歐洲國家公民投票經驗之跨國比較：議題、時程與結果 - 東吳大學

120 東 吳 政 治 學 報 /2009/ 第 二 十 七 卷 第 一 期The Comparison of Referendum inEuropean Democracies:Issues, Timings and ResultsChunta Lee *This article will analyze the national referendum experiencesof 15 European countries since 1940 using C2D (Center forResearch in Direct Democracy) online database developed byUniversity Zurich. The analysis of these 15 countries'experiences will be compared against Switzerland, which is themost experienced country at referendum in the world. We willanalyze the voting rates and voting results (approval/disapprocal)to evaluate issues such as the category of referendum issues andprocedural issues of referendum. The results reveal that theconstitutional and territorial issues regarding highly valued bycitizens as reflected through higher voting rate. Moreover,European countries’ referendums are rarely held with othernational elections at the same time. Last, some examples ofconcurrent elections with multi-issues of referendums areinitiated and it was found that the voting rates are relativelyhigher with the exception of Switzerland. However, this kind ofconcurrent election is also found to produce either all-approval* Ph. D. Student, Department of Public Administration and Policy, National TaipeiUniversity.