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...

Starting from the 1980s, institutions of direct democracy were introduced into most Latin American constitutions. To date, the practical application of these institutions remains almost exclusively restricted to the subtype of government plebiscites while the use of citizen initiated instruments...

The crisis of representative democracy in Latin America became apparent in a wave of constitutional reforms during the 1990s. A striking feature of these reforms was the incorporation of institutions of direct democracy (IDD) into most post-transitional Latin American constitutions. Despite the...