IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sek/iacpro/8710867.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Local referendum: The perspectives of a forgotten legal instrument

Author

Listed:
  • Boldizsár Szentgáli-Tóth

    (Hungarian Academy of Sciences; Eotvos Loránd University)

Abstract

Direct democracy is generally represented by national referenda, when the whole population of a country could decide on a particular matter, or could express an opinion. However, in most of the democratic countries, the local communities, regions or townships have also the right to hold referenda from local issues, such as the planned construction of new industrial facilities, or from investments with remarkable environmental impact. These referenda are subject to similar legal framework, than national referenda, but their inherent character is different: this local legal instrument does not constitute essentially the expression of the popular sovereignty, but it creates a tool for the citizens to participate at the self-governance of the local community. Due to this ambiguity, local referenda shall be distinguished clearly from the national level of direct democracy: the legal background, the special campaign, and the remedies of local referenda shall be analysed in depth. Moreover, to outline the different models in this regard, a comparative research would be also crucial to provide an overarching picture from local referenda across Europe.As the outcome of our research, we would provide a deeper understanding of local referendum as an underestimated instrument of direct democracy, and we would conceptualize, how this constitutionally acknowledged legal framework could serve the interest of the citizens and the local communities more efficiently. For this purpose, certain points would be highlighted for consideration for future constitution-making processes. Our research would cover a field, which has been little researched, and it would be based on three strands of literature, which has been rarely used by this integrated manner. Firstly, we would rely on contributions from direct democracy, which give us some sense from the general character of this forgotten legal instrument. Secondly, the literature from the self-governance would be also referred, as local referenda shall be evaluated primarily within this concept. Thirdly, sources directly linked to local referendum would be also revealed from various European countries, where this concept plays a significant role to decide particular issues.

Suggested Citation

  • Boldizsár Szentgáli-Tóth, 2019. "Local referendum: The perspectives of a forgotten legal instrument," Proceedings of International Academic Conferences 8710867, International Institute of Social and Economic Sciences.
    • Handle: RePEc:sek:iacpro:8710867
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://iises.net/proceedings/iises-international-academic-conference-copenhagen/table-of-content/detail?cid=87&iid=053&rid=10867
    File Function: First version, 2019
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ReferendumDirect democracySelf-governancePopular participationConstitutional law;

    JEL classification:

    • K00 - Law and Economics - - General - - - General (including Data Sources and Description)
    • K10 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - General (Constitutional Law)
    • K39 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Other

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:sek:iacpro:8710867. 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: Klara Cermakova (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://iises.net/ .

    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.