| Abstrakt: |
This publication focuses on the essence and origin of referendums and referendum democracy from the perspective of entrenching the doctrine, the constitutional law-making and the law application practice. The author makes a systematic analysis of veches, popular assemblies, communes, conventions and other archaic forms of democracy in the medieval States of Eastern and Western Europe, as well as in the North American colonies at the times when they were settled by Puritan communities. The article examines the phenomenology of transformation of popular assemblies in the Swiss colonies into referendum as an institution, analyzes the content of this term and of the institution, its comparability with plebiscites, evolution and further constitutional consolidation. The article makes and substantiates the conclusion that at the end of the XIX century in Switzerland, the United States and France, at the level of political and legal doctrine and the Constitution and law application practice, three main models of referendum democracy were formed and developed further worldwide over the next 120 years. The first Swiss model of referendum democracy is the most ancient, and its essence consists in the comprehensive use of various types of referendums at the canton and Federation level for mandatory consideration of constitutional amendments (proposals), issues of Switzerland's entry to and exit from international treaties and unions, as well as other issues which citizens regard as the issues which should be resolved in a referendum, subject to compliance with the procedure for initiating the voting. This model, on the one hand, inspired J.-J. Rousseau to write his "Social Contract", and on the other hand, it received its own doctrinal basis from him. The second American model of referendum democracy was developed in the United States under the influence of the developing traditions of self-government in Puritan communities which became the first centers of public power in the North American colonies; this model was used exclusively at the level of states, to directly address the issues of importance for these communities. Since the eighteenth century, referendum democracy has become an integral part of political processes and is applied to legitimization of constitutions of the states and amendments thereto. The third French "plebiscitarian" model of referendum democracy was based on the theories and doctrines of thinkers of the XVII--XVIII centuries, primarily J.-J. Rousseau, about popular sovereignty and its direct implementation, as well as on the contradictory experience of their implementation in the process of constitutional State-building during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars in Europe. It is noted that the identified and examined models of referendum democracy (Swiss, American and French) are now multiplied by many other new models (Scandinavian, Latin American, Iberian, post-socialist, Islamic, etc.). But it is the Swiss, American and French models of referendum democracy, in their combination, that form a kind of a "matrix" of modern referendum democracy. If effective legislation on referendums in Ukraine is to be revived, the values, essence (origin) and content of this "matrix" of referendum democracy should be taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
