, we explore an empirically neglected mechanism linking landholding inequality and democratization. Taking advantage of four direct democratic votes between 1866 and 1877 in Switzerland, we demonstrate that landholding inequality also influences the political preferences of ordinary citizens who do not control these resources. This paper shows that high levels of landholding inequality provide local elites with the incentive and the means to align the local population's voting behaviour with their political goals. Supplementary analyses using qualitative and quantitative data further substantiate this social control mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: Researchers have examined the campaign strategies, messaging, and outcomes of popular votes on tobacco tax increases from 1998 to 2008, but no study has investigated measures that have appeared since 2008. Methods: The author uses state newspaper archives, voter pamphlets, academic reports, advocacy websites, and personal interviews to obtain information about the 11 tobacco tax increase ballot measures that appeared from 2012 to 2022. Findings: The three measures that succeeded during 2012–2022 featured sufficient financial resources, collaboration with influential stakeholders, and early public support. Two of the three successful measures offered significant concessions to the tobacco industry, and both were designed as legislatively referred statutes. Elsewhere, proponents sought unsuccessfully to enact citizen-led initiatives that would allocate revenue to progressive policy priorities. In contrast to previous eras, tobacco industry arguments often centered around antitax and antigovernment rhetoric, which was viewed as especially compelling in conservative states. The industry's success rate was higher than in the past, and it continued to outspend its opponents, sometimes by staggering margins. Conclusions: Campaign spending and early support remain critical to the success of tobacco tax ballot measures. Big Tobacco can extract significant concessions even in defeat, and direct democracy is an effective but imperfect ally to tobacco control advocates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can democratic innovations (DIs) offer a cure for the widespread loss of support for electoral institutions? This widely held assumption among advocates of DIs should be questioned more thoroughly. Insufficient attention has been paid so far to the impact of different types of DIs on electoral legitimacy, defined as the support for the principles grounding electoral representation. What is at stake is the compatibility and equilibrium between different parts of the new democratic systems that are developing in many political contexts. To address this issue, the article offers an innovative typology, distinguishing five types of DIs based on their relationship with traditional representative institutions. This allows to identify DIs that do have the potential to strengthen electoral legitimacy (initiative, recall, abrogative referendums, deliberative town-halls) from others overtly attacking it (lottocracy, liquid democracy) or potentially challenging it (citizen-initiated referendums and empowered citizens' assemblies). The article shows that it is not because an innovation is conceived as complementary to electoral representative institutions that it cannot challenge the latter's foundations. Finally, it identifies several issues on which empirical knowledge is lacking, opening perspectives for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A strong oscillation of electoral preferences took place in Chile between the election of the members of the Constitutional Convention in May 2021 and the election of the members of the Constitutional Council in May 2023. This is surprising because, until the national-scale social uprising in 2019, there was a broad consensus that Chile was a highly institutionalised party system where political preferences tended to be stable. In this research note, we study how the electoral choices made by citizens shifted between both elections, using the ecological inference approach based on a Bayesian hierarchical model developed elsewhere. We find that a vast majority of the new voters that resulted from the compulsory voting policy implemented between both elections opted for centre-right to right-wing candidates. However, this evidence is insufficient to determine whether these new voters predominantly align with right-leaning ideologies or hold anti-systemic viewpoints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly work on populism and borders have largely followed separate paths so far. This article aims at bringing together these two strands by means of an empirical analysis of individual attitudes on a re-bordering policy in the context of a national-populist mobilization against the free movement of persons. Recent contributions on border regions in affluent countries have highlighted an increased opposition to European integration that is fueled by political actors from the populist radical right. We hypothesize that border residents are more opposed to the free movement of persons than non-border residents the more they are exposed to the influx of cross-border workers. The empirical analysis draws on a representative post-vote survey from the so-called “VOTO studies” on a popular initiative by the radical right that demanded Switzerland’s termination of the free movement of persons with the European Union in 2020. In line with our hypothesis, we find a significant positive interaction effect between border residence and the share of cross-border commuters on the likelihood to vote in favor of this proposition. While border residence turns out to be insufficient to foster increased re-bordering attitudes, we show that the magnitude of incoming cross-border commuters makes a difference.

The emergent literature on citizen forecasting suggests that the public, in the aggregate, can often accurately predict the outcomes of elections. However, it is not clear how citizens form judgments about election results or what factors influence individual predictions. Drawing on an original survey experiment conducted during the campaign for the United Kingdom's Brexit referendum, we provide novel evidence of what influences citizen forecasts in a so-far unexplored context of direct democracy. Specifically, we investigate the effect of voting preferences and political sophistication, in addition to three "exogenous factors" that we manipulate experimentally—i.e., social cues, elite cues and campaign arguments. Our findings indicate that citizens are reasonably accurate in their predictions, with the average forecast being close to the actual result of the referendum. However, important individual heterogeneity exists, with politically sophisticated voters being more accurate in their predictions and less prone to wishful thinking than non-sophisticated voters. Experimental findings show that partisan voters adjust their predictions in response to cues provided by their favorite party's elites and partly in response to campaign arguments, and the effects are larger for low-sophisticated voters. We discuss the mechanisms accounting for the experimental effects, in addition to the implications of our findings for public opinion research and the literature on citizen forecasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies have tried to identify citizens' views about which actors should govern and how. These studies have mostly looked at support for citizens or independent experts being given a greater role. Recently, Hibbing, Theiss-Morse, Hibbing and Fortunato have proposed a new battery of 21 survey items capturing the dimensions along which citizens' preferences for who should govern are organized. Testing their survey instrument among US respondents, they identified seven dimensions. In this study, we replicate their approach across nine European democracies, namely, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Ireland and the Netherlands. The replication allows, first, to compare citizens' preferences for political actors between the US and Europe, and within Europe. Second, it provides suggestions for how Hibbing and colleagues' battery might be adapted and re-used in other countries, enabling further cross-national comparative research on citizens' preferences for who should govern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the impact of intra-party transformations and access to power on the visions of political participation of activists taking part in populist anti-establishment parties with a strong emphasis on digital participation, using the Five Star Movement (M5S) as a case study. Going beyond studies conceiving the M5S as a populist and digital party, we argue that activists support a democratic ideal based on a civic culture involving a demanding role for ordinary citizens, who should be highly interested in politics and involved locally on a day-to-day basis. A negative vision of the Italian citizen judged as incapable of playing this role accompanies this ideal. Our article also demonstrates how political involvement in the M5S transformed the visions of activists, making them warier of direct democracy and more disillusioned about their fellow citizens. The analysis relies on qualitative semi-directed interviews with former and current M5S activists with diversified socio-demographics, political and participation trajectories in two Italian regions. More broadly, our article shows that the effects of entering government and intra-party reforms reinforcing the leadership at the expense of local activists are particularly strong in anti-establishment parties and clash with the conceptions of participation supported by activists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hanna Svensson's book, "Establishing Shared Knowledge in Political Meetings: Repairing and Correcting in Public," explores a participatory democratic initiative in the council of Grand Lyon, France. The book analyzes how participants in political meetings establish shared knowledge through repairing and correcting sequences. It examines the normative patterns and cultural competencies that enable citizens' direct democratic participation. The book highlights the importance of cultural context in the success of democratic frameworks and calls for further exploration of the cultural basis of democracy. [Extracted from the article]

In 2020, Arizonans approved Proposition 207, the Smart and Safe Arizona Act, which legalized recreational marijuana sales. Previous research has typically used non‐spatial survey data to understand marijuana legalization voting patterns. However, voting behavior can, in part, be shaped by geographic context, or place, which is unaccounted for in aspatial survey data. We use multiscale geographically weighted regression to analyze how place shaped Proposition 207 voting behavior, independently of demographic variations across space. We find significant spatial variability in the sensitivity of voting for Proposition 207 to changes in several of the predictor variables of opposition and support for recreational marijuana legalization. We argue that local statistical modeling approaches provide a more in‐depth understanding of ballot measure voting behavior than the current use of global models. Related Articles: Branton, Regina, and Ronald J. McGauvran. 2018. "Mary Jane Rocks the Vote: The Impact of Climate Context on Support for Cannabis Initiatives." Politics & Policy 46(2): 209–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12248. Brekken, Katheryn C., and Vanessa M. Fenley. 2020. "Part of the Narrative: Generic News Frames in the U.S. Recreational Marijuana Policy Subsystem." Politics & Policy 49(1): 6–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12388. Fisk, Jonathan M., Joseph A. Vonasek, and Elvis Davis. 2018. "'Pot'reneurial Politics: The Budgetary Highs and Lows of Recreational Marijuana Policy Innovation." Politics & Policy 46(2): 189–208. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12246. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article suggests that we need to rethink the legitimacy of EU referenda by considering them as democratic games with different groups of players, levels and rounds. Unlike most research on EU referenda informed by direct democracy or demoicracy, the article employs the approach of agonistic democracy. It argues that we need to shift analytical focus from the member-state to the EU citizen and develop EU-level criteria for a comprehensive assessment of EU referenda's legitimacy. The criteria are whether all EU citizens – and not just the citizens from the country conducting the referendum – had opportunities to participate in the political dialogue surrounding the EU referendum, and whether citizens across the EU have been able to develop EU-level democratic subjectivities through such participation. Applying these criteria in the cases of the Greek and British EU referenda, the article finds legitimacy shortcomings for both, yet with variations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "The Constitution of the Algorithm" analyzes the relationship between the Constitution and the digital reality. The author argues that the Spanish Constitution of 1978 does not adapt to the current reality, which is hybrid and globalized. It proposes "constitutionalizing algorithms" and "digitizing the Constitution" as solutions. The impact of the digital society on fundamental rights and democracy is also studied, as well as the dangers of relying on digital products and services. Special attention is paid to the rights of freedom of information and protection of personal data, and the impact of direct democracy and the influence of large companies on the web 2.0 are discussed. Additionally, the influence of China and the United States through personal data is mentioned, and a "Constitution of the Algorithm" that adapts to the digital reality is proposed. [Extracted from the article]

The present article explores the dynamics behind Czech radical-right leader Tomio Okamura and his Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party’s frequent criticism of the West. It argues that their attacks on the West should be seen as not only a critique of liberal democracy but also a denunciation of the post-socialist socio-economic and political order in Central and Eastern Europe. The transition from socialism to liberal democracy in this region has closely tied the concept of liberal democracy to ‘the Western model’, turning discussions about the West into debates about the post-1989 transition. Using a qualitative analysis of social media communication and drawing on the insights of critical discourse analysis, the article shows how Okamura and his party use their denunciation of the West to fight against both the Western liberal democratic model and the Czech post-socialist regime. By doing so, they tap into post-socialist tropes and challenge the West–East hierarchy of knowledge. The Czech case sheds light on the regional specificity of radical right movements in Central and Eastern Europe and how their anti-Western, anti-liberal stance is influenced by issues related to the post-1989 transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2017, 97,61% of the people of Cumaral, Colombia, voted in a popular consultation against having the oil industry in their municipality. However, this historical result was challenged by the government in court and ultimately overturned in 2018. By looking into the origins and strategies employed by Cumaral's environmental movement, we argue that their success involved turning a diverse, and even contradictory, collective into a singular voice that could reject the state's development agenda. We thus highlight the combination of factors that led to the consultation result showing that an effective way of resistance can be achieved through the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of SWS - Rundschau is the property of Verein fur interdisziplinare sozialwissenschaftliche Studien und Analysen and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We introduce a new framework of the functions of direct democracy within a democratic political system. These are: (1) channeling political input into the decision-making arenas by circumventing organized interests (input function), (2) channeling political issues out of the representative decision-making system (exit function), and (3) producing decisions about political questions (decision function). Based on the analysis of 277 instruments of direct democracy on the national level in 103 countries around the world, we find that the input and exit functions are rather unbalanced in their dynamics. The exit function shows a tendency to strengthen the concentration of power, whereas the input function rarely allows for access to both decision-making arenas. However, once issues reach the referendum, the impact is often strong, and only a small minority of states conduct referendums without any formal consequences. Beyond these results, the presented approach allows to start long-time observations of the state of direct democracy in democratic systems.

The article analyses the development of representative democracy in Croatia from its independence to today. During the 1990s, Croatia changed its electoral system several times and had a bicameral parliament. With the constitutional changes implemented in 2001, the legislative power was organized on a unicameral principle. At the same time, the previous semi-presidential system was replaced by a parliamentary one. These changes represent only the basic framework within which representative democracy in Croatia developed over time. An important milestone in this development was the introduction of preferential voting at the national elections in 2015, which allowed the voters to vote for a particular list and a specific candidate on that list. According to some, this improved the problematic state of inner-party democracy, although, for others, the reform was not far-reaching enough. Given that representative democracy does not function in a vacuum, the article also considers the impact of direct democracy on the functioning of representative democracy in Croatia. Referring to the Croatian experience, it argues that this complementary form of democracy had a positive impact on the quality of representative democracy in the country. Nevertheless, in the face of representative democracy in Croatia, many open questions still need to be addressed. The most important one is how to increase the turnout in the elections, which is still comparatively low and arguably related to the low trust in politics.

I contend that parliamentary representative democracy betrays what must be democratic about democratic citizenship – its directness. I examine this betrayal to consider what makes democratic citizenship democratic, what is direct about direct democracy, and how it may provide a means to (re)democratize democracy. To do so, I engage the conundrums about citizenship Aristotle posed in the Politics. For millennia, theorists have used Aristotle’s dislike of democracy and related misrepresentations to dismiss direct democracy as impossible for large states. Moreover, the problems he raised have roiled political theory ever since because they established two issues that indicate how profoundly democracy troubles citizenship. The first concerns what it means for “the people” to remain sovereign even when most delegate the political powers of their citizenship to others. The second concerns the historical capacity of democracy to transform the political by disrupting entrenched power and legalized inequality. If so, democracy must somehow institutionalize disruption as a resource to keep it vigorous. I examine how the provocations of sovereignty, equality, and disruption democratize citizenship. These problems are unresolvable in a democracy. Their tensions are necessary to mobilize democratization, as Athenian democracy shows. Attempts to resolve them – such as republican representative democracy – destroy its energies.

Este ensayo abordó la cuestión fundamental de si la representación política es compatible con los principios democráticos, considerando que el demos no toma decisiones directamente. La tesis central argumentó que la representación política era genuinamente democrática al permitir la expresión de los intereses de la ciudadanía a través de sus representantes. Se inició con dos premisas: la necesidad de reflejar los intereses de la ciudadanía en instituciones y las limitaciones de la democracia directa en sociedades modernas. Estas premisas respaldaron la idea de que la representación política podía efectivamente representar los intereses del demos, desafiando la noción de que sólo la democracia directa lo lograba. La importancia del voto como mecanismo de representación ciudadana se abordó como la tercera premisa, siendo el punto de convergencia entre las dos anteriores. El aporte académico radicó en profundizar en aspectos cruciales de la democracia, explorando cómo los sistemas representativos están en sintonía con los valores democráticos y cómo el voto desempeñaba un rol crucial en ello. Esta investigación enriqueció el debate sobre la relación entre representación política y democracia, estableciendo bases sólidas para futuros análisis y reflexiones en este campo.

In recent American elections political candidates have actively emphasized features of their fundraising profiles when campaigning. Yet, surprisingly, we know comparatively little about how financial information affects vote choice specifically, whether effects differ across types of election, and how robust any effects are to other relevant political signals. Using a series of conjoint experiment designs, I compare the effects of campaigns' financial profiles on vote choice across direct democratic and representative elections, randomizing subjects' exposure to additional political cues. I find that while the financial profile of candidates can affect vote choice, these effects are drowned out by non-financial signals. In ballot initiative races, the explicit policy focus of the election appears to swamp any effect of financial information. This paper is the first to explore the comparative effects of financial disclosure across election type, contributing to our understanding of how different heuristics interact across electoral contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debate on Irish unification has increased in recent years, yet public attitudes on the processes that might lead to it are underexplored. This article examines the results of an online public consultation carried out in Northern Ireland in the summer of 2020 on how any future referendums on the unification question would best be conducted. It shows that hopes and fears on this question exist across society in Northern Ireland. It also reveals that public views are yet to crystallise on many of the design features of a referendum. There are some exceptions to this: there is a widespread feeling that the Brexit referendum process should not be replicated; and there are signs of divergent views emerging between communities on the franchise, referendum threshold, and use of citizens' assemblies. Nevertheless, we conclude that the lack of hardened views on most questions of process points to an opportunity for policymakers and impartial observers to foster agreement on how a referendum process should be conducted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Faced with contradictory outcomes in empirical studies on the relation between democracy and income inequality, this paper attempts to provide empirical relations between democracy and income inequality. In particular, the authors seek to find if any curvilinear relation exists as in the Kuznets hypothesis. Design/methodology/approach: Given elusiveness in empirical relations, the authors will consider several specifications using different estimation methods such as ordinary least squares (OLS), panel data estimation and performing statistical tests to determine the best specification for the relation between income inequality and democracy. Once the authors choose the specification, then the authors will apply this specification to the different groups of data to find any meaningful implications. Findings: Using the unbalanced panel of 136 countries spanning from 1980 to 2018, the authors found an inverse U-shaped relation, called a political Kuznets curve – income inequality increases first and then decreases later as more democracy is achieved. By quantifying the curve, the authors find that the direct impact of democracy on income inequality is small and that the incremental impact of democracy on income inequality is smaller in a semi-democracy while relatively larger in a full democracy and autocracy. Originality/value: From the study's findings, the following policy implications can be considered. First, any change in income inequality caused by democratization should not be concerning as the impact of democracy on income inequality is measured to be very small. Second, the largest factor reducing income inequality is real GDP per capita. Third, the authors find that an impact of government expenditure on income inequality is also inversely U-shaped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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