The National Referendum in the Polish Legal Tradition
Journal: Przegląd Prawniczy Uniwersytetu im Adama Mickiewicza
Year: 2025

This article provides a concise historical-legal analysis of the national referendum in the Polish constitutional tradition from 1918 to the present. It examines how successive political systems—the Second Republic, the People’s Republic of Poland and the Third Republic—shaped both the normative framework and the practical functioning of the referendum. The study shows that despite its constitutional status as an instrument of direct democracy, the referendum has been used predominantly for poli