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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. 

The Citizen Initiative in our typology

Citizen Initiatives world-wide

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