ABSTRACT
The referendum is a controversial tool: traditionally, as the constitutional or political debates at the dawn of the first representative regimes attest; periodically, as on the occasion of specific consultations which have produced criticized results or inflicted a blow to current governments (such as those on the European Constitutional Treaty in 2005); at the present, since the Brexit ‘shock’ and the British Prime minister’s resignation, followed a few months later by that of the Italian Prime Minister disavowed in his draft institutional reforms. Outside Europe, the October 2016 referendum in Colombia, which resulted in the rejection of peace agreements deemed as ‘historic’, also created uncertainty and it might have precipitated the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Colombian President a few days later.
