Popular initiatives
Just as the term suggests, a popular initiative means that citizens themselves are eligible to initiate a referendum. A referendum of this type comes about when one or more people collect a sufficient number of signatures requesting a referendum be held in a specific question.
Institutional initiatives
In most countries, however, referendums are held following an institutional initiative. This may either be statutory or optional. In this context, a statutory referendum means that a referendum must be held on certain issues under the countrys constitution. An optional, facultative initiative comes from an elected assembly (in Sweden the Riksdag, county council or municipal council) from case to case when there is a need to sound out public opinion on a particular issue.
A referendum may be either consultative, which means that it is not binding and leaves those in power free to make a decision contrary to the outcome of the referendum, or decisive which means the outcome is directly binding. In other words, there are several different combinations of referendums. They may either be top-down or bottom-up initiatives, be consultative or binding and, in addition, be organised both nationally and locally.
Advantages and disadvantages of referendums
One of the arguments put forward against referendums is that they tend to simplify complicated problems and reduce them to yes or no answers. Difficulties in formulating the questions and interpreting the outcome are also mentioned. Furthermore, in certain cases they may lead to low turnout and lack of interest, for example when referendums are held often and concern highly technical matters. In these cases, a legitimacy problem arises. It has also been claimed that, by using referendums, decision-making on important issues is left to those with the least political knowledge and experience who are highly likely to be influenced by sudden swings in opinion. An additional problem is that referendums may undermine representative democracy. Furthermore, they give an inadequate picture of the will of the people and offer politicians an opportunity to avoid taking a position on sensitive issues.
On the other hand, those who argue in favour of the use of referendums claim that they strengthen democracy in that citizens may express their opinion directly rather than via politicians interpretation of their views. And referendums give the Riksdag and Government up-to-date knowledge of what citizens want between elections. There are also examples showing that referendums contribute to increasing political interest and make citizens more aware and knowledgeable about political issues. Referendums enable citizens to express an opinion on a specific matter and in this way can give difficult decisions extra legitimacy.
Some are of the view that referendums function as a safety valve when the parties operating in the representative system are excessively divided either internally or among themselves. It may then be difficult for the Government to find a solid basis for dealing with a certain issue and in this situation a solution might be to consult the electorate in a referendum on the issue in question. For the last few decades there has been a trend in Europe to hold referendums prior to key decisions relating to EU cooperation, for example membership of the Union and participation in EMU cooperation.
