Citizen Initiative

In the first type, votes can be launched by collecting the necessary number of signatures. The people, or more precisely actors from civil society (Hornig, 2011a; Serdült/Welp, 2012: 82), can choose the content and timing of a vote; in the terminology of Smith a vote uncontrolled by political authorities. For such a mechanism, different terms can be found in the literature: “Popular initiative” (Vatter, 2009: 128; Altman/Sánchez, 2020: 34), “legislative initiative” 

(Qvortrup, 2018: 1), “citizen-initiated referendum” (Moeckli, 2021: 6) or “law initiative” (Hornig, 2011a: 37). This instrument is also labeled as an “active instrument” according to Vatter “because of the active role played by non-governmental actors (e.g., citizens) in launching them” (Vatter, 2009: 128). Similar to International IDEA (2008), we use the term “Citizen initiative” in the Navigator typology, to underline the role of the citizens for timing and content of the vote.