Recent Insights On Direct Democracy Arguments Drivers Pubmed

Leo Migdal

-Dec 6, 2025, 5:15 AM

recent insights on direct democracy arguments drivers pubmed

Rooted in history, with origins tracing back to Athenian democracy in the 5th century BCE, direct democracy has gained renewed attention as a potential solution to the challenges of representative democracy. It is often seen as a means to reduce democratic deficits, enhance citizen participation, and legitimize political decisions. This study reviews recent literature on direct democracy, analyzing 46 articles published between 2016 and 2023 to map key themes and debates. While findings highlight its potential to strengthen participation, empower citizens, and align policies with public preferences, they also emphasize significant risks, including the marginalization of vulnerable groups and susceptibility to elite manipulation. Keywords: ballot initiatives; direct democracy; review; referendum. Direct democracy, where citizens vote directly on laws and policies, has been around since ancient Athens and is now being looked at again as a way to improve how modern democracies work.

Many people believe it can help fix problems like low trust in politicians and lack of citizen involvement. This study looked at 46 recent research papers published between 2016 and 2023 to understand what experts are saying about direct democracy today. The research shows that while direct democracy can increase participation and make government decisions more in line with what people want, it also comes with risks. These include the possibility of powerful groups taking advantage of the system and some groups of people being left out or harmed by the process. Rooted in history, with origins tracing back to Athenian democracy in the 5th century BCE, direct democracy has gained renewed attention as a potential solution to the challenges of representative democracy. It is often seen as a means to reduce democratic deficits, enhance citizen participation, and legitimize political decisions.

This study reviews recent literature on direct democracy, analyzing 46 articles published between 2016 and 2023 to map key themes and debates. While findings highlight its potential to strengthen participation, empower citizens, and align policies with public preferences, they also emphasize significant risks, including the marginalization of vulnerable groups and susceptibility to elite manipulation. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 11, Article number: 1681 (2024) Cite this article This article delves into the evolving landscape of direct democracy, particularly in the context of the digital era, where ICT and digital platforms play a pivotal role in shaping democratic engagement. Through a comprehensive analysis of empirical data and theoretical frameworks, it evaluates the advantages and inherent challenges of direct democracy, such as majority tyranny, short-term focus, polarization, and the spread of misinformation. It proposes the concept of Liquid democracy as a promising hybrid model that combines direct and representative elements, allowing for voting rights delegation to trusted entities, thereby potentially mitigating some of the traditional drawbacks...

Furthermore, the article underscores the necessity for legal regulations and constitutional safeguards to protect fundamental rights and ensure long-term sustainability within a direct democracy framework. This research contributes to the ongoing discourse on democratic innovation and highlights the need for a balanced approach to integrating digital tools with democratic processes. In recent decades, democratic regimes have spread globally. However, this expansion has been accompanied by widespread discontent about how these regimes function, affecting both new and long-established democracies. This dissatisfaction reflects a general loss of public confidence in democratic systems. Although democracy has gained broad acceptance since the collapse of numerous authoritarian and communist regimes, reports of public disillusionment and alienation continue to surface (Ruth et al., 2018).

Supporting this trend, research from the Center for the Future of Democracy indicates that public satisfaction with democracy is currently at an unprecedented low, based on 5 million survey responses collected over 40 years... While most democracies are representative, where citizens elect officials to make decisions on their behalf, institutions like elections and parliaments have faced ongoing criticism and are at the forefront of political science debates. This discontent has sparked interest in alternative forms of democratic governance, such as direct democracy. For instance, Switzerland maintains the most comprehensive system of direct democracy, requiring mandatory referendums for constitutional amendments, citizens’ initiatives, new parliamentary legislation, and major international treaties. Swiss citizens have the power to veto parliamentary laws. In the UK, eight referendums were held between 1997 and 2016, alongside efforts to involve citizens directly in decision-making through mechanisms like citizens’ juries (The Constitution Society, 2021).

Similarly, in the United States, many states and municipalities—including Oregon, California, Colorado, Utah, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and New England—have adopted direct democracy practices, such as citizen initiatives, recall elections, and votes on public finances. Direct democracy, or “pure democracy”, involves the public directly in decision-making. Unlike representative democracy, where elected officials pass laws, direct democracy allows citizens to determine laws and policies themselves (Longley, 2024). It can be implemented through citizen assemblies or referendums, where people vote on specific issues instead of electing representatives or parties. While it is sometimes envisioned as a complete political system, in modern contexts, direct democracy often exists alongside representative institutions as part of a mixed system (Schiller, 2022). Despite its reputation as the purest form of democracy, where citizens directly influence the laws under which they live, bypassing elected politicians to enhance transparency and accountability, direct democracy has several notable drawbacks.

These limitations suggest reasons for caution when considering its implementation. Rooted in history, with origins tracing back to Athenian democracy in the 5th century BCE, direct democracy has gained renewed attention as a potential solution to the challenges of representative democracy. It is often seen as a means to reduce democratic deficits, enhance citizen participation, and legitimize political decisions. This study reviews recent literature on direct democracy, analyzing 46 articles published between 2016 and 2023 to map key themes and debates. While findings highlight its potential to strengthen participation, empower citizens, and align policies with public preferences, they also emphasize significant risks, including the marginalization of vulnerable groups and susceptibility to elite manipulation.,Direct democracy, where... Many people believe it can help fix problems like low trust in politicians and lack of citizen involvement.

This study looked at 46 recent research papers published between 2016 and 2023 to understand what experts are saying about direct democracy today. The research shows that while direct democracy can increase participation and make government decisions more in line with what people want, it also comes with risks. These include the possibility of powerful groups taking advantage of the system and some groups of people being left out or harmed by the process. Şimşek, C., Limão, J., Campos, I., Fuchs, D., & Schlipphak, B. (2025). Recent insights on direct democracy: Arguments, drivers, effects and conditions.

Open research Europe, 5: 171. doi:10.12688/openreseurope.20444.1. Our research integrity and auditing teams lead the rigorous process that protects the quality of the scientific record Background: Over the past decade, a number of American states have legalized marijuana for recreational use. There are various state level factors that impact policy adoption. This study investigates whether and how these factors have contributed to higher likelihoods of adopting recreational marijuana legalization.

Data and methods: Drawing on longitudinal data from 2012 to 2019 for 49 U.S. states, this study assesses the impacts of political and economic contexts, public opinion, policy history, demand, and ideological and spatial diffusion on the likelihood of marijuana legalization. This study also introduces a novel measure - the level of direct democracy - to capture variability in the use of direct democratic processes, and assesses its effect on legalization. Cox proportional hazard regression models were used to estimate the effect of these factors on the probability of legalization. Results: Net of political and economic contexts, amenable contexts for marijuana, and diffusion, states with higher levels of direct democracy - where voters can more easily initiate policy change by way of initiatives and... Conclusion: The level of direct democracy is relevant for understanding policy adoption.

In the case of marijuana legalization, a state's degree of direct democracy can signal the state's openness to progressive policy change. Scholars should consider how direct democracy interacts with contextual factors to impact stages of the policy change process. Keywords: Ballot initiatives; Cannabis/marijuana; Diffusion; Direct democracy; Legalization; Policy.

Recent Insights On Direct Democracy Arguments Drivers Pubmed

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