Suchergebnisse

Consultative referendums may provide crucial information about public opinion but have received little attention in the literature compared with their binding counterparts. In this article, we analyse 221 Norwegian local consultative referendums on municipal amalgamation using the Venice Commission's code on referendums. Much of the referendum literature suggests that consultative referendums are in fact binding. The municipal councils followed the outcomes of the referendums in most cases, but 14% chose to go against it. While the overall impression is that the outcomes of consultative referendums are seen as binding, the data indicate that ballot design may affect voters' choice as well as council decisions. Although many democratic standards were met, the wording of questions and alternatives on the ballot paper were problematic in a number of cases – reducing the democratic value of the citizens' advice.

In this chapter, we examine participation rate and time use trends in volunteering in Scandinavia during the period from the beginning of the 1990s until the mid-2010s. The aim of the analysis is twofold. First, we aim to provide a descriptive analysis of the trends in volunteering in Scandinavia during the period under investigation. Second, we aim to determine whether and to what extent the socio-demographic and institutional changes in the Scandinavian societies during this period can explain the observed trends in volunteering. The results show that the overall levels of participation in volunteering are high and stable in the Scandinavian countries, with a small upward trend. The participation levels are all high in international comparisons, but they are markedly higher in Norway and Sweden than in Denmark. Volunteers' contributions of time appear relatively stable in Norway, but Denmark has witnessed a slight decline and Sweden has witnessed a slight increase. The explanatory analysis revealed that nearly half of the upward trend in the levels of volunteering can be attributed to the expansion of education in the Scandinavian countries. The explanatory analysis also indicated that the gap in the levels of volunteering between Sweden and Norway on the one hand, and Denmark on the other hand, cannot be attributed to socio-demographic differences between the countries, as the gap is left unchanged when controlling for socio-demographic factors.