La utilidad del referéndum como acicate y contrapeso en las democracias representativas

Abstract

The use of referendums has grown exponentially in recent years in comparative law and has become widespread at all levels of government, not only where it was already normalised as a usual channel for political participation, but also where it had previously solely been used to answer questions of great importance. This has shown that referendums can complement representative democracy, by enhancing its repre-sentativeness and acting as a counterbalance. However, it has also shown that not all referendums enrich democracy: it depends upon who is asking, what they are asking about and under what conditions the campaign is debated. In short, it depends on its guarantees. In this paper I analyse the functionality of several types of referendum and the principal guarantees that can be implemented to make them compatible with representative democracy, especially the expansion of people with the legal authority to lobby for their calling, the exclusion of certain issues in referendums and the requirements for a quorum or for a qualified majority for the result to be recognised as valid.