Human rights referendum
Dissonance between ‘the will of the people’ and fundamental rights
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12188216 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ignatius Yordan Nugraha (0000-0002-0807-5141, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 115-133 |
| Publication date | 2020-06-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0924-0519 • E-ISSN: 2214-7357 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0924051920923614 |
| OpenAlex | W3035012559 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 4 |
Referendums and popular initiatives have proliferated in many parts of the world as part of the effort to improve the quality of democracy and enhance citizen participation in policy making. However, even before the surge of populist nationalism in the 2010s, referendums have become a sort of weapon to restrict various rights. Furthermore, the juxtaposition between ‘the will of the people’ and human rights has once again brought back the classical criticism against direct democracy that it constitutes ‘a tyranny of the majority’ that could erode minority rights. With these concerns in mind, this paper is written to analyse the dissonance between human rights referendums and international human rights law through a positivist lens. The overall goal is to determine whether States have an ex ante obligation to prevent a referendum on a subject matter that is contrary to human rights
Cognitive dissonance · Criticism · Democracy · Fundamental rights · Human rights · International human rights law · Law and economics · Obligation · Political science · Politics · Referendum · Sociology · Comparative constitutional jurisprudence studies · Human Rights and Immigration · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Social Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
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