Prethodno priopćenje
Local Political Participation in Europe: Elections and Referendums
Norbert Kersting
; Insitut za političke znanosti, Sveučilište u Muensteru, Njemačka
Sažetak
Political protests are growing in emerging and established emocracies. Since the 1970s, the demand for political participation has become obvious. The 1990s saw more open dialogue-oriented participatory instruments, which began to be implemented in some countries (‘century of participation’). The proliferation of participatory instruments in the field of talk centric deliberative democracies has been called the ‘deliberative turn’ (Dryzek, 2002). A new push is also attributed to the open government data, the movement initiated by the US President Obama’s government when it set up its open government data initiative in 2009. These include online and offline participation (Kersting, 2013). It is a practice that most new instruments of participation are implemented at the local level. It is frequently argued that these deliberative forums do not lead to binding decisions. However, compared to elections, the number of citizens participating is rather small and selective. New forms of vote-centric direct democracy such as referenda and other initiatives are implemented in some countries. The paper presents a model of offline and online participation. The focus will be on representative and direct democratic participation. Participation in elections and proliferation of referenda and initiatives will be analysed. Participation in these spheres of numeric democracy can lead to binding decisions. Legal frameworks of different European countries is presented and compared. Is the turnout at the local level small and declining? Who is included and who is excluded? In the empirical part, the article predominantly uses the analyses of the latest survey data from representative comparative opinion polls such as the World Value
Survey (WVS).
Ključne riječi
participation; Internet; referendum; elections; local government
Hrčak ID:
142714
URI
Datum izdavanja:
28.6.2015.
Posjeta: 1.542 *