Catholic University

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).