Direct Democracy: Chances and Challenges

Gebhard Kirchgässner

CREMA Working Paper Series from Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA)

Abstract: This paper discusses several problems of direct popular decisions. In the first part, we consid- er problems related to the functioning of direct democracy. As a political system it only makes sense if there exists a continuous process and not if only occasional single questions are brought to a referendum. Then, the relation between direct democracy and the rule of unanim- ity is discussed, a subject of special relevance to the European Union, before we consider the role of quorums. In the second part, some areas are considered in which conflicts might arise. Results of initiatives might be incompatible with individual human rights or might endanger fiscal sustainability, and referenda might impede economic reforms. All these problems, how- ever, do not justify a general re jection of direct popular rights . Thus, we conclude by listing several points that should be observed to safeguard the well-functioning of direct democracy.

Keywords: Direct democracy; referendum; initiative; human rights; economic re- forms; fiscal sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.crema-research.ch/papers/2015-09.pdf Full Text (application/pdf)
https://www.crema-research.ch/abstracts/2015-09.htm Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Direct Democracy: Chances and Challenges (2015)
Working Paper: Direct Democracy: Chances and Challenges (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cra:wpaper:2015-09

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CREMA Working Paper Series from Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Anna-Lea Werlen ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).