Direct democracy and political participation from a cross-national perspective

In recent decades, there has been a worldwide increase in the number of referendums (LeDuc 2003: 21). However, it would be premature to envisage this development as a move towards a more participatory democracy or as an increase in the quality of democracy in general. In most states where referendums were submitted to a vote on a national level, they were initiated by the political majority on issues and at a time politically opportune for that majority. The referendum thus served as a plebiscite (Moeckli 2003).