Politics outside parliament: explaining candidates’ support for citizen-initiated referendums

Abstract The role of politicians in referendums has been extensively analyzed from the perspectives of referendum initiation and use, and policy implementation. We know relatively little about what politicians think about referendums, and therefore from understanding how far they are from what citizens believe and being able to predict their propensity to adopt or block referendums when they are in office. The present article addresses this gap in the literature and seeks to identify what drives candidates running in national elections to support citizen-initiated referendums. The multi-level ordinal regression analysis with mixed-effects presented here uses individual-level data from the Comparative Candidate Survey (Wave 2) and country-level data from 18 countries. The results indicate that many candidates support citizen-initiated referendums, and their attitudes are driven by a combination of criticism of representative democracy and willingness to bring citizens into the decision-making process. The majoritarian components of the electoral system and higher polarization in the party system also increase support for referendums.