IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/elg/eechap/21846_18.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Direct democracy

In: Handbook of Comparative Political Institutions

Author

Listed:
  • David Altman

Abstract

This contribution briefly overviews how different mechanisms of direct democracy (MDDs) find their way into contemporary polities, offering a typology of the most used MDDs - such as referendums, popular initiatives and plebiscites. It pays attention to the incredible variation of their institutional designs and advances avenues for direct-democracy measurement, zooming in on the modern-day uses of these institutions. It is shown that, as with virtually any political institution, MDDs can be abused and instrumentalized by anyone. It also debunks some of direct democracy’s presumed effects on democracy. Finally, it opens some suggestions for future avenues research can take.

Suggested Citation

  • David Altman, 2024. "Direct democracy," Chapters, in: Adrian Vatter & Rahel Freiburghaus (ed.), Handbook of Comparative Political Institutions, chapter 18, pages 276-293, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    • Handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:21846_18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781803929095.00026
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Politics and Public Policy;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:21846_18. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Darrel McCalla (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.e-elgar.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.