Direct Legislation in North America and Europe: Promoting or Restricting Biotechnology?

Abstract

This article analyzes the impact of direct legislation, such as initiatives and referenda, on policies for agro-food and medical biotechnologies. Between 1980 and 2007, citizens around the world voted on biotechnology policies on 25 occasions. The analysis of these referenda and initiatives has shown that the mobilization of the popular initiative has proven to be an institution for successfully promoting more state intervention, in particular for agro-food biotechnology. Direct democracy contributed to opening up the policy-making process for interests critical towards biotechnology and thus helped to produce a more inclusive policy-making process and provided a counterweight to the influence of physicians and research interests on public policies. However, direct legislation also allowed proponents of biotechnology to promote medical research and applications.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Uwe Serdült and his team from the Centre for Research on Direct Democracy (c2d) in Aarau, Switzerland for the research in their database on direct democracy; Audrey L'Espérance for her assistance in researching the US cases, and Sara Rozman, for her research on the case of Slovenia. We would also like to thank the four anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions.

Notes

1. By using the term of direct legislation, we do not exclude popular initiatives that allow amending or revising the constitution, as is for example the case in Switzerland.

2. Depending on the procedure for scrutinizing the content of an initiative, the government and the courts may, however, have a say in whether a proposition is admissible, i.e. constitutional, or not.

3. If the policy-making process results in no state intervention or the adoption of self-regulatory mechanism organized interests might turn to the popular initiative.

4. Database: Database of the C2D, Center for direct democracy http://www.c2d.ch/ and National Conference of State Legislators, Ballot Measure Database, http://www.ncsl.org/programs/legman/elect/dbintro.htm: search for years 1980 to 2005 by October 2005, Keywords biotechnology, biomedicine, stem cell, in vitro fertilization, eggs, sperm, donation, surrogacy, surrogate motherhood, cloning, genetic, genetically modified, genetically engineered, genes, DNA.

5. We are not taking into account cases where initiatives or referenda failed to collect the necessary signatures, where they did not reach the ballot stage for legal reasons such as the conformity of initiatives to basic constitutional principles. Ballots voted on and the policies later declared unconstitutional by a court have been taken into account.

6. In the canton of Glarus, the yearly citizen assembly voted on the issue of assisted reproductive technology. The initiative for the proposal came from the citizens; we have thus classified this case with the initiatives, even though it was legally speaking not a popular initiative.

7. With the exception of total revisions of the constitution and initiatives taking the form of general suggestions.

8. In the case of an initiative and counter-proposal a third question is added asking the citizen which of the two they prefer.

9. The cryopreservation of impregnated eggs is permitted.

10. Swiss norms also allow for ‘negative’ labeling, i.e. using the fact that a food product does not contain GMO for marketing purposes.

11. The Federal Council is the government.

12. National Conference of State Legislation: http://www.ncsl.org/programs/health/genetics/charts.htm, http://www.ncsl.org/programs/health/genetics/geneticsDB.cfm (last consulted December 2008).

13. In the case of Virginia, it is not clear whether therapeutic cloning is prohibited, or only reproductive cloning. Louisiana prohibits research on IVF embryos: further investigations are needed to interpret this prohibition.

14. A number of states also adopted bills imposing more severe penalties for activists destroying GM crop fields. A few states issue their own authorizations for field trials (Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Vermont), taking into account, however, prior decisions of the APHIS (US Department of Agriculture). In the case of pesticides, with some exceptions, states base their decisions and also the registration on the EPA's decision and registration. California runs its own authorization and registering program with respect to pesticides (see Taylor et al. 2004).

15. Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, source: http://environmentalcommons.org/gmo-tracker.html.

16. Norme in materia di procreazione medicalmente assistita; Law No. 40/2004 of 19 February 2004, published in the Official Journal on February 24, 2004.

17. Official Gazette, No. 11 (1977), p. 572.

18. Handbook of Committee for Freedom of Choice 2001: 4.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christine Rothmayr Allison

Christine Rothmayr Allison is associate professor of political science at the Université de Montréal. She is the co-editor and contributing author of The Politics of Biotechnology in North America and Europe (Lanham, MD: Lexington 2007) and Comparative Biomedical Policy (London: Routledge 2004). Her research on biotechnology issues has been published in the European Journal of Political Research and Comparative Political Studies among others.

Frédéric Varone

Frédéric Varone is professor of political science at the University of Geneva (Switzerland). His current research interests include comparative public policy and public sector reforms. He has published articles in Journal of European Public Policy, Comparative Political Studies, Governance, European Journal of Political Research, Journal of Public Policy and West European Politics.