Talk:Popular initiative

Untitled
I to do so, but in my personal opinion it'd make the most sense to leave the (dominant) political science as Initiative and mention the other uses on Initiative (disambiguation). Sarge Baldy 16:12, Jun 23, 2004 (UTC)

In retrospect having read the guidelines on disambiguation I think there is not yet any nead to make this a disambiguation page. Barnaby dawson 12:12, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Meaning of Initiative
I think iniative would be better as a disambiguation page, starting with the personal trait. The current page reads as being rather American; in European Union political science "right of initiative" is the broader question of who has the ability to start a legislative process and (since it is the EU) has little to do with individual citizens.--Henrygb 10:54, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Popular initiative
It would be better called popular initiative. And would include EU institutions´ popular initiative. Regards. --Nukeless 00:18, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Initiative in the United States Order of Paragraphs
Why not put the information about the situation for the national initiative in the USA before the states' paragraph(s)? VVHeavyVv (talk) 03:06, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

If there are no objections I'm going to change the ordering of that section. VVHeavyVv (talk) 17:58, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

There are no "initiatives" in Europe
From the definition given here:


 * In political science, an initiative (also known as a popular or citizens' initiative) is a means by which a petition signed by a certain minimum number of registered voters can force a public vote (plebiscite).

Means:


 * petition ... forces ... plebiscite

Than a petition by a few causes a vote by everyone. But the European Citizens' Initiative (from this article) is defined as:


 * 1,000,000 citizens, from minimal numbers of different member states, could invite the executive body of the European Union (EU), the European Commission, to consider any proposal

Or from the main article:


 * right to request the Commission to initiate a legislative proposal

In other words, there is no plebiscite. If I am correct, the lack of an actual plebiscite means it is not an initiative. If I am correct, the "European Citizens' Initiative" is not an initiative, but something else. In fact, the same holds true for every country in Europe: none call for a plebiscite. There is no plebiscite; there is no national/statewide vote.

I propose that a new article be made. I don't know what it should be called, probably not a "right to petition" as at least the German Wikipedia defines that as the right to address (say something) the legislature(s)/government and be recognized. Int21h (talk) 15:54, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi, you asked in german Wikipedia's article Europäische Bürgerinitiative to participate in this discussion. Yes, you are right, the European Citizen Initiative includes no plebiscite at all. In a way, it is "something else". One might call it a Government Petition, because it constitutes no right to a plebiscite and aims on the Government (EU-Commission) rather than the Parliament, as Petitions normally do. I don't know any similar political instrument in any european state. Calling it "initiative" is nevertheless appropiate, as most languages doesn't use the expression "initiative" in such a strict way as it is used in english. At least in german an "Initiative" includes every step or public call for change in a political matter. Such has not neccessarily to be a formal action of direct democracy. A public demand of the Minority Leader to act in the matter X is called an "Initiative" too. I assume, that many of the languages in Europe use the word "initiative" in a similar, non-strict way as the german language does. Second point: You're wrong saying, that no european country knows plebiscites. In fact, each and every one does, and with the exception of Germany every country in EU had at least one nation-wide plebiscite in the past. Right now, the European Union does not have a union-wide plebiscite. But as far as I know, such a plebiscite is not generally ruled out in Treaty of Lisboa - it is simply not regulated or instituted at the very moment. I hope the above statements helps clearing the different concepts of the word "initiative". best regards Lokiseinchef (talk) 17:44, 12 January 2014 (UTC)
 * PS:The information in the article is obsolete. All regulations for the ECI are set and the instrument is being used since spring 2012. The first ECI "Right2Water" was handed over in October 2013 and it's signatures are currently being checked. It tries to prevent the planned privatisation of water supply throughout Europe. All infos to all ECIs can be found here: Public register of ECIs or in this german Wikipedia-article I wrote a time ago: Liste der europäischen Bürgerinitiativen


 * Re the statement that 'Calling it "initiative" is nevertheless appropiate, as most languages doesn't use the expression "initiative" in such a strict way as it is used in english', it's worth noting that neither British nor (to the best of my knowledge) Irish English use initiative in the same 'strict' way in which it's used in American English. greymullet (talk) 12:42, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

E-government petitions
Should chapters E-government petitions in Europe and Australia and E-government petitions in the United States in article Online petition be merged in this article?--Custoo (talk) 18:17, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
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Need Initiative map
This map is for Popular referendum. We need the correct initiative map. I'll check into it. This map is correctly on the Popular referendum article.--Wyn.junior (talk) 19:58, 23 February 2019 (UTC)



Map has a faulty source and disagrees with the info on the page
I am removing the map from the page. I wrote a comment on the map's talk page [here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_talk:Carte_des_r%C3%A9f%C3%A9rendums_d%27origine_populaire_2019.png] These are my reasons:

The source listed on the map (https://www.direct-democracy-navigator.org/) does not list citizen's initiatives, it seems to just list every law or constitution article which allows any type of referendum. For example, Ireland does not have a citizen's initiative, but to change the constitution there has to be a referendum. There are two articles in the constitution which mention this, so the page lists '2 national instances', neither of which are a citizen's initiative.

The map lists countries as having referendums which the source does not, eg Belarus.

The source itself also lists itself as incomplete.

And the information given on the Initiative page contradicts that on the map. Again for example, Belarus is not listed on this page, but it is mentioned on the map.

The secondary source listed on the map is, to paraphrase, the relevant Wikipedia pages, which I think is an insufficient source, there should be a listed source for each country on the Initiative page. This shouldn't be hard, the relevant constitution article or law would be more than enough. - 37.169.159.5 (talk) 22:13, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

What does 'legislative, abrogative, constitutional' mean?
These terms are never explained in this context. Does legislative mean an initiative can propose a law, or does it mean it means be reviewed by the legislative body of the government? Can someone explain these on the page please. Or replace them with a more useful terminology like direct or indirect.

Also, the title should be changed to Citizen's Initiative since that's what the article is about. Initiative is just the process of beginning a piece of legislation, it could be done by anyone, parliament, president, king, etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.172.165.5 (talk) 04:04, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose to merge Right of initiative (legislative) into Initiative. I think that the Right of initiative article is a subset of the Initiative content, as the Initiative covers both: Referenda and legislative initiative. This can be confirmed by both: the introduction, and the examples in an individual countries, for example Finland or Romania. The Right of initiative (legislative) is of a reasonable size that the merging into Initiative will not cause any problems as far as article size is concerned. SkywalkerPL (talk) 08:33, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Pinging some of the top contributors to the both articles. SkywalkerPL (talk) 08:33, 7 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Support As it stands, I don't think the right of initiative warrants a separate article (it only covers France and the EU, and not in a great deal more detail than the main article, so could easily be merged). However, at some point (when the topic is well developed), it might be worth having a separate article to detail the rights of initiative in each country, although possibly under a different name like Right of initiative by country or something. (separately, the main article definitely needs some work – currently "By country" section has some countries detailed in a table and others in prose. They should all be done in the same way). Number   5  7  08:41, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Mildly oppose There is some overlap, but given that they cover the separate domains of referenda vs. ordinary legislative process, I think the Initiative article would need to be expanded greatly in focus to accommodate this, so having separate articles is justified. To merge them would result in an article split between two similar but rather separate focuses, so I think it may be clearer to the readers as two articles. It may be better to add links between the articles and rename Initiative to be more specific, such as Popular initiative. Right of initiative (legislative) may have limited content at the moment, but there is a great amount of room for expansion in the future. Vaurnheart (talk) 15:47, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * That's incorrect. Initiative already covers both: referenda and legislative process. SkywalkerPL (talk) 20:29, 23 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose. Right of initiative (legislative) has very little content so far, but it seems fully justified to have one article that covers the broader right to initiate a legislative procedure - by citizens' groups and by parliaments/governments/members of parliament (MPs), i.e. Right of initiative (legislative); versus a more specific article for citizens' initiatives. The article initiative is defined in the lead and by its content to only cover grassroots citizens' initiatives - which is a big enough topic. Right of initiative (legislative) could easily be develop to summarise the relations between citizens' and MPs/parliaments'/governments' initiatives. Boud (talk) 23:42, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Right of initiative (legislative) describes who has the ability to propose legislation for consideration by a legislature and the process by which this proposal is made. Initiative describes procedures where citizens' petitions play a role in the legislative process. Of the three kinds of initiatives described, only indirect initiatives certainly fit within the scope of Right of initiative (legislative). Agenda initiatives may propose bills, but may merely be placing an issue on the agenda or making a general proposal which needs to be rewritten in the format/genre of a bill. Direct initiatives bypass the legislature and therefore are not proposing bills. Thus, these articles overlap, but neither is a subset of the other and so cannot be written in WP:SUMMARYSTYLE. Daask (talk) 20:31, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

The table needs sourcing and clarifying
See the above complaint about the map. I think that the table has similar problems. The title of the map says it's only about referenda, but the content (which I haven't checked) seems to include both grassroots-initiated referenda and general citizens' legislative initiatives. Anyone starting work on this should make a reasonable choice of what the definition of the table is and clarify that, before adding sources. Boud (talk) 00:47, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
 * What's the difference between the two? --Aréat (talk) 04:35, 13 November 2020 (UTC)