Since 1997, the UK constitution has undergone a transformation. This has since become a rolling process which shows little sign of abating. However, some of this constitutional change has been criticised for being rushed, piecemeal and with little consideration of the broader constitution. Yet, despite these criticisms, the underlying methodology of constitutional change has not been discussed in any great detail. This thesis, focusing on formal constitutional change, argues that the methodology to deliver that change should be enhanced to address these concerns. After establishing the limits of formal constitutional change, this thesis then considers how constitutional issues are approached within government and suggests that a Department of Legal Affairs would improve the preparation of proposed changes before being presented to Parliament. The politics of constitutional change are then analysed, with a particular focus on the process of coalition negotiations, which has become a new part of the methodology. The parliamentary process is considered by analysing the parliamentary passage of what became the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 and the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006. Recent changes to parliamentary procedure have allowed Parliament to scrutinise constitutional legislation more effectively, although there are still areas for significant improvement, particularly during the Committee Stage in the House of Commons. The thesis then considers the role of referendums and establishes when a referendum is required either as a matter of law or convention. The thesis then shows how procedural innovations such as the constitutional conventions in Australia and Ireland or the citizens’ assemblies in British Columbia and Ontario could be used in the UK. Also, as any recommendations of a constitutional convention or a citizens’ assembly are usually put to the rest of the electorate at a referendum, the links between a convention or assembly and the referendum process are discussed. Taken together, these enhancements to discrete aspects of the methodology of constitutional change should ensure that changes are more considered and allow for a more a stable constitutional settlement.

The diploma thesis Local Referendum in the European Area offers a comprehensive overview of the legal regulation of the institute of local referendum in individual European countries. In four parts devoted to Central, Southern, Western and Northern Europe, it introduces the regulation of this institute in the local legal systems and compares individual solutions not only with the Czech regulation, but across all European states. It deals in detail with individual aspects of the local referendum, including its announcement, binding force and the possibility of a popular initiative.

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This thesis deals with the essential aspects of the local referendum as a widely used complement of representative democracy and with the particular forms it appears in the Czech and Slovenian legal orders. The main objectives of this thesis are following: describing Czech and Slovenian legal regulations concerning the local referendum in detail, exploring certain areas of its practical use and finally concluding whether there is any significant difference in the way these two countries, that share similar experience historically and of the recent years too, approach direct democracy and the institute of the local referendum in particular. The body of the thesis is made up of nine chapters. In the first chapter Introduction I clarify what led me to focus on the respective issues. The second chapter Idea of Direct Democracy tackles the origins and the essence of direct democracy, its potential to be used in the modern world and also briefly describes those institutes of direct democracy that are used in the Czech and Slovenian practice. The third chapter Referendum in general classifies individual types of referendums. In the fourth chapter Local referendum in the Czech Republic, we can find an exhaustive description of the Czech legal regulation of the local referendum, analysis of the data...

Politics today is facing a troubling trend towards the empowerment of nationalist movements. With strong historical traditions and a powerful Scottish National Party, Scotland would appear to be a prime candidate for such movements. However, this thesis argues that Scotland represents a nation with a unique civic culture. This thesis seeks to determine which elements of Scottish political and cultural history have led to its modern day civic culture, in the form of a civic nationalism, or patriotism. It asks: why is Scottish nationalism unique, and why does it matter? To answer, I have broken down the thesis into three main chapters that consider the theories of nationalism that are significant to the study of Scottish nationalism, the foundations of Scottish nationalism, and how Scottish nationalism manifests itself in civic contexts. The results reflect that Scottish civic culture deeply permeates the nation's politics. Even when given the opportunity for independence, Scotland chose to remain a part of the United Kingdom in order to maintain its interests with the European Union. And, while political cultures are subject to rapid change, the current state of Scottish culture reflects a civic manifestation. / Master of Arts

Diss. Univ. Bern, 1999. / Buchhandelsausg. der Diss. Bern, 1999. Bibliogr.

The subject of the thesis is the Czech Republic parliamentary debate about a national referendum spanning from 1989 to 2014. It is mapping the evolution of the debates on the base of stenographic protocols from the proceedings concerning national referendum bill, as discussed by Chamber of deputies of the Czech Republic. The theoretical part of the thesis is based on current debates about direct democracy. The metodological part of the thesis is using concepts and terminology of the discoursive approach of R. Wodak. Based on this approach, the analysis of the debates is focusing on the main discoursive elements, those are, context framing, inter - discoursive relations, the main issues of the debates, reasoning and identification of the participants. The second level analysis is putting the debates about national referendum into the the context with contemporary debates about direct democracy. In the last part of the thesis the results of the analysis are discussed.

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The Peace referendum of 2016 was an attempt by the Colombian government under president Juan Manuel Santos to seek popular ratification for the newly signed peace agreement with left-wing guerilla group FARC, after more than half a decade of hostilities. When the ballots closed, however, it was with a record high abstention, and a small majority of votes for the No-side. Despite enjoying a decrease of violence and being in the national and international spotlight, conflict areas displayed a particularly high abstention - largely missing from the ballots were the victims of the conflict themselves. Through a mixed method approach, this field study inquires into the potential role enduring effects of violence played, building on Ojeda’s psychological theories of political participation and the substantial scholarly body on mental health outcomes of violence. Challenging the dominating theory of contemporary violence as the cause for abstention, it finds support for an enduring impact of past violence on political participation on an aggregated level. This is partly contradicted by the answers given by inhabitants of Colombian municipalities Valdivia and El Retiro, where interviews and surveys were conducted in the winter of 2018. Nonetheless, the answers of the residents provide important and noteworthy implications, as the effects of violence appear to transform depending on the milieu in which its victims are situated.

Voters are getting information from more and more sources. Along with this proliferation of sources has come an increasing distrust of traditional mass media. This has created a challenge for voters who seek reliable information when making decisions in the voting booth; including on ballot initiatives. Because voters tend to find ballot initiatives confusing and not easily informed by traditional party cues, the Citizen's Initiative Review (CIR) and the non-partisan, fact-based recommendations they produce have now spread into multiple states. This thesis seeks to gauge whether the CIR is effective at achieving the goals of increasing voter knowledge and encouraging thoughtful voting decisions; two challenges posed by ballot initiatives. I evaluate the available literature on how voters make decisions in general and about ballot initiatives specifically and then review data from five studies conducted in states with a CIR to determine whether the CIR has met these goals. Where other reports have evaluated findings from individual studies or states, my report takes a comprehensive view of the available data and compares it to what traditional political science literature has to say about voter behavior related to ballot initiatives. On balance, I find that voters see the CIR as providing useful and informative recommendations that have legitimate positive impacts on how they deliberate and vote on ballot initiatives.