Popular consultation

Popular consultations or popular suffrages in constitutional law and history are public deliberation by the people making decisions as electoral body and as legislator, taken in the exercise of a form of political participation. When the people are deciding in a direct manner over what is submitted for a popular consultation, both the bodies of the State and the citizens ere exercising a form of direct democracy.

In such way popular consultations taken place as parenthesis of representative democracy, only in countries where the constitutional law recognize popular sovereignty.

There are different types of popular political consultations according to what is established in the political constitution of every country.

Modern popular consultations

• Elections and ballots, governed by the Constitution and statutes that define the electoral system.
• Initiative or citizen's initiative decision
• Petition decision, about a request to a government office
• Plebiscite decision, about political controversy
• recall or recall referendum decision, about removing an elected official
• Referendum decision, about a specific proposal previously approved, regulated by the referendum's law.

Are not included polls consultations, until they will be recognized by a constitutional law

Ancient popular consultations

In institutions of law and ancient history is not distinguishable between the people as elector and people as legislator.

• boule deliberations, made by the ancient Greek council of citizens
• comitia deliberation, made by the Legislative assemblies of the Roman Republic
• volksbefragung: the non-binding referendum of Germanic tradition.

See also

• Decision making
• Deliberative democracy
• Consensus democracy
• Direct democracy
• E-democracy
• Participatory democracy
• Representative democracy