Potentials of Direct Democracy in an Extremely Majoritarian System: The Case of Hungary Zoltán Tibor Pállinger (Andrássy University Budapest) 1. Introduction Hungary’s political system is grounded on the idea of representative democracy. The country has a long tradition of parliamentarianism. As it is the case with many other Central- and Eastern-European countries, direct democratic instruments where introduced into the country’s political repertoire during the transition from state-socialism to democracy during the “Third wave” (Huntington 1993, 16). It was the party state’s parliament which, seeking to enhance the decaying communist system’s legitimacy, introduced a bill on referendums and popular initiatives in June 1989, even before the constitutional amendments introducing democracy were enacted in October 1989 and the first free elections were held in March/April 1990 (Pállinger 2012, 113). Direct democracy, however, is quite alien to Hungarian political traditions and practices. Since their introduction direct democratic instruments caused a problem regarding their adjustment to the predominant representative democracy. The original act on referendum and popular initiative (Act XVII/1989) was not entirely in line with the new democratic institutional setting, and the 50 % participation threshold questioned its practicability. The integration of direct democratic elements into the representative system made numerous clarifications necessary. Therefore, the Constitutional Court (CC) grew into the position of a major actor in shaping Hungarian direct democracy. It helped to clarify procedural ambiguities and its fundamental decisions became guiding principles for the parliamentary law-making. In 1997 the parliament amended the constitution and the act on referendum and popular initiative, thereby lowering the approval threshold to 25 % and clarifying some procedural questions. In April 2011 the parliament adopted a new constitution (=Fundamental Law [FL]), which restored the 50 % participation threshold, abolished the agenda initiative and the parliament’s competence to initiate a nationwide referendum. Finally, the parliament enacted a new act on referendum and popular initiative (Act CCXXXVIII/2013), which implemented the new basic law’s provisions and brought further procedural clarification.