Abstract

The author reviews two books on the referendum phenomenon, one on the experience in Central and Eastern European countries, and the other on the Italian experience. The first book, edited by Andreas Auer and Michael Bützer, is a large collection of essays written by scholars, constitutionalists and political scientists, and has its origins in the conclusions of an international study congress held in Budapest in February 2000. The book is the result of intense study and research promoted by the "Centre d'ètudes et de documentation sur la démocratie directe" (c2d - http://c2d.unige.ch) set up in 1993 in the Department of Constitutional law of the University of Geneva. The first part contains twelve contributions on referendum as such as well as on experiences in twelve Central and Eastern European countries, from the Baltic to the Balkans. The second part features thirteen contributions commenting on a number of different institutional issues relating to normative theory and empirical analysis. The second book by Alfonso Di Giovine, an Italian constitutionalist, is a collection of articles on the Italian referendum experience. The Central-Eastern European and Italian experiences are different in many aspects, but they have two significant points in common: the importance of the role played by political parties, and the requirement of a quorum for the vote to be valid. Auer holds that "threshold requirements are a childhood disease of direct democracy" whereas Di Giovine believes that threshold requirements and abstentionism must be given due consideration in order to counteract referendum abuse. The reviewer's opinion is that the "quorum" ought to be disposed of.