LAUSR

ABSTRACT As part of their anti-establishment rhetoric, populists often call for more direct forms of citizen participation – most notably referendums – as a means to return ‘power to the people’. In this article, I ask what this reclaiming of ‘direct democracy’ by populist actors means for the possibility of viewing referendums as a part of the representative system of democracy. I show that referendums are commonly (mis-)understood as ‘reflecting the will of the people’, buying into the populist belief that there is a single collective will that can be represented in its entirety. In this article I develop and defend a ‘pluralistic-democratic’ account of referendum legitimacy, which is compatible with the tenets of representative democracy. I conclude by asking how this different view can be reflected in institutional design.