Pushed by technological, cultural and related political drivers, a ‘new plebiscitary democracy’ is emerging which challenges established electoral democracy as well as variants of deliberative democracy. The new plebiscitary democracy reinvents and radicalizes longer-existing methods (initiative, referendum, recall, primary, petition, poll) with new tools and applications (mostly digital). It comes with a comparatively thin conceptualization of democracy, invoking the bare notion of a demos whose aggregated will is to steer actors and issues in public governance in a straight majoritarian way. In addition to unravelling the reinvented logic of plebiscitary democracy in conceptual terms, this article fleshes out an empirically informed matrix of emerging formats, distinguishing between votations that are ‘political-leader’ and ‘public-issue’ oriented on the one hand, and ‘inside-out’ and ‘outside-in’ initiated on the other hand. Relatedly, it proposes an agenda for systematic research into the various guises, drivers and implications of the new plebiscitary democracy. Finally, it reflects on possible objections to the argumentation.

This paper contributes to a growing body of research on voting technology and voter confidence, which generally concludes that voters are less confident in technology—particularly in developed democracies. Using a unique survey experiment, this paper demonstrates that far fewer individuals are concerned about election fraud involving electronic voting, compared with other potential forms of election fraud such as registering ineligible voters or voter suppression. Other interesting findings emerge from the data: Older individuals are more concerned about fraud with electronic voting but the effects of age appear to be conditioned on political polarization. This paper advances our understanding of the impact of voting technology on electoral confidence, and raises important substantive and methodological questions about priming.