Liubomir Topaloff

Liubomir Topaloff, associate professor of political science at Meiji University, Tokyo, is author of Political Parties and Euroskepticism (2012), and Political Economy of Populism (2018).

July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3

The Rise of Referendums: Elite Strategy or Populist Weapon?

Political elites once held referendums to fend off challenges to European integration. More recently, Euroskeptic parties have employed referendums to batter down the walls of elite consensus. But the spread of referendums threatens to undermine the legitimacy of representative democracy.