Abstract
In the current climate of declining trust in political parties and often in the very institutions of liberal democracy, political actors often bring up proposals for the introduction of more instruments of direct democracy as a way to, in their words, empower the people disillusioned by the current system. In the Czech Republic, the debate mostly revolves around various proposals for fulfilling the Czech Constitution's expectation of a constitutional law institutionalizing a referendum.
Some parties, such as Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD), made a referendum law a key piece of their platforms for the 2017 parliamentary election. Since the election, numerous proposals for a referendum law have been floated.
The aim of this paper is threefold. First, it will provide a definition of what constitutes a measure intended to move a system toward direct democracy, since political parties' rhetoric often includes in this category measures clearly not warranting the inclusion from a Political Science standpoint (e.g. direct elections of mayors).
Second, the paper will provide an overview of what direct democracy proposals have been introduced in platforms and statements of political parties currently sitting in the lower house of Parliament, and whether or not a party has written and introduced legislative language to that end in Parliament. The third section will use the data to discern whether parliamentary parties concern themselves with direct democracy as a high-priority issue, or whether it is mostly deployed as an issue meant to energize the party's electorate, only to be moved to the back-burner after the election.