Exploring the new plebiscitary democracy

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores the emerging, hitherto underconceptualized, new plebiscitary democracy, which reinvents and radicalizes longer-existing plebiscitary methods (initiative, referendum, recall, primary, petition, poll) with new tools and applications (mostly digital). The new plebiscitary democracy comes with a comparatively thin conception of democracy, invoking the bare notion of a demos whose aggregated will is to steer actors and issues in public governance in a straight majoritarian way. The chapter fleshes out an empirically informed typology, distinguishing between new plebiscitary methods that are developed bottom-up versus top-down, and that are issue-oriented versus leader-oriented. Various specimens, confronting both deliberative and electoral democracy, are discussed. As systematic research into the various guises, drivers, and implications of the new plebiscitary democracy is largely missing, and much less advanced than research into the deliberative turn, a gap-filling research agenda is being teased out here.