ABSTRACT
Referenda grant legitimacy to individuals, interests, and institutions, and therefore may change the distribution of power between entities, but they may also increase tensions between competing political individuals, interests, and institutions. This chapter argues that referenda in the post-Soviet government reflect a democratization that has been led thus far by a political elite with little direction from the citizenry. On March 17, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, general secretary of the Communist Party and president of the Union, called a referendum on the preservation of the Soviet federal state. The Soviet republics responded in a variety of ways: by boycotting the vote, changing the question, holding counter or dueling referenda, or by simply adding another question to the ballot. The issues that encourage elites to use the referendum, like issues of governance and constitutional matters, will be resolved in a democratically consolidated regime.
