ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a historical overview of the use of referendums from the Renaissance through to the First World War. Historically referendums were about self-determination. The first instances of referendums in anything like the present-day form date back to 1527 when the French King Francis one held a plebiscite in Burgundy on whether to transfer the area to the Spanish king in 1527 as he had agreed to in the Treaty of Madrid. The use of the referendum and other forms of direct democracy as an alternative aggregator might also explain the growing use of mechanisms in the United States, where the initiative and the referendum were used to spearhead the "Reagan revolution". Indeed, countries that hitherto have had very few national referendums are now experimenting with referendums at the local level. To understand the apparent change towards a greater use of direct democracy, a bit of historical context might be useful.
