ABSTRACT
About two decades ago, introducing a journal issue on institution-building and confronting the question “Do institutions matter”, Jean Laponce and Bernard Saint-Jacques gave the following answer: “Yes, institutions do matter, as leaders matter, as social forces matter, as the weight of traditions matter, as accidents matter” (1997: 233). Very much the same list may be quoted as a general guideline for seeking causes and effects of institutions, the abundance of approaches allowing for in-depth studies of selected factors as well as for broader endeavors. Here, pursuing the ambition to search for explanations and patterns that relate to the existence and use in different countries and regions of referendum provisions, two competing as well as over-lapping theoretical approaches are applied. Or, to phrase this differently: the chapter is in search of an aetiology of referendums, and implements this search by focusing on two main frameworks.
