Editing Referendum (section)

===Undue limitations on regular government power===
Several commentators have noted that the use of [[Popular initiative|citizens' initiatives]] to amend constitutions has so tied the government to a jumble of popular demands as to render the government unworkable. A 2009 article in ''[[The Economist]]'' argued that this had restricted the ability of the [[California]] state government to tax the people and pass the budget, and called for an entirely new Californian constitution.<ref>{{Cite news
 | title=California: The ungovernable state
 | magazine=[[The Economist]]
 | location=[[London]]
 | date=16–22 May 2009
 | pages=33–36
 | url=http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?STORY_ID=13649050
 | access-date=8 September 2009
 | archive-date=4 September 2009
 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090904195421/http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13649050
 | url-status=live
 }}</ref>

A similar problem also arises when elected governments accumulate excessive debts. That can severely reduce the effective margin for later governments.

Both these problems can be moderated by a combination of other measures as 
* strict rules for correct accounting on budget plans and effective public expenditure;
* mandatory assessment by an independent public institution of all budgetary implications of all legislative proposals, before they can be approved;
* mandatory prior assessment of the constitutional coherence of any proposal;
* interdiction of extra-budget expenditure (tax payers anyway have to fund them, sooner or later).