Post on 28-Feb-2020
DIRECT DEMOCRACY AND REGIME LEGITIMACY IN EUROPE
Sergiu Gherghina
Institute of Political Science
Goethe University Frankfurt
gherghina@soz.uni-frankfurt.de
Paper prepared for presentation at the ECPR Joint Session of Workshops
10-15 April 2014, Salamanca
Workshop: “Regime Legitimisation through Institutional Reform:
Analysing its Dimensions and Effectiveness”
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Introduction
In the last two decades an increasing body of literature discusses the disaffection of
citizens with representative democracy. The existence of several problems in the process
of political representation led to a gradual abandon of the traditional modes of
involvement (e.g. electoral turnout, party membership). One solution to address this
“democratic malaise” has been the adoption of direct democracy procedures through
which citizens receive a direct say in political decision-making (Scarrow 2001; Smith 2009;
Geissel & Newton 2012). A different strand of literature emphasizes the decrease of
regime legitimacy across the world. The recent street protests in Eastern Europe are only
one indication of citizens’ attitudes and behaviors towards state authorities. While earlier
studies have focused on the causes and consequences of direct democracy and regime
legitimacy, little attention has been paid to the relationship between them.
This paper tries to fill this empirical void and aims to identify a relationship
between legislative provisions and use of direct democracy, on one hand, and regime
legitimacy, on the other hand. The cross-national analysis includes 39 European countries
ranging from transition countries to established democracies. It uses bivariate statistical
analysis and country-level data collected from legislation, secondary sources, and
aggregate surveys. The central argument of my exploratory study is that possibilities for
public’s direct involvement reflect high importance given to citizens, openness of the
regime towards different ways of making decisions and ways to avoid unpopular
institutions such as parties or the legislature. As a consequence of these benefits, citizens
are likely to accept and support the regime, improving or maintaining its legitimacy.
The first section reviews the existing approaches to legitimacy and outlines the
conceptualization and measurement used in this study. This is followed by a discussion
about direct democracy, its forms, and expectations regarding its relationship with
legitimacy. The third section presents the variable operationalization, data and research
method. The next section presents and interprets the empirical results of the analysis,
while the conclusions discuss potential implications and avenues for further research.
Conceptualizing and Measuring Regime Legitimacy
Starting with Weber’s distinction between authority and coercion, the concept of
legitimacy has become central to a broad array of political analyses because it pertains to
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how power may be used by state institutions and what are citizens’ reactions to it. In
defining authority Weber (1978) refers to the legitimate use of power that citizens accept
and act upon orders given to them because they consider this to be appropriate
behaviors. Legitimacy can be defined in a broad sense as “the capacity of a political
system to engender and maintain the belief that existing institutions are the most
appropriate or proper ones for the society” (Lipset 1959, p.86). Following this line of
argument, Beetham (1991) defines legitimacy as a sum of three components: conformity
to established rules, justifiability of the rules by reference to shared beliefs, and the
expressed consent of the people.
These definitions point in the direction of two distinct approaches towards
legitimacy. The names of these perspectives vary across studies but they have similar
meanings. On one hand, there is the system level, normative or input-based legitimacy
relating to the working principles and functioning of state institutions with emphasis on
decision-making and exercise of power. On the other hand, we have a grassroots
subjective, descriptive, or output-based legitimacy referring to the public assessment of
the relevance and quality of institutional performance. According to the system level
perspective state institutions must be inclusive, responsive, efficient and fair in order to
be legitimate (Weatherford 1992). These attributes enhance high quality of governance
that, in turn, contributes to their acceptance by the population, i.e. comply with the rules
of society because they believe they should. This approach corresponds to what Blatter
(2007) calls normative legitimacy concerned with the extent to which political realities
comply with ideal settings about how state institutions should be. Since democratic
systems are the only ones in which institutions have such properties, liberal democracy is
considered the norm for political legitimacy. However, the latter is a matter of degree
rather than all or nothing concept (Beetham 1991) and earlier research showed that all
types of political regimes sought legitimacy (Englebert 2002; Gandhi 2008; Gilley 2009;
Levitsky & Way 2010).
On the other hand, legitimacy can be seen from the citizens’ point of view: a
regime is legitimate as long as the population perceives it as such. In the words of
Beetham, state institutions’ conformity to rules has no effect if citizens do not believe
those rules are legitimate. If they are not justified in the terms of shared beliefs, the
population is likely to reject institutions and withdraw its support to be ruled. In brief, this
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type of legitimacy is evaluative in that citizens decide if political institutions are
acceptable (Diamond 1999; Hurrelmann et al. 2007). These value-based judgments of
obeying state institutions are then translated into behaviors of compliance with laws and
regulations (Gibson & Caldeira 2003; Estlund 2009; Levi et al. 2009). This descriptive
approach (Blatter 2007) towards legitimacy substantively covers the subject (population),
object (state institutions), and the relationship between the two (attitudes and behaviors
as effects of institutional features). In light of these conceptual advantages, this paper
uses the subjective perspective and defines regime legitimacy as citizen evaluations of
the state institutions’ ability to rightfully hold and exercise political power. Essentially, it
refers to the degree of popular acceptance, consent and support of a specific system of
governance.
The use of the descriptive definition does not ignore its complementarity with the
normative approach towards legitimacy (Norris 1999; Levi et al. 2009). On the contrary,
citizens’ evaluations have – at least to some extent – a normative component in that they
compare what institutions are with what they should be according to their views. Thus,
legitimacy is not only the reflection of willing obedience in front of authorities (Tyler
2006) but pertains also to the development and maintenance of supportive attitudes
towards the regime. This idea according to which output-based (subjective) legitimacy
cannot be achieved without input-based legitimacy lies at the core of my theoretical
argument from the following section.
With regard to operationalization, the use of a descriptive conceptualization
brings legitimacy quite close to notions such as political support or trust. Easton (1965,
p.278) explains that “legitimacy is a distinct form of political support that concerns
evaluations of the state from a public or ‘common good’ perspective”. This means that
citizens have the ability to identify their common interests and develop standards to
assess the performance of state institutions with regard to those interests. The degrees
to which citizens’ standards are achieved determine the degrees of legitimacy. This
complex process cuts across the forms of support for state institutions and elites
(specific) or for political community and regime (diffuse). Institutional trust is a useful
concept but too narrow to make it an equivalent of legitimacy. Earlier studies have shown
that trust is usually an assessment of authorities’ performance and/or competence
(Rothstein 2005) or a belief that institutions are motivated to rightfully and fairly deliver
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what they promise (Levi et al. 2009). People are likely to support those state institutions
producing the goods and services expected of them. In addition, legitimacy refers to the
acceptance of general norms and principles of the political system. This is where the
notion of diffuse support, conceptualized as an established set of attitudes toward
politics and its functioning, comes into play (Dalton 2004).
The combination of these two types of political support leads to a multi-
dimensional structure of legitimacy. Gilley (2006b) has partly followed this path and
measured legitimacy through three components referring to citizens’ views and
acceptance of government legality, justification of the government, and consent to the
government. In this case, the multi-dimensionality refers to the types of attitudes. While
the three indicators are useful, the main shortcoming of his approach is the absence of
regime-oriented attitudes. His operationalization brings legitimacy to close to the array of
specific support. While his choice is understandable given the large number of analyzed
countries – where only few common indicators were available – it is less justifiable from a
theoretical perspective.
Booth and Seligson (2009) have solved this problem by looking at attitudes at a
second layer, i.e. the political system. Their measurement of legitimacy used six
dimensions: support for core regime principles, recognition of a political community,
evaluation of regime performance, support for political institutions, support for local
government, and support for political elites. Among these indicators, the support for
local government is not more than a proxy for legitimacy in the European context.1 This
type of support is embedded in broader attitudes towards core regime principles or
political institutions. Most European countries have effective local government for more
than half a century. Arguably, attitudes towards political elites are reflected in the
evaluation of regime performance or in the support for political institutions.
In measuring legitimacy this paper follows Booth and Seligson’s methodology
after applying the above mentioned modifications, i.e. the removal of two indicators.
Consequently, legitimacy is seen as a function of four types of attitudes: 1) acceptance of
core regime principles; 2) evaluation of regime performance; 3) support for political
1 Booth and Seligson conducted their research in Latin America and the political context may requiredifferent measurement. This is why my criticism should be regarded mostly in the framework of theEuropean analysis from this paper.
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institutions and 4) support for institutions of authority. While details about
operationalization will be provided in the research design section, it is now time to
discuss about direct democracy as a potential source of regime legitimacy in Europe.
Direct Democracy and Regime Legitimacy
By direct democracy this paper understands four broad types: referendums (including
plebiscites), citizens’ initiatives, agenda initiatives, and recall. Under referendum the
public votes on a proposal put on the ballot by the state institutions (government,
legislature, president) or by themselves in those countries where citizen-initiated
referendums are possible. The citizens’ initiative refers to proposals submitted by citizens
to the legislature; if the latter does not act on the proposal the initiative may be
submitted to popular vote (referendum) alone or with a competing measure proposed by
state authorities. Agenda initiatives bypass the Parliament and citizens make a legislative
proposal on which they vote after circulating a petition. The recall procedure means that
citizens vote to remove from office a representative either at local or national level. One
way to decrease the disaffection with representative democracy is to provide citizens
these alternative opportunities for political involvement. In this sense, representative
mechanisms are not replaced but rather complemented by different means of political
engagement. In reality, not even in the small-size countries, we observe no pure forms of
direct democracy. Instead, there are different degrees to which representative and direct
democracy are. Accordingly, the arguments in the following lines refer to how increased
presence of direct democracy affects legitimacy.
The message conveyed in the previous section is that regime legitimacy depends
upon the popular acceptance of institutional procedures, behaviors, and outcomes. If the
public suspects the decision-making process in their country to be corrupted, legitimacy
suffers. If citizens consider that the degree of their influence over policy-making is low,
legitimacy is likely to be also low. In representative democracies elections are the crucial
mechanism that guarantees citizens’ involvement. However, elections rarely provide
effective opportunities for citizens to influence policy-making (Budge 1996). Elections
allow citizens to choose between several intermediaries who promise to aggregate and
represent their interests. Essentially, they are contests between political competitors –
parties or candidates – with general promises, often fairly similar, that are seldom
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pursued after elections. Moreover, even when choices between competitors are
meaningful electoral results do not always reflect the popular will, being artificially
influenced by the rules of the game, i.e. electoral systems (Knight & Johnson 1994). As a
result, it is not surprising that there is growing public dissatisfaction with the system of
representative democracy (Norris 1999; Gray & Caul 2000; Pharr et al. 2000; Dalton 2004)
and citizens have become impatient with intermediaries between their opinions and
public policies (Morris 1999).
Direct democracy can compensate for these shortcomings and link citizens’
preferences to political decisions. To begin with, direct democracy can accommodate the
demands of an increasingly educated public. Over the last five decades the changing
social trends have fostered the development of a large category of critical citizens (Norris
1999; Newton & Norris 2000; Dalton 2004; Geissel & Newton 2012). This category rejects
the guidance of representative institutions and criticizes them either for deficiencies in
delivering the expected goods and services or for their redundant tasks. Let us take an
example to illustrate this perceived redundancy. Politics consists of complex and
sophisticated processes and the choice among initial alternatives is not often accessible
to ordinary voters. In this context, political parties simplify choices and generate symbols
of identification and loyalty (Borre & Katz 1973; Rosenstone & Hansen 1993; Dalton &
Wattenberg 2000). Educated voters do not need the simplification of initial alternatives,
while the rest of voters often figure out how to vote on issues of interest to them
(Nicholson 2005). Consequently, the possibility to express non-mediated preferences
allows voters to feel satisfied regarding their deeper involvement in decision-making.
Related to the previous argument, if representative institutions do not live up to
the public expectations of democratic citizenship (Pateman 1970; Budge 1996), direct
democracy may alter the degree of discontent by favoring the emergence of a (partial)
system of self-government. The latter allows the pursuit of interests and preferences that
may be (for various reasons) squeezed out of representative politics. One possible
consequence is a better and more responsible decision-making process from both
representative institutions – that will feel the pressure of alternative policy-making – and
citizens who will have no one to blame for poor decisions. In brief, the openness of the
regime towards direct democracy tools is likely to boost popular evaluations of
legitimacy.
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Furthermore, representative democracy has been considered too hierarchical,
bureaucratic and partisan to be able to deal effectively with questions of popular
sovereignty or social exclusion. For example, some voters see their preferences discarded
when the parties for which they voted are not large enough to participate in policy-
making, i.e. fail to gain access to Parliament. The disappointment may end up in exclusion
from participation in the next elections. Direct democracy tools reduce the likelihood of
such situations by allowing citizens to express their preferences although they may be in
minority, e.g. through initiatives. Contrary to the case of elections presented above,
direct participation leads to cohesive society with limited exclusion (Barnes 1999).
On a pragmatic note, the use of direct democracy tools can enhance the popular
involvement in representative mechanisms. For example, the organization of a
referendum – on a sensitive or salient issue in society – at the same time with a candidate
race is likely to attract more people to the polls compared to regular elections. This
particular setting can diminish voter apathy because it combines two ways of policy
influence. Moreover, candidates can take stances on the matter debated in the
referendum and thus determine particular segments of the electorate to turn out and
vote for them.
All these arguments suggest that there are theoretical reasons to believe that
direct democracy tools can shape regime legitimacy in a country. Consequently, I
formulate three hypotheses that are tested in the empirical section of this paper:
H1: The existence of many direct democracy tools at national level is associated with high
regime legitimacy.
H2: The existence of many direct democracy tools at local level is associated with high
regime legitimacy.
H3: The extensive use of referendums at national level is associated with high regime
legitimacy.
The hypotheses refer to direct democracy at two different levels and cover both their
existence in the legislation and practical use. This approach is driven by theoretical and
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empirical reasons. First, local level direct democracy tools are expected to have a
separate effect on legitimacy than the tools at national level because citizens behave
differently. They are concerned about problems in their community and know that direct
involvement in the decision-making process can bring change. At national level, only
salient issues attract the interest of citizens who are also aware that their involvement
has marginal influence due to the high number of voters. Moreover, as it will be
illustrated in the empirical section, some countries adopted local direct democracy in the
absence of such tools at national level (e.g. Belgium, Germany). Corollary, some countries
have national level direct democracy and are less concerned with what happens at local
level.
Second, H3 looks only at the use of national level referendums due to
quantification reasons. Referendums are organized either because they are a) mandatory
as it is the case with EU accession or constitutional changes in some countries, b) initiated
by state institutions (parliamentary majority, president) or c) initiated by citizens. They
are always organized and both successful and unsuccessful outcomes matter. Unlike
referendums, the other three types - citizen initiative, agenda initiative and recall – are
difficult to count. In their case, we can take into consideration only the successful
outcomes, e.g. when a citizens’ initiative is subjected to vote. None of the unsuccessful
attempt can be counted and this introduces bias. At the same time, local level
referendums are too numerous to count and there is no reliable information on their
numbers across countries and time.
The hypothesis testing will refer to the division between Western and Eastern
Europe. This is relevant mainly from the perspectives of democratic consolidation and
experience with democracy. Thus, in addition to the identification of relationships for all
39 countries, variations within the two regions will be also analyzed.
Research Design
The analysis is conducted at country level for a total number of 39 European countries.
This universe of cases resulted after excluding the authoritarian regimes2 (e.g. Azerbaijan,
2 The linkage between direct democracy and regime legitimacy requires the existence of basic rights andliberties such as freedom of expression and involvement. This is the reason for which I included in my studyonly democracies or democratizing countries.
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Belarus), countries with different rules for segments of population (Bosnia and
Herzegovina), and cases for which (reliable) data were not available (e.g. Andorra,
Cyprus, Israel, Liechtenstein, Turkey). There is a geographical balance between Western
and Eastern Europe (19 vs. 20 cases) and countries of various sizes are included (Germany
and the UK at one extreme and Iceland and Luxembourg at the other).
Variable operationalization
One crucial variable of this study is regime legitimacy. Being about citizens’ evaluations of
the attributes of their political system, survey data can best capture it. I use data from the
4th wave of the European Values Study (2008). This survey is not randomly picked, being
from the last year before the financial crisis: the crisis is likely to influence regime
legitimacy especially that income levels (GDP/capita) are almost deterministic (Gilley
2006a). While survey data is collected at individual level, the aggregation at country level
required several steps that are briefly explained below. As explained at the end of the
section about conceptualization and measurement, regime legitimacy includes four types
of attitudes; for each of them I use two indicators. The acceptance of core regime
principles – basic rules of democracy – is operationalized as the rejection of a strong
leader who does not need the legislature to rule and the rejection of army rule. The
evaluation of regime performance uses two indicators: satisfaction with democracy and
an assessment of how good or bad the current government is. The support for political
institutions is measured as citizens’ support for parliament and government.3 The support
for institutions of authority is measured as people’s support for police and justice system.
Most of these eight indicators (two for every type of attitudes) were measured in
the survey on a four-point scale to capture the degree of support and acceptance. To
aggregate them, I recoded each dichotomously to have value 0 for no acceptance, no
support, or negative assessment and 1 for acceptance, support, or positive evaluation
(see Appendix 1). The next step was the creation of an index of legitimacy that included
the eight indicators, equally weighed (minimum value of 0 and a maximum value of 8).
Each respondent from the 39 analyzed countries had a score on this nine-point index. To
3 In theory, the support for government and the assessment of the government (good or bad) are differentevaluations. The low correlation coefficient between the two (0.39) shows that this is empirically the casein the used dataset.
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measure legitimacy at country level, I took the average score of individuals in the same
country. The standard deviations of the averages are fairly similar and therefore it is not
necessary to standardize them. As a supplementary check, I have checked the correlation
between these averages and the lowest quartile of the index at country level. The
correlation coefficient is higher than 0.93, statistically significant at 0.01. Table 1 reflects
the distribution of average legitimacy between countries with a range between 2.19 in
Bulgaria and 6.2 in Denmark; the vertical axis presents the values of the country level
index.
Table 1: The Levels of Regime Legitimacy at Country Level
The first two hypotheses speak about the existence of direct democracy tools at national
and local levels. These refer to mentions in the legislation about referendums (mandatory
and optional type), citizens’ initiative, agenda initiative, and recall. Both variables are
count measures and they represent the sum of these types. For example, if a country
specifies in its legislation all direct democracy tools at national level it gets a score of 5
(referendum has two versions); the same applies at local level. Most data comes from the
Direct Democracy Database available on the website of International Institute for
Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA). For the countries that are not included in the
IDEA Database (e.g. Armenia) I gathered data from either primary (legislation) or
secondary sources (reports, earlier studies, or websites dedicated to the topic such as
Navigator to Direct Democracy). Whenever possible, I have triangulated the information
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for all countries – including those in the IDEA database – to make sure that the
information is accurate and complete.
The variable in the third hypothesis is the use of referendums at national level. In
addition to the number of times when a referendum is used, two further issues are
important (Setala 1999; Mendelsohn & Parkin 2001; LeDuc 2003): what happens after the
vote (binding or not) and how easy a referendum can succeed (required quorum).
Following these considerations, the variable in H3 is calculated with this formula:
Rc/2 x Q + Rb x Q
where Rc is the number of consultative referendums,Rb is the number of binding referendums,Q is the required quorum to pass the referendum.
Binding referendums are weighed twice as much as consultative because citizens have a
much stronger voice if their decisions are immediately implemented rather than re-
examined by an institution. In light of the arguments presented in the previous section,
this can have a higher impact on regime legitimacy. The quorum may be different for the
two types of referendums and has three values: 1 for both turnout and approval
quorums, 2 for turnout only, and 3 for no quorum required. The reasons behind this
ordinal ranking is that the very permissive legislation (no quorums) can make the
referendum institution much more effective than in the case where both approval and
turnout quorums are required to have a successful referendum. These scores are
calculated for the referendums organized between 1990 (to ensure comparability
between Western and Eastern Europe) and 2008.
The low number of cases does not allow sophisticated quantitative analyses. At
the same time, the goal of this paper is exploratory and intends to identify the existence
of relationships between direct democracy and regime legitimacy. This can be done with
bivariate analysis in the form of correlations presented in the following section.
Findings
General descriptive statistics sheds light on the extent to which direct democracy tools
are mentioned in the legislation of the 39 analyzed countries. To begin with the national
level, Figure 1 presents six categories according to the number of legislative provisions.
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Belgium and Germany are the only countries that do not allow any direct involvement of
citizens at national level. The numbers indicate that among the countries with direct
democracy provisions at national level the smallest category is that of countries with one
tool and that is always the referendum. This category is not geographically clustered and
includes Czech Republic, Greece, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The largest
categories are those of countries that have two and four direct democracy tools at
national level. Almost half of the countries fall in one of these two categories. Many of
the countries in the category with two types do not combine referendums with other
types of direct democracy but provide citizens the possibility to engage in both
mandatory and optional referendums. Examples of countries using this approach are
Armenia or Estonia I Eastern Europe, but also Denmark, France or Ireland in Western
Europe.
Figure 1: The Distribution of Direct Democracy Tools at National Level in Europe
The category of countries with inclusive legislation, i.e. mentioning all types of direct
democracy, has a clear geographic concentration. With the exception of Italy, all other
countries come from Eastern Europe. This is not surprising since many post-communist
countries have opted for participatory constitutions when they changed the regime in the
beginning of the 90s. This option for inclusive and direct citizen participation was partly a
reaction to the decades of authoritarianism. For some of them, the way in which
institutional change took place is illustrative for their options. For example, in Hungary,
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the negotiations regarding the transfer of power between communists and opposition
took the form of Round Table Talks (Walsh 1994) where 50 delegates and 500 experts
formed committees and sub-committees. The whole process involved approximately
1,000 documented meetings for three months (Bruszt 1990). Another example is Slovakia
where the “velvet divorce” from the Czech Republic in 1993 has involved some
consultations with the masses.
The direct democracy at local level has more categories because I have counted
the regulations for both regional and community level. In some countries, in particular
the federations, the regional level is very important. Thus, it is not surprising the only two
countries with nine provisions (Figure 2) regarding direct democracy at local level are
federal: Germany and Switzerland. At the other extreme, Greece is the only country with
no direct democracy at local level. Since the institution of referendum exists at national
level, there is no possibility to use it at local level. Instead of direct democracy tools,
Greece gives preference to dialog-oriented procedures such as participation in the town
meetings or assemblies of neighborhood councils.
Figure 2: The Distribution of Direct Democracy Tools at Local Level in Europe
The category of countries with four direct democracy tools at local level is the largest,
being closely followed by the categories with one or two such tools. Although there are
more categories at the local than at national level, more than 80% of the countries have a
maximum number of four provisions in their legislation. Sometimes, the legislation does
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not explicitly mention the possibility for direct involvement of citizens, but allows room
for manoeuver in practice. For example, in Belgium the constitution prohibits any regional
or local level referendums making it clear that state institutions at local level are
responsible for decision-making. According to this provision, local authorities cannot be
compelled by citizens in the exercise of their responsibilities. However, this does not
impede local authorities to organize consultative referendums on particular matters; such
consultative votes have been organized in practice. Similarly, in Denmark the local
authority can decide without the approval of a higher administrative institution to hold
consultative referendums although there is no provision in the legislation.
The correlation between the provisions for direct democracy at national and local
level is negative (-0.14, not statistically significant).4 This value indicates a weak tendency
of countries with no or few direct democracy provisions at national level to have
legislation on (more) direct democracy tools at local level. The most obvious example in
this case is Germany with no direct democracy tool at national level but with nine at local
level. France, Luxembourg and Poland are other examples of countries following this
pattern. The reciprocal is also valid: countries with extensive provisions at national level
provide fewer opportunities to their citizens to get involved at local level. An example is
Georgia that has five provisions at national level and only one for local level or Portugal
(fours vs. two). The low value of the coefficient is due to the fact that not many countries
have sharp differences between the national and local level; several countries have
exactly the same number e.g. Bulgaria, Estonia, or Iceland. The correlation has a different
sign and strength when we divide the universe of countries according to their
geographical (and political) location. For Western Europe the coefficient is very small
(0.05) indicating the absence of an empirical relationship. In Eastern Europe the
coefficient is negative (-0.26) indicating a medium tendency of countries with more
provisions for direct democracy at national level to allow less involvement at local level.
Empirically, this is the case in a series of countries such as Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia,
Moldova, or Montenegro.
4 The statistical significance does not provide substantial information because the analysis takes intoaccoutn the universe of cases and not a sample from which we can generalize. At the same time, thenumber of cases is fairly limited and this can influence the level of significance.
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Similarly to the legislative provisions for direct democracy, the use of referendums
has broad variations between the examined countries. The score obtained after using the
formula presented in the research design section ranges between 0 in countries like
Bulgaria, Greece or Iceland to more than 150 in Switzerland.
A Complex Picture
Table 1 summarizes the correlation coefficients for the three hypothesized relationships.
The bivariate statistical analyses for all European countries indicate empirical support for
H2 and H3. At the same time, evidence goes against H1: levels of regime legitimacy are
lower in countries with more provisions for direct democracy at national level. The
relationship is driven by East European countries that have legislation with many tools for
direct democracy and low levels of legitimacy. The adoption of inclusive legislation during
democratization was encouraged by the negative experiences with limited
representation in the previous regime, on one hand, and the European Union (EU) pre-
accession agreements, on the other hand.
Table 1: The Correlation Coefficients for Direct Democracy and Regime LegitimacyAll European Countries Western Europe Eastern Europe
Direct Democracy at National Level -0.40* -0.05 -0.20Direct Democracy at Local Level 0.18 0.17 -0.13Use of National Referendums 0.25 0.16 0.47** p > 0.05; ** p > 0.01.
These differences are not only relative to Western European countries but also within the
region. The coefficient calculated separately for Eastern Europe shows that even within
the region countries with lower legitimacy have more legislation about direct democracy
at national level. For illustrative purposes Figure 3 includes a comparison of direct
democracy provisions (gray dots) and regime legitimacy (black dots) in the EU New
Member States from Eastern Europe (these are 10 out of the 20 East European countries
in the analysis). The comparison between these 10 countries is relevant because their
democratic performances were officially acknowledged in 1999 when the EU started the
accession process; two of them – Bulgaria and Romania – were late joiners due to delayed
reforms. The negative relationship can be easily observed also within this small group:
countries with many provisions (Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia and Lithuania) have low levels
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of legitimacy, while countries with relatively high levels of legitimacy (Czech Republic,
Estonia, Poland and Slovenia) have few provisions.
Figure 3: National Level Direct Democracy and Regime Legitimacy in Eastern Europe (EU NMS)
Regarding H2, there is a positive relationship between direct democracy provisions at
local level and regime legitimacy (0.18). As the correlation between national and local
level provisions for direct democracy was negative (see the previous sub-section), it is
quite intuitive to have a different relationship with regime legitimacy. This time, West
European countries have more legislative provisions and proportionally higher levels of
regime legitimacy than countries in Eastern Europe. Within the regions, East European
countries follow the same pattern as in the case of H1: there is a negative correlation
indicating that countries with more provisions have lower levels of legitimacy.
In Western Europe the coefficient is fairly similar with what observed for the
pooled analysis. To better illustrate this relationship Figure 4 includes 10 countries
selected on the basis of their geographical positioning (three from North, four from
Central Europe, and three from South). The provisions for direct democracy at local level
(gray dots) are minimal in Norway and Portugal and quite extensive in Germany and
Switzerland. Regime legitimacy (black dots) is quite homogenous among these countries
especially when compared with the legitimacy for Eastern Europe in Figure 3. The
distribution of the 10 countries on these two variables indicates the existence of a
positive relationship. Countries with high number of provisions (Spain, France, Germany,
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and Switzerland) have higher levels of legitimacy than countries with few provisions
(Portugal, Italy). The relationship would have been stronger if Norway or the Netherlands
– both with high levels of legitimacy – had more direct democracy provisions in their
legislation. This observation takes us back to the theoretical expectations and provides
one possible explanation for the few provisions in some West European countries. These
countries in which legitimacy is high – and has been high for decades –have little
incentives to promote direct democracy tools at national level.
Figure 4: Local Level Direct Democracy and Regime Legitimacy in Western Europe
Finally, there is empirical support for H3: in countries that use more referendums (binding
and easy to pass) the levels of regime legitimacy are higher than in the rest of cases. The
correlation coefficient has an average value (0.25) with consistent positive signs in both
regions. In Eastern Europe the coefficient is considerably higher (o.47 statistically
significant at 0.05) than in Western Europe (0.16). This result tells a complex story when
corroborated with the findings from H1. According to the latter, many legislative
provisions about direct democracy at national level correspond to low legitimacy. As the
use of referendums is positively associated with legitimacy, we may conclude that direct
democracy does not increase legitimacy if it is only on paper. The mere existence of
provisions without practical implementation may not be perceived as alternative means
of involvement. This is particularly observable in Eastern Europe where the high number
of provisions was not backed by practical use. The bivariate correlation between
18
provisions and national level and use of referendums in Eastern Europe shows no
relationship between the two; the value of the coefficient is 0.01.
The implementation of direct democracy is a possible explanation for the different
results provided by H1 and H2. Local level direct democracy rarely remains only on paper.
Although difficult to quantify the exact amount of tools used at local level there are many
examples showing that it is practiced in different communities across countries. As the
existence of regulations at the local level is often accompanied by implementation, it
differs significantly from what encountered at national level.
Conclusions
This paper tried to identify a relationship between direct democracy and regime
legitimacy in 39 European countries. The main results indicate that provisions for direct
democracy at local level and use of referendums at national level are positively associated
with legitimacy. The negative correlation between provisions for direct democracy at
national level and legitimacy may be explained through the absence of implementation.
The major conclusion of these findings is that direct democracy may have an impact only
if applied. When provisions remain solely on paper, direct democracy does not trigger the
expected attitudes. Equally important, this paper showed that the differences between
Eastern and Western Europe are smaller than initially considered.
This analysis is preliminary in its conclusions. Its exploratory goals were primarily
meant to identify an empirical relationship and to draw attention to a possible
explanation for the variation of regime legitimacy in Europe. Its major implication is
theoretical in the sense that these results give sufficient reason to include direct
democracy in future analyses of sources of legitimacy. On empirical grounds, this study
has produced evidence to account for synchronic differences between levels of
legitimacy. Moving beyond the relationships presented here, more empirical evidence is
required to determine how direct democracy tools offer citizens incentives to increase
their regime legitimacy. Further research can also investigate reverse causation with low
levels of legitimacy leading to the adoption of direct democracy tools. Regime legitimacy
can be better understood as soon as the correspondence between formal provisions of
direct democracy and practices is established.
19
Appendix 1: The Operationalization of Regime Legitimacy
Dimension Item Question Answers Code
Acceptance of core
regime principles
Attitude against
strong leader
Q66.A: Having a strong leader who does not have to bother with
parliament and elections
Very good
Fairly good
Fairly bad
Very bad
0
Attitude against army
rule
Q66.C Having the army rule the country 1
Evaluation of regime
performance
Satisfaction with
democracy
Q64: On the whole are you (answer options) with the way democracy is
developing in our country?
Very satisfied
Rather satisfied
Not very satisfied
Not at all satisfied
1
0
Good vs. Bad
Government
Q65: People have different views about the system for governing this
country. Here is a scale for rating how well things are going: 1 means
very bad; 10 means very good
1-5 0
6-10 1
Support for political
institutions
Support for
legislature
Q63: Please look at this card and tell me how much confidence you have
in Parliament.
A great deal
Quite a lot
Not very much
None at all
1
Support for
Government
Q63.R: Please look at this card and tell me how much confidence you
have in Government.
0
Support for
institutions of
authority
Support for police Q63.F: Please look at this card and tell me how much confidence you
have in the police.
A great deal
Quite a lot
Not very much
None at all
1
Support for justice Q63.N: Please look at this card and tell me how much confidence you
have in the justice system.
0
20
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