INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON INITIATIVES, REFERENDUMS, AND DIRECT DEMOCRACY

Introduction

The Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD) held the International Symposium on Initiatives, Referendums, and Direct Democracy on October 12, 2003. At the time, Taiwan's Legislative Yuan had not yet passed the Referendum Bill; the referendum legislation that would eventually be approved on November 27, 2003 delineates the provisions that serve as the basis for President Chen's controversial "defensive" or "peace referendum," suggested to be held on March 20, 2004.

The TFD's symposium featured full-day panel discussions on initiatives and referendums (I&R). The direct democracy experts invited by the Foundation to participate are key members and founders of the Initiative and Referendum Institutes (IRI) of Europe and the United States. Among them, they have served as direct democracy consultants with the European Parliament, individual EU governments, state governments of the United States, as well as civic groups and research institutions all over the world. Over 200 academics, parliamentarians, government officials, and members of the general public attended the symposium, participating in lively discussions.

Symposium Proceedings

The proceedings of the symposium are now available online. The entire symposium proceedings can be downloaded at once, or you can download the different sessions one at a time. To view these documents, you will need Adobe Reader; if you do not already have this program installed on your computer, you can download it free from Adobe's Web site.

Entire symposium proceedings (17,228 KB)  Download

Table of Contents Download

Acknowledgement Download

Abstract Download

Participants Download

Welcome Remarks
Michael Y.M. Kau 
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Session 1
Direct Democracy in Modern Democratic Evolution
Theo Schiller
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Session 2
Initiative and Referendum in the United States
Dane Waters
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Session 3
The European Referendum Challenge: From French Revolution to European Integration, Facts, Views and Prospects
Bruno Kaufmann
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Q & A
Morning Session
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Session 4
Democracy from Below: Environmental Concerns and Swiss Direct Democracy
Adrian Schmid
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Session 5
The Design of Direct Democracy:
Preliminary Basis for Assessing Suboptimal Procedures of Citizen Lawmaking
Andreas Gross
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Session 6
Referendums: A Taiwan Perspective
Jaushieh Joseph Wu
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Q & A
Afternoon Session
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