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Law General

The Limits and Legitimacy of Referendums

edited by Richard Albert & Richard Stacey

Publisher
Oxford University Press
Initial publish date
Jun 2022
Category
General
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780198867647
    Publish Date
    Jun 2022
    List Price
    $165.00

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Description

The possibility of democracy-enhancing uses and anti-democratic abuses of referendums reveals a paradox: mechanisms of democracy can be exploited to do violence to the basic principles of democracy. The Limits and Legitimacy of Referendums seeks to identify standards we might use to assess the democratic legitimacy of a referendum when we cannot rely on the norms of traditional liberal democracy.

This innovative book explores how referendums manage the tension between liberalism and democracy, and whether this device holds promise for reconciling these two commitments. A range of scholars from around the world expose how referendums may be abused on one hand to achieve short-term political or even personal gains, and how, on the other, they may aspire to reflect the best traditions of deliberative, innovative, democracy-enhancing popular decision-making.

Structured around three big questions, this book seeks to identify what makes a referendum legitimate. First, why have referendums on issues of fundamental political importance become so frequent around the world? Second, who are - or who should be - the people that make decisions about a political community's future? And third, are referendums an effective and reliable mechanism of popular sovereignty or democratic choice?

These essays - written for scholars, public lawyers, political actors and citizens - bring together diverse perspectives on referendums, constitutionalism, liberalism and democracy in ways that challenge the conventional wisdom, prompt new answers to enduring questions, and urge reconsideration of how we evaluate the legitimacy of referendums.

About the authors

Richard Albert is Professor of Law at The University of Texas at Austin and, in 2017-18, Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto.

Richard Albert's profile page

Richard Stacey's profile page

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