The new Constitution of the Republic of Armenia was adopted by referendum held on July 5, 1995. This represented a historic event for both the people and the state of Armenia. Whereas the adoption of the Constitution and the parliamentary elections were indicative of the thrust to adopt democratic processes, they also laid the foundation of the state system in Armenia by establishing the consti...

As if the process or withdrawal from the European Union were not already complex enough in itself, the Brexit vote has also reopened constitutional questions for the United Kingdom. Scotland’s devolved government is calling for a new independence referendum and seeking a special arrangement with the EU. Northern Ireland has drawn less attention but is politically at least as significant: Brexit...

This paper looks in detail at the proposals for further fiscal devolution to the Scottish Parliament following the No vote in September’s independence referendum. The proposals vary significantly in terms of the taxes proposed for devolution and the balance between welfare spending devolution and maintenance of UK-wide social welfare union, but all envisage Scotland evolving into a semi-autonom...

16 proportionality” which the German Constitutional Court developed in the 1950s and which since then has been treated as unwritten constitutional law in Germany. In the decades that followed the 1950s the German Constitutional Court realized that the principle of proportionality (commensurability) works like a representation of people’s moral sense and sense of justice. Therefore, the German C...

Abstract In some countries, direct democracy is used successfully to increase legitimacy of decisions or mitigate conflict, and in other authoritarian leaders seem instrumentalize manipulate referendums. How can referendum integrity be analyzed? This article presents an empirical instrument evaluate the variety encompasses criteria for analysis democracy. First, we develop a cycle model based o...