The use of referendums has gained popularity among both voters and parties. Yet, despite the diffusion of such direct forms of democracy during the last decades in Europe, referendums remain not a very common policy instrument in Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg). We establish that this trend could be explained by a large consensus among mainstream (especially right) parties and voters against the use of direct democracy. Moreover, we confirmed the well-established demarcation with radical ideologies, which convey overall more support and congruence on the use of referendums than the mainstream. Additionally, and probably reflecting this new line of cleavage, we show that support for referendums among the voters relate to left-wing economic position, but also with culturally right-wing view. Overall, this article questions the relevance of the traditional left-right divide to explain support for direct democracy, as well as the capacity for (some) parties to align with their voters in terms of democratic demands.

As governments in Western Europe have retreated from providing public services over the past decades, they have stimulated communities to take over many of these services. This has resulted in, among other things, a plethora of community-based initiatives (CBIs). CBIs are heralded by some for their innovative potential: they would address new problems. CBIs are also criticised for being undemocratic, as their activities can marginalise or overrule elected politicians and the citizens active in CBIs are not representative of the population. We argue that these different praises and criticisms implicitly depart from different democratic perspectives, specifically the representative and do-democratic perspectives. These different perspectives need to be explicated and compared in order to judge in what ways CBIs can and cannot be said to have democratic legitimacy, when assessed from different perspectives on democracy.

The use of referendums has gained popularity among both voters and parties. Yet, despite the diffusion of such direct forms of democracy during the last decades in Europe, referendums remain not a very common policy instrument in Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg). We establish that this trend could be explained by a large consensus among mainstream (especially right) parties and voters against the use of direct democracy. Moreover, we confirmed the well-established demarcation with radical ideologies, which convey overall more support and congruence on the use of referendums than the mainstream. Additionally, and probably reflecting this new line of cleavage, we show that support for referendums among the voters relate to left-wing economic position, but also with culturally right-wing view. Overall, this article questions the relevance of the traditional left-right divide to explain support for direct democracy, as well as the capacity for (some) parties to align with their voters in terms of democratic demands.

Modern authoritarian regimes have implemented a relatively large number of referendums in recent decades. These have had important consequences for institutional change. Applying the new Direct Democracy Integrity Index to the Turkish constitutional referendum in 2017 and the Russian constitutional referendum in 2020, this analysis determines whether these plebiscites fulfil the standards of integrity and respect the rights of oppositional parties and minorities. We found that the level of integrity was lower during the pre-election period than during the election or the post-election period. We observe that modern authoritarian systems such as Russia (in 2020) use strategies of mobilisation, activism and even modern forms of deliberative democracy. However, their strategies are characterised by propaganda. In contrast, authoritarian regimes (such as Turkey) are still implementing strategies of repression which lead to passivity, disengagement and apathy. Both have strong implications for the integrity of referendums.

The scant literature on policy implementation in direct democracy has found that non-compliance with accepted initiatives is rather widespread. Political scientists have mainly explained this finding by focusing on the preferences of those actors in charge of implementation, thereby neglecting supranational restrictions. This article advances the literature by focusing on the challenge posed by international law. It is argued that the implementation of initiatives that conflict with international law poses a dilemma between responsiveness (i.e., respecting the people’s will) and responsibility (i.e., complying with a country’s external obligations). A case study of the Swiss deportation initiative shows that legislators relied as much as possible on responsiveness by enacting a decisive tightening of penal legislation according to the basic demands of the accepted proposition and as little as necessary on responsibility, given that MPs refrained from implementing those provisions that conflicted with mandatory international law.