Tag: referendum
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What’s at Stake in the Turkish Constitutional Amendment Proposal
–Ilayda Gunes, The University of Chicago Law School In the wake of the failed coup attempt of July 15, 2016, Turkey has been struggling to heal its wounds under a state of emergency. Apart from the loss of hundreds of lives and more than 2,000 injured in clashes during the abortive coup, the country has also…
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UK Learns Brexit is Easier Said Than Done
[This post was first published on the website of the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale. It is republished here with permission of the author.] —David R. Cameron, Professor of Political Science, Director of the Program on European Union Studies, Yale University When Prime Minister Theresa May took over…
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The Italian Constitutional Challenge: An Overview of the Upcoming Referendum
—Lorenza Violini, Full Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Milan, and Antonia Baraggia, Post-doctoral Fellow, University of Milan As it is well known, Italy is in the midst of a great constitutional reform, which–if approved by the referendum that will be held on December 4th–will modify 47 Articles of the Constitution (corresponding to 33% of the…
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Video Interview: Constitutional Revision in Greece, Featuring Alkmene Fotiadou
—Richard Albert, Boston College Law School In this installment of our video interview series at I-CONnect, I ask Alkmene Fotiadou whether the recently-proposed constitutional revision in Greece could be unconstitutional. We discuss how the revision–which would be approved by referendum–departs from the formal rules of constitutional amendment in the Greek Constitution, and why, according to Fotiadou, this…
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Was the Brexit Referendum Democratic?
Cross-posted with permission from the UK Constitutional Law Association Blog. The original post appears here. —Stephen Tierney, University of Edinburgh The past three weeks have seen a steady backlash against the referendum. It is understandable that many don’t like the outcome, after all 48% voted for Remain.
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Going Against the Consociational Grain: The Debate on the Dutch Advisory Referendum Act and the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement Referendum
—Reijer Passchier & Wim Voermans, Leiden University On April 6, 2016, the Netherlands held the first referendum under its new Advisory Referendum Act of 2015 (Wet raadgevend referendum)[1] and the third national referendum in two centuries.[2] This was a test on a highly controversial issue: Dutch political (consocialist) culture and referendums do not mix well.
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The Brexiteers: Right Answer, Wrong Question
—Nicholas Barber, Associate Professor of Constitutional Law, Oxford University Towards the end of the 1990s I was invited to a workshop just outside of Berlin at which a group of young academics gathered to discuss the future of the European Union.
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The Implementation Initiative (“Durchsetzungsinitiative”): Deepening the Divide Between Citizens and Non-Citizens in Switzerland
—Rekha Oleschak, Institute of Federalism, University of Fribourg[1] On 28 February 2016, Swiss citizens will go to polls again, this time to exercise their direct democratic rights on a wide range of issues, including taxation, prohibition of speculation on commodities, whether or not to have a second tunnel to the Gotthard and finally, on the…
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Venice is not Barcelona: A Less Aggressive Regional Question gets a More Nuanced Constitutional Answer
—Diletta Tega, University of Bologna (Italy) In 2014 it was not only the Catalan and Scottish governments which were involved in claims for independence: the Italian Region of Veneto was also involved. Yet the three cases are very different: in this post, I will try to describe the Veneto case and highlight its peculiarities.
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The Greek Crisis–A Symptom of the EU’s Constitutional Malaise
—Nicole Scicluna, Department of Political Science and International Studies (POLSIS), University of Birmingham The euro crisis started in Greece and to Greece it returned. Since the Syriza government’s election in January 2015, we have seen a succession of intense and sometimes acrimonious exchanges between Greek officials and representatives of the IMF, EU and member state governments, which…