Зарубіжний досвід закріплення права народу на участь у законотворчості
Foreign Experience of Establishing the Right of the People to Participate in Legislation

Summary/Abstract: The article analyzes the foreign experience of consolidating the right of the people to participate in lawmaking. The following conclusions were made in the course of the research: in general, there are two common approaches to determining the minimum number of persons (only citizens who have the right to vote): proportional (the proportion of the total number of voters is set); quantitative (a clear number of voters is determined, whose initiative is sufficient to be considered “popular”. Foreign experience in the forms of people’s participation in law-making is extremely multifaceted, as it provides a wide variety of forms, which we think should be classified according to the criterion of bilateral obligations and the level of inclusiveness of Parliament in relations with the people. It should be noted that we see the greatest efficiency in the implementation of such forms of direct participation of the people in lawmaking, namely: legislative initiative; referendum; activity of consultative and advisory bodies, and the people’s veto should be considered as a kind of referendum, with a complex structure and mechanism for implementation. The existence of the limits of people’s access to participation in law-making is analyzed and it is determined that most of the Constitutions of states declare the inadmissibility of putting to a referendum issues related to: tax and budget system, international activities, amnesty. Instead, we believe that the wording of the Swiss Constitution is extremely accurate. The first set of issues on which the people have the right to initiate legislation is identical to the range of issues considered by Parliament. As for the Swiss Constitution, it gives extremely broad initiatives to the people not only at the level of the state as a whole, but also at the level of the cantons. Thus, we conclude that the right of the people to participate in lawmaking is an integral part of the system of democratic rights and freedoms, and the trend we see based on the analysis of the Constitutions of democracies shows a trend towards expanding models and forms of such participation. what should be taken into account during the constitutional and legal regulation of this issue in Ukraine.

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