Abstract
The chapter surveys the historical development of the referendum from the Romans through the French Revolution and throughout the twentieth Century. It is shown that referendums tended to be used when the governing elites fell out of favour with the electorate. Thus issues were increasingly submitted to votes after the number of party-identifiers began to fall and at a time when so-called post-materialist values came to the fore.
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Qvortrup, M. (2018). Introduction: Theory, Practice and History. In: Qvortrup, M. (eds) Referendums Around the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57798-2_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57798-2_1
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