'Direct Democracy': Concept or Slogan?

Public and academic debates about the democratic credentials of popular vote processes have long taken place as debates about “direct democracy.” Yet researchers in democracy studies disagree on the meaning of this term. This paper aims at providing conceptual clarification. First, I highlight the existence of four main different understandings of “direct democracy,” which I classify in a typology with two main dimensions: i.) breadth of inclusion, and ii.) decision-making capacity. The former distinguishes types that enable a sub-part of the citizenry to influence policy-making from types that include the mass public. The latter differentiates types where citizens can decide from types where they can provide inputs. I then draw two implications of this disentanglement for the concept of “direct democracy” and debates about it. First, most uses of the concept are reductive ones that confuse a general notion of “direct democracy” with one specific type. Second, there is no common core to the four types beyond the notion of “democracy” itself. I thus argue for abandoning “direct democracy” as a concept for research and for focusing on the specific processes attached to it – processes that are now commonly approached as democratic innovations. I conclude by suggesting that the typology of types of “direct democracy” can serve as a useful typology of political processes.