Referendum as an institute of direct will of citizens: effectiveness of implementation in national and international practice

Purpose: Analysis of the institution of the referendum as a form of direct expression of the will of citizens, identifying the effectiveness of the implementation of the referendum in national and international practice. Methodology: General scientific (systemic, structural-functional, historical), private scientific (synthesis, analysis, comparison, analogy). Results: For a number of reasons, the referendum institution was not widely spread in Russia. The reasons for the low popularity of the referendum as a form of direct expression of the will of the people are the complexity of the procedure for organizing it, conducting it, the vagueness of the requirements for the issues put forward for voting, the vagueness of the wordings established by the legislator, the high financial costs, the lack of interest of the authorities in resolving fundamentally important issues directly by the population, and the low legal literacy of the citizens themselves, passivity, their distrust of the institution in question. Novelty/originality/value: At this stage in the development of mankind, a referendum with its rich history is undoubtedly one of the most significant institutions in a democratic state, the most important criterion for building a civil society. Its improvement is legislative, the most frequent application in practice can lead to the very so-called Rousseau sovereign nation, which not only knows its rights, but can also protect them, use them legally to improve not only their own, but also everyone around him. Only the reform of the institute, not in part, but in its totality, in all its problematic aspects, can lead the state to that reality in which «its bearer of sovereignty and the only source of power in the Russian Federation is its multinational people».