ABSTRACT
Since 1989 seven nation-wide referendums have been held in Hungary. However, the function of direct democracy remained unclear. It is by no means insignificant, but its use is confronted with two major challenges: Hungary’s political system is extremely majoritarian and predominantly representative. The conceptional and practical flaws limit the interaction between the representative and direct-democratic system, thereby restricting the development of more deliberative forms of politics. The paper will give an overview on the practice of direct democracy and will show how the ruling elites use direct-democratic instruments to gain political dominance. It also wants to contribute to the clarification of the role of direct democracy within a representative political system on a theoretical level and to help to better understand functional changes of direct democracy in the process of hybridisation. In terms of methodology, this paper represents a theory-led cross-section through Hungary’s democratic history.
