What role does political knowledge play in campaigning for and participation in direct democracy? A foundational principle of democracy is citizen participation in decision-making. This foundation assumes that citizens are at least somewhat knowledgeable about government and able to make informed choices. This analysis examines the role that meaningful decisions play in direct democracy, because “for voters to make meaningful decisions, they must understand the options on which they are deciding” (Dalton 1988: 13). This analysis uses three different methodologies to investigate this relationship. First, through qualitative analysis and a mail survey of petitioners, this study explores how petitioners view and approach the public. This study finds that expectations of political knowledge affects how petitioners approach the public and how much time they spend educating the public about their initiative. Second, through statistical (multi-level regression) analysis, this study investigates the impact of the ballot language on participation in individual ballot propositions. This study finds that ballot language is a significant barrier to participation. Third, through experimental analysis, this study connects measures of political knowledge and participation on ballot propositions written by petitioners across the country. This study finds that when confronted with more difficult ballot language voters are less likely to participate. However, when controlling for political knowledge this effect is truncated. The findings of this analysis argue the elite bias of direct democracy in ballot language, accessibility, and motives of petitioners. The study of participation in direct democracy and political knowledge across American states advances the theoretical understanding of democratic participation, and furthers our understanding of the role citizen political knowledge plays in policymaking.

<p>The organisation of the municipalities is based on the principle of representation. It has previously been impossible to give the citizens more influence through direct democracy, but the information technology gives new possibilities and the choice of democracy model might no longer be obvious. Representation can be interpreted in many ways and there is a need for a more distinct definition of the rule that the municipalities shall be governed according to the principle of representation. It should also be further investigated how the new technology can be used to increase the use of direct democracy. The municipalities ought to work to supplement the representation with direct democracy in the form of active discourse with the citizens. This can be done for example through referendums, consultations or citizen councils. There are already possibilities to increase the civil influence, and the municipalities are therefore responsible to ensure that these possibilities are used.</p>

Pastaraisiais metais pastebėta tiesioginės demokratijos procedūrų augimo pasaulyje tendencija. Niekada iki šiol tiek daug žmonių negalėjo balsuoti jiems svarbiais klausimais, kaip per pastarąjį dešimtmetį. Vis dažniau naudojama iniciatyvios teisė, visuotiniai balsavimai, sprendžiant esminius klausimus ir išrinktų pareigūnų atšaukimo mechanizmas, iš esmės pakeitė politinę dinamiką. Visame pasaulyje, atstovaujamoji demokratija yra pertvarkoma ir modernizuojama. Taigi, ir šio magistro darbo tema buvo pasirinkta neatstitiktinai, o siekiant platesniame referendumo instituto analizės kontekste išanalizuoti referendumų patirtį bei įvertinti jų perspektyvas Lietuvoje, Šveicarijoje ir Kalifornijoje. Tikslas pasiektas analizuojant teisės doktriną ir teisės aktus, vertinant Lietuvos bei pasirinktų (Šveicarijos bei Kalifornijos) valstybių referendumų patirtį ir jų poveikį atstovaujamai demokratijai. Pirmojoje darbo dalyje išsamiai aptariama referendumo, kaip tiesioginės demokratijos instituto, samprata bei klasifikacija, dėl kurios terminologijos mokslininkų nuomonė išsiskiria. Antrojoje dalyje aptariama referendumų praktika Lietuvoje ir pateikiamas jos vertinimas. Trečiojoje dalyje analizuojami tiesioginės demokratijos institutai Šveicarijoje bei pateikiamas jų vertinimas. Ketvirtojoje dalyje vertinama tiesioginė demokratija Kalifornijoje. Galiausiai penktojoje dalyje pateikiama referendumų skeptikų nuomonė ir argumentai, paneigiantys ją. / In recent years the growth of direct democratic procedures in the world has become far more noticeable. Never before such a large number of people could vote for the actual issues since over the past decade. More frequently applied initiative law, general voting with a view to resolving essential problems and using mechanism of cancelation of the elected officials has fundamentally changed the political dynamics. Around the world representative democracy is being transformed and modernized. Thus the topic of the Master‘s thesis was chosen not randomly but to the more extensive context of the analysis of the referendum institute and aims to approach the experience of the referenda and assessing their prospects in Lithuania, Switzerland and California. The objective has been achieved by analyzing legal doctrine and legislation in terms of Lithuania and the experience of the selected states (Switzerland and California) organizing the referendums as well as their effects on representative democracy. The first part disputes the referendum in detail referring to it as the institute of direct democracy, concept and classification since the researchers’ opinion concerning the terminology is different. The second part deals with the practice of referendum law in Lithuania and its assessment is presented. The third part analyzes the institutions of direct democracy in Switzerland and their assessment. The direct democracy in California is assessed in the fourth part while and... [to full text]

Democracy Now! is an independently syndicated hour long daily audio and video program that is broadcast on 1179 radio, television, and internet stations throughout the world, as well as being freely available on their website under a Creative-Commons License. They are a global news organization based in New York City, with the stated goal of providing “rarely heard” perspectives in their coverage. Democracy Now! was one of the early independent news organizations to provide continuous coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York's Zuccotti park. Their early coverage of the movement is relevant to the extent that it helps to obviate the demographics of the OWS movement as well as highlight the potential for a “radically-democratic agonistic pluralism,” as conceptualized by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Through the dual frames of discourse and intersectionality theories, this qualitiative study examines the coverage of Occupy Wall Street by Democracy Now!, in an attempt to understand the interplay of the movement's demographic heterogeneity and the manner in which its public antagonism is characterized by this independent media outlet. The sociopolitical and historical context provided by Democracy Now! is used to understand where the outlet exists with in the media as well as if this coverage can be part of “radical democratic possibilities.”

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Diante do descontentamento do povo com seus representantes, nota-se a existência de uma possível crise democrática. Percebe-se haver uma falta de identificação entre as leis vigentes e políticas públicas adotadas com as reais necessidades populares o que gera descrença no sistema e nos políticos, levando o povo, cada dia mais, a se afastar das decisões políticas. A máxima democrática de que todo poder emana do povo e deve ser exercido em seu nome, não vem sendo demonstrada no histórico brasileiro, pois, após a eleição, alguns representantes acabam exercendo o poder em benefício próprio, e pior, muitas vezes contra o anseio popular. A Constituição da República de 1988, seguindo tendência democrática atual, buscou contornar o problema prevendo instrumentos que propiciassem a participação popular de forma direta, sem, contudo, alijar a representação. Todavia, mais de vinte anos após a promulgação da Constituição, esses mecanismos têm sido pouco utilizados. Assim, o presente estudo tem por objetivo analisar, em especial, os instrumentos da democracia direta que traduzem a vontade popular manifestada nas urnas, quais sejam: o plebiscito e o referendo. A partir de uma análise histórica da democracia, busca-se entender o porquê da escassez dessas consultas populares, bem como avaliar os meios de que dispõem para conformar o ideal do cidadão às políticas governamentais adotadas por seus representantes. / Over time there has been an increasing schism between elected officials and the electorade, this causing a crisis of our democracy. This schism strengthens the view among citizens that public policy and enacted laws and regulations do not address popular needs. The result is growing disenchantment with politics itself, leading to distrust of political system, government, and, of course, politicians. This leads to the failure of our democratic system, specifically, lack of plebiscite and referendum. The principle that all power emanates from the people and must be exercised on their name has never been a reality in Brazilian history. Although such a concept may be abstract and difficult to implement, the primary reason for the failure of its implementation is the lack of accountability of politicians to their electorate. Instead, what our democratic society has seen, or at least has perceived, is that politicians do not act to address popular needs; rather, politicians act to address special interests for themselves personally and for persons with the ability to influence political decisions. The Constitution, enacted in 1988, sought to address some of these representation failures by providing mechanisms that would encourage, and enable, public participation in a more direct way with their representatives. Almost twenty-five years after the promulgation of the Constitution, it has become obvious that mechanisms have done little to address representation. The purpose of this thesis is to identify and provide a better understanding of why these representative failures occur and to examine certain instruments of direct democracy that better reflect the popular will expressed and polls by electorate.

How do voters navigate the intersection between democracy and capitalism? Citizens have the opportunity to directly decide upon policies that shape their state's economy through market regulatory ballot measures; however, the role of voters in this key intersection and policy making-mechanism has been largely overlooked. Models of reasoning and decision-making in the voting literature have primarily developed from rational choice theory. These models identify conditions under which self-interest and partisanship influence voter choice and policy attitude formation. To extend this literature to voter reasoning on market regulatory measures, I examined how variation in voter choice and reasoning corresponded with variation in social indicators of self-interest and partisanship, both of which are foundational individual-level processes for capitalism and democracy, respectively. In order to carry out this analysis I conducted semi-structured interviews with 120 respondents about how they voted on four market regulatory ballot measures that appeared on the Arizona state ballot from 2008-2012 related to narcotic decriminalization and medicalization, education funding, immigration and labor markets, and consumer protection. Drawing from contemporary models of voter reasoning, I selected self-interest and partisanship as independent variables for this analysis and then examined how variation in these variables corresponded with variation in voter choice. I subsequently used my qualitative data to investigate how voters used narratives of self-interest and partisan values to reason about these four market regulatory ballot measures. I supplemented my qualitative analysis by investigating voter use of beliefs from non-partisan economic philosophies in their reasoning on these measures. To my knowledge, voter reasoning related to market regulatory ballot measures has yet to be studied and therefore my analysis required holding key factors (such as gender, race, and ethnicity) constant in order to limit sources of variation in voter choice and reasoning.

The dissertation compiles a series of essays which describes effects of various institutional variations randomized across a sample of 500 villages in Afghanistan in 2007. The first essay examines the institutional effects of the creation of democratically-elected, gender-balanced village development councils across 474 village councils. The creation of councils is found to have no effects on the structure and function of local governance or on how male villagers perceive local governance quality. However, council creation provokes increased local governance activity among paramilitary commanders – who experience broad-based improvements in public perceptions – and improves perceptions of local governance quality among women. The results indicate that externally-imposed de jure reforms do not substantially alter institutional outcomes, but may provoke countervailing responses by political authorities seeking to benefit from the institutional change. The second essay examines the effects of direct democracy on the alignment between public resource allocation decisions and citizen preferences. Using data from 250 villages, the study compares decision outcomes produced by secret-ballot referenda with outcomes produced by public meetings led by an elected village council. The results indicate that while elites do exert influence over outcomes produced by public meetings, their preferences do not determine the outcomes of referenda, which are influenced primarily by citizen preferences. Referenda are also found to improve citizen satisfaction, which is particularly low where elites exert undue influence over outcomes. The third essay examines whether the inclusion of villages in Afghanistan‘s largest development program affects counter-insurgency outcomes, such as individual perceptions of well-being, attitudes towards government, and the occurrence of violent incidents in surrounding areas. The program is found to affect all three measures, but only in areas with low levels of initial violence. The results indicate that development programs can limit the onset of insurgencies in relatively secure areas, but are not effective in improving attitudes to government and reducing violence where insurgents are already active. / Government

This paper seeks to explore why the people of Switzerland have preponderantly voted in favour of a strong military defence despite the reality of Swiss security in the 21st century being dependent on international collaboration outside the military arena. The conundrum is answered by determining the Swiss Federal Council’s strategic narrative regarding security, through examination of its explanatory texts in voting booklets between 1978 and 2020, finding that the matter of armed neutrality is a red thread. Either neutrality is used as justification of an act supported by the Federal Council, or that neutrality would be harmed by popular initiatives the Council does not endorse.

Direct democracy was adopted by states to balance the influence and power of corporate interests. Although corporate money has always been a part of American democracy, dark money expenditures have increased significantly since the Citizens United v. FEC case. Corporate money in elections poses a problem because it inconsistent with the tenants of direct democracy. Little published literature addresses the influence of corporate money on direct democracy measures. Using Kingdon's multiple streams approach as the foundation, the purpose of this case study was to investigate the perceived influence of corporate money on the 2018 ballot initiative and referendum measures in Arizona. The research question was focused on the perceptions of political professionals of the influence of corporate money on direct democracy. Data were collected through using a purposeful sampling that identified 10 political professionals. Semi-structured interviews with participants were supplemented with document review. Data were inductively coded, and then subjected to a thematic analysis procedure, producing 4 thematic elements. The key findings of this study indicated that access to the ballot, using an effective campaign strategy, running an effective paid media campaign, and the outcome all hinged on the money available to fund and support, or oppose, a measure. The implications for social change for the study include informing policy makers of the perceived influence of corporate money on direct democracy so they are equipped to implement policy aligned with the original goal of citizen participation in the state's constitution.