Referendums are often considered the superior form of democratic expression, but how legitimate are they really?

“France is at war,” declared the French President, François Hollande, in front of the Congress of the French Parliament on 16th November 2015. He was using the same words as Le Monde on 14th November and Manuel Valls the same evening on TF1 television news. The Prime Minister then said that Islamic State (IS) would lose the struggle, but he admitted that it was only just beginning.

The economic crisis and the democracy crisis share some of the same causes: redefining the ideal of democracy, the impotence of current regulatory methods in the face of collective decision-making, and a crisis within political programmes.