Economics Letters 120 (2013) 36–39 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Economics Letters journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet On the design of citizens’ initiatives in a union of states Nicola Maaser ∗ Department of Economics, University of Bremen, Mary-Somerville-Straße 5, 28359 Bremen, Germany highlights • For a successful initiative in a union of states state-specific thresholds need to be reached. • The campaign organizer rationally decides which states to target. • Proportional thresholds avoid distortions in the initiative process if constituencies exhibit similar variation of preferences. • Degressive thresholds are preferable if preference heterogeneity increases in population size. article info Article history: Received 20 December 2012 Received in revised form 12 March 2013 Accepted 22 March 2013 Available online 28 March 2013 Keywords: Initiatives Political campaigns Direct democracy abstract The paper studies the design of popular initiatives in unions of states. We analyze the effect of state- specific threshold requirements on the incentives of a rational campaign organizer who decides which constituencies to target. If the heterogeneity of preferences in a population increases with its size, de- gressively proportional thresholds satisfy the normative objective of ‘neutrality’ between individuals from different states. In contrast, thresholds which are linear in population size are ‘neutral’ if a priori no dif- ferences between states are acknowledged. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction One of the key innovations in the democratic processes of the European Union (EU) is the introduction of the European citizens’ initiative (ECI) as established in the 2009 Treaty of Lisbon. While direct democratic instruments form part of the political culture at the sub-national or national level in many advanced democracies including most of the EU member states and have been used in- creasingly in the last two decades (see, e.g., Bogdanor, 1994; Setälä, 1999), the ECI is the first attempt of implementing a piece of direct democracy in a union of states. 1 Article 11 (4) of the Treaty pro- vides that [. . . ] not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States may take the initiative of inviting the Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens ∗ Tel.: +49 421218 58555. E-mail addresses: nicola.maaser@zes.uni-bremen.de, nicola.maaser@uni-bayreuth.de. 1 Starting with a French referendum in March 1972 there has been a number of national referenda on Europe, i.e., on enlargement of or accession to the European Union (or its predecessors). In some cases, e.g., the Netherlands, these referenda provided the first instance of direct democracy at the national level. consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties. Being addressed to the European Commission which is respon- sible for initiating policy proposals and monitoring policy imple- mentation, the ECI promises to give citizens the possibility to exert influence on the political agenda of the EU. 2 While in most democracies using that instrument a successful initiative either requires the legislature to act or directly triggers a popular vote, EU law-makers are not legally bound to take any legislative action in response to the collection of signatures. In the words of the European Commission, the ECI ‘‘does not affect the Commission’s right of initiative, it will, however, oblige the Com- mission, as a college, to give serious consideration to the requests made by citizens’’ (EU Commission Staff Working Document SEC (2010) 370). If a citizens’ initiative is presented according to the rules, the Commission will have to issue a communication within three months of submission. It seems therefore fair to describe the European Citizens’ Initia- tive as a petition or popular motion which leaves practically full control to the established European political institutions, in partic- ular the Commission. Even though the new right is not nearly as 2 By contrast, a petition (provided for in Articles 24 and 227 TFEU and introduced in 1992) is addressed to the European Parliament. 0165-1765/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2013.03.035