The Case of the Croatian Capital Zagreb The new system of directly elected mayors implemented in Croatia in 2009 faced its most severe diiculties in municipalities with divided power, where the mayor and council majority represent diferent political options. Due to the uneasy relationship between the Mayor and the City Assembly in Zagreb, the new Croatian government decided to propose changes in the laws regulating elections and the relationship between the representative and executive bodies in the local government system one year ahead of the 2013 local elections. Mayors were explicitly given the right to elect and revoke the representatives of units of local and regional self-government in local institutions and companies. The second most signiicant aspect of the 'mini-reform' of the Croatian local government system is the introduction of the possibility of the simultaneous dissolution of the representative body and dismissal of the executive body, with new early elections for both bodies, in cases of the non adoption of the municipal budget.
In October 2014 a citizens' initiative called 'In the Name of the Family' collected more than 380,000 signatures demanding a constitutional referendum on comprehensive electoral reform in Croatia. The Initiative aimed to introduce preferential voting for MPs; new criteria for the establishment of electoral constituencies; a lower electoral threshold from five to three per cent; a ban on pre-electoral coalitions and joint lists of several parties; and postal and electronic voting. The constitutional referendum demanded by the initiative was not held due to the organizers collecting an insufficient number of signatures for the referendum petition to be valid, and only a limited reform of the electoral system was enacted with the introduction of preferential voting for MPs. What had started as a bottom-up citizens' initiative (or 'mass imposition' in Renwick's terminology) finally ended as an 'elite majority imposition' of an electoral reform.
In the opinion of many Slovenian and Croatian scholars, the constitutional and legislative design of citizen-initiated referendums in their respective countries was in many ways flawed. Referendums initiated by citizens have caused, at least from the point of view of governments in these two countries, many unexpected constitutional, political and/or economic problems. Over the years, several unsuccessful constitutional reforms of the institute of referendum have been attempted both in Slovenia and Croatia. In 2013, Slovenia finally attained its 'constitutional moment' in which it was possible to reach an almost universal consensus in the National Assembly on constitutionally redesigning the legislative referendum. On the other hand, several attempts by the Croatian Parliament to amend the constitutional provision relating to citizens' initiatives have come to nothing due to the interests of the major parties in the constitutional amendment process being different.
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