plebiscitary

Plebiscitary democracy is defined as where a leader is elected but once elected has almost all of the power.

This is plebiscitary, not parliamentary democracy."

Nixon's Presidential model resembled the plebiscitary Presidency.

Theories of what he calls plebiscitary democracy assume romantic and utopian notions of human nature and society.

Plebiscitary politics enhances, indeed exalts, executive preponderance in policy-making and implementation, at the expense of legislatures.

The plebiscitary projects were "the most powerful unified action of the German working class in the period of relative stabilization of capitalism".

In most liberal democracies it has gradually been supplemented by a new plebiscitary politics, based on the cult of charismatic leaders built up through the mass media.

True, the change was one of dynasty only, not of /regime/, albeit Louis-Philippe posed rather as a plebiscitary monarch.

The plebiscitary Presidency is a Presidency that is accountable only during elections or impeachment rather than daily to the Congress, the press and the public.

According to Mommsen, Weber's sociological idea of charismatic authority was evident in his political views, and was "close to fascist notions of plebiscitary leadership."

See Bush's Plebiscitary Presidency The plebiscitary President would govern by decrees such as executive orders.

Mr. Perot's candidacy and the maneuvering it provoked among the other contenders is an example of what Mr. Fishkin decries as a shift toward "plebiscitary" democracy.

Progressive reforms such as initiatives and referendums, like Perot's vague notions of direct democracy, tended to bypass legislatures and to concentrate plebiscitary power in allegedly nonpartisan executives--the president, governors, city managers.

In short, the war had schooled de Gaulle in certain kinds of politics - in the power politics of international relations and in the image-building and propagandizing of plebiscitary politics.

EVEN in California, birthplace of the tax revolt and showcase of plebiscitary excess, there has never been an extravaganza like the fight brewing over the recall of Gov. Gray Davis.

But now there was in place a plebiscitary system; the total number of presidential primaries had risen sharply, thereby substantially increasing popular participation in the selection of delegates and further weakening the power of party leaders.

Could anti-Semitism, so pivotal in Hitler's 'world view', have been of only minor significance in forming the bonds between Führer and people which gave the Third Reich its popular legitimation and plebiscitary base of acclamation?

The solution took the form of a regime that, to most intents and purposes, was plebiscitary in character, with a new constitution and with a president possessing considerable popular support but in which the democratic institutions did not operate properly.

Also, the direct experience of 'contact' with the Führer through his major speeches, which for years had served as the ritualistic form of plebiscitary 'meeting'between the Leader and his people, to be repeated at regular intervals, took place only infrequently after 1942.

At his total war speech delivered in 1943, audiences shouted Sieg Heil as Joseph Goebbels solicited from them "a kind of plebiscitary 'Ja' to self destruction in a war which Germany could by now neither win nor end through negotiated peace".

He deplores, among many other things, "plebiscitary tendencies" in governance, forced desegregation ("people should be allowed to do what comes naturally," and policies should be "responsive to local feelings, local customs and local needs") and egalitarianism generally (because "every attempt at social leveling ends with leveling to the bottom, never to the top").

This means that the politician must be forever inventive ("The roaches have developed an immunity to this year's roach spray," in Morris's felicitous metaphor), but it also means that the future of America's direct democracy - a kind of plebiscitary Internet chat room - is, in Morris's eyes, bright.