Democratic theorists generally ignore that the institutional design of popular vote processes varies in important ways. However, these differences in design influence the kind of role that these processes play in and their impact on democratic systems. We intend to remedy this situation by launching a normative discussion about the institutional design of popular vote processes in the Debate “Do Referendums Enhance or Threaten Democracy?” In this introductory essay, we first insist on the necessity to adopt a differentiated conception of popular vote processes. We then highlight some aspects of our normative approach to the institutional design of popular vote processes. We finally argue that referendum processes can positively contribute to democratic systems when they are 1) launched bottom‐up and 2) legally binding.

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What is the relationship between referendum and initiative processes and democracy? The dominant understanding is that these popular vote processes are institutions associated with a model of direct democracy that stands in opposition to representative democracy. However, this pervasive approach is rarely justified and appears to limit the study of popular vote processes by focusing on implausible ideals, obscuring that many democratic institutions face similar challenges, and encouraging overgeneralising claims that neglect institutional variation in referendum and initiative processes. Previous criticisms of the association of popular vote processes with direct democracy have failed to clearly articulate an alternative. We trace the emergence of a democratic systems approach to popular vote processes and argue that it provides a better conceptual framework to empirically study and normatively discuss these processes.

The main aim of this final essay is to draw on the insights gathered in the Debate “Do Referendums Enhance or Threaten Democracy” to inform future normative and empirical discussions about the design of popular vote processes. We first offer some clarifications regarding three of the concerns raised by respondents about our introductory essay. We then propose a systematic classification of the lines of variation along which the design of popular vote processes usually varies. More precisely, we highlight nine lines of variation: trigger, origin of the text, legal basis, scope, trigger requirements, time, ballot, information, and decision rule. We conclude by emphasizing the relevance and necessity of debating the formal institutional design of popular vote processes.

How do face-to-face, assembly processes, and non-face-to-face, popular vote processes impact the decisions made by citizens? Normative discussions of the comparative merits of these two broad types of participatory decision-making processes partly rely on empirical assumptions concerning this question. In this paper, we test the central assumption that assemblies lead to decisions that are more widely supported by participants than popular votes. We do so by analyzing 1,400 decisions made through these processes on the highly salient issue of municipal mergers in Swiss municipalities since 1999. We find that assembly decisions are consistently made by larger majorities than popular vote decisions and that this relationship is significantly mediated by turnout. This suggests that higher levels of agreement in assemblies mainly result from selection biases – with fewer dissenting citizens participating in assemblies than in popular votes – rather than from internal dynamics in assemblies.