The Use of Government-Initiated Referendums in Latin America: Towards a Theory of Referendum Causes

Over the past two decades there has been a considerable increase in the number of referendums worldwide. The existing literature on direct democracy has so far failed to explain this phenomenon by delivering a consistent theory on the causes of referendums. This explorative study aims at undertaking...

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Autor principal:	BREUER,ANITA
Lenguaje:	English
Publicado:	Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Instituto de Ciencia Política 2009
Materias:	Referendums Latin America Fragmentation Direct Democracy
Acceso en línea:	http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0718-090X2009000100002
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spelling	oai:scielo:S0718-090X20090001000022009-09-08The Use of Government-Initiated Referendums in Latin America: Towards a Theory of Referendum CausesBREUER,ANITA Referendums Latin America Fragmentation Direct Democracy Over the past two decades there has been a considerable increase in the number of referendums worldwide. The existing literature on direct democracy has so far failed to explain this phenomenon by delivering a consistent theory on the causes of referendums. This explorative study aims at undertaking steps toward closing this gap by focusing on the specific type of facultative government-initiated referendums (FGIR) and their use in presidential systems. Using QC A (a case-sensitive technique based on the formal logic of Boolean algebra), this study systematically compares the political opportunity structures of 49 presidential systems from 12 Latin American countries to detect the factors that spurred or obstructed the occurrence of FGIR. It concludes that FGIR are closely linked to high levels of party system fragmentation and divided government, i.e. two factors which have long been deemed problematic in the context of presidential systems, while their obstruction is mainly owed to the specific constitutional provisions regulating the referendum device.info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessPontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Instituto de Ciencia PolíticaRevista de ciencia política (Santiago) v.29 n.1 20092009-01-01text/htmlhttp://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0718-090X2009000100002en10.4067/S0718-090X2009000100002
institution	Scielo Chile
collection	Scielo Chile
language	English
topic	Referendums Latin America Fragmentation Direct Democracy
spellingShingle	Referendums Latin America Fragmentation Direct Democracy BREUER,ANITA The Use of Government-Initiated Referendums in Latin America: Towards a Theory of Referendum Causes
description	Over the past two decades there has been a considerable increase in the number of referendums worldwide. The existing literature on direct democracy has so far failed to explain this phenomenon by delivering a consistent theory on the causes of referendums. This explorative study aims at undertaking steps toward closing this gap by focusing on the specific type of facultative government-initiated referendums (FGIR) and their use in presidential systems. Using QC A (a case-sensitive technique based on the formal logic of Boolean algebra), this study systematically compares the political opportunity structures of 49 presidential systems from 12 Latin American countries to detect the factors that spurred or obstructed the occurrence of FGIR. It concludes that FGIR are closely linked to high levels of party system fragmentation and divided government, i.e. two factors which have long been deemed problematic in the context of presidential systems, while their obstruction is mainly owed to the specific constitutional provisions regulating the referendum device.
author	BREUER,ANITA
author_facet	BREUER,ANITA
author_sort	BREUER,ANITA
title	The Use of Government-Initiated Referendums in Latin America: Towards a Theory of Referendum Causes
title_short	The Use of Government-Initiated Referendums in Latin America: Towards a Theory of Referendum Causes
title_full	The Use of Government-Initiated Referendums in Latin America: Towards a Theory of Referendum Causes
title_fullStr	The Use of Government-Initiated Referendums in Latin America: Towards a Theory of Referendum Causes
title_full_unstemmed	The Use of Government-Initiated Referendums in Latin America: Towards a Theory of Referendum Causes
title_sort	use of government-initiated referendums in latin america: towards a theory of referendum causes
publisher	Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Instituto de Ciencia Política
publishDate	2009
url	http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0718-090X2009000100002
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The Use of Government-Initiated Referendums in Latin America: Towards a Theory of Referendum Causes

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