Three-stage people's legislation

As a three-stage Citizenlawmaking is any method of the Citizenlawmaking through which the people a law can decide by means of three steps.

General

• The popular initiative represents the prelude to the three-stage national legislative process. Here, a certain, relatively small number of signatures must be freely collected for a draft law in order to obtain a referral to parliament and approval for a referendum .
• In the case of a referendum , a certain significantly higher number of voters must express their support for the cause of the referendum within a certain period of time so that the referendum can be introduced into parliament. This can be done through free collection of signatures, through official entry on lists or a combination of both.
• For the final referendum , which usually follows a rejection of the referendum, all voters are called upon to take part in the vote on the draft law in order to either accept or reject it.

Germany

• Most of the German federal states have three-tier national legislation. In some, however, the first stage in the legal text is not called " popular initiative " but "application for approval of a popular initiative " .
• Most of the proposals for people's legislation that are discussed at the federal level and which have received the most attention also have three stages.
• In the Weimar Republic there was a procedure for people's legislation that ranged between three- and two-tier popular legislation : The first stage, the "application for approval of a referendum" only required 5,000 signatures or an organization whose board could make a support of 100,000 credible .