About this Blog
Direct democracy -- the Switzerland-inspired system of initiatives, referenda and recalls that allows voters to make and repeal laws in 24 states -- is poorly understood. It isn’t even very direct. Direct democracy has become blockbuster democracy: a half-billion-dollar international industry of signature gatherers, consultants, and election lawyers who use ballot measures less as a method of making law and more as a tool of mega-communications to boost some politicians, hurt others, and supplement lobbying campaigns.
Blockbuster democracy is a decentralized business that practices wide-open politics. This blog aims to provide a center of news, analysis and conversation for and about the industry. We will report from blockbuster democracy’s capital -- California -- but we’ll monitor ballot measures from across the country and around the globe.
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Uruguay, And A Common Language of Direct Democracy
Among the most interesting people at this global meeting of journalists and academics here in Aarau has been David Altman, a political science professor at Catholic University in Chile. Altman has done the most comprehensive survey work, looking at every use of direct democracy in the world in the period from 1985 to 2005.
Two of his findings stick out. !. Uruguay, not the United States, is the most direct democratic country in the western Hemisphere. For all the activitiy in U.S. states, we don't have a national initiative or referendum. (Though former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel has spent years pushing for just that). Bur Uruguay, despite repeated and dramatic changes in its constitution, has had a durable direct democracy. Altman's paper on this is here.
2. Altman makes a strong case that we need a common, global language for direct democracy. (We don't even have a common language in the American press. (The Washington Post, for reasons only its editors know, insists on using the term referendum -- inaccurately -- to describe ballot initiatives in California and other Western states.) Altman has broken the types of ballot measures into two main categories: plebiscites (ballot measures that come from "above", from rulers) and referendums (ballot measures that come from below, through collections of signatures or other popular methods).
Under plebiscites, he identifies four types: 1 constitutional plebiscites (binding measures required by the constitution), 2 consultive plebiscites (where the rulers ask voters their opinion), 3 binding plebiscites (where the rulers ask but they have to accept the result) and 4 legislative counter-proposal (where rulers put on their own alternative to a true popular referendum.
Under referendums, there are another four types: 1 popular initiatives (that's what we know in California) 2 facultatitve referenda (that's when voters gather signatures to force a vote on whether to approve a legislative action), 3 recall, and 4 consultive initiatives (indirect initiatives, in which voters gather signatures to put an item on the legislative agenda -- but cannot enact it directly).
It's as good a language as I've seen. More from Altman in the future.
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