Agenda Initiatives in Comparative Context: Enhancing Channels for Democratic Participation

When: Thursday, September 12, 2019, 1:00 PM - 5:45 PM
Where: Room 3.1, 3rd Floor, Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS), 67-69 Lincoln's Inn Fields

This workshop will bring together scholars from the disciplines of law and political science to explore this question and a range of others concerning agenda initiatives. Agenda initiatives allow citizens to use a signature gathering exercise to call for legislative action. They are a relatively little known, little studied and often misunderstood form of direct democracy (as compared to its more powerful cousin, the referendum). They have now existed for nearly a century beginning in Austria, as the brainchild of the distinguished jurist Hans Kelsen, and gradually spreading to many other European states and Latin America in particular.

Organised by: Mario Mendez (QMUL)