SEOUL -- Back home in California, those who want to change the initiative process suggest re-introducing the so-called indirect initiative. Each ballot initiative would be presented to the legislature for action--more like a petition than a full-scale initiative that circumvents the legislature entirely and goes right to the ballot.

In the rest of the world, such indirect initiatives are called "agenda" initiatives -- because they put a particular subject on the agenda. Whether such agenda initiatives are a useful tool, or a waste of time, has been a subject of debate throughout this week's global forum on direct democracy here.

Some European delegates are talking up the agenda initiative that is part of the proposed new European Union constitution, as embodied in the Lisbon Treaty. If the treaty is approved next month by voters in Ireland (the only EU country to mandate a vote of the people on the treaty), Voters around Europe will be able to gather signatures on agenda initiatives that are then presented to European government for hearing and up-or-down vote. But this new initiative--the first transnational initiative-does not permit voters to put such an initiative on a continent-wide ballot.

But there's been widespread skepticism about the usefulness of agenda initiatives. In European and Asian countries with such measures, the initiatives have rarely resulted in changes in the law. A North American delegate suggested that it would merely provide another avenue for politicians to blunt the will of the people. And while the EU initiative could be groundbreaking, delegates at a workshop I attended Tuesday morning said that its primary value would be as a first step to future rules that would guarantee more democracy and more citizen participation in EU decisions.

“This is not nothing," Initiative & Referendum Institute president Bruno Kaufmann said this morning. "it’s an instrument that is fairly weak. But it’s far more than what they have in many member states.”