PLEBISCITE, a term borrowed from the French for a vote of all the electors in a country or given area taken on some specific question. The most familiar example of the use of the plebiscite in French history was in 1852, when the coup d'etat of 1851 was confirmed and the title of emperor was given to Napolean III. Its essential characteristic, as distinguished from the referendum (q.v.), is this :—A plebiscitary vote decides a specific question, ad hoc and pro hac vice. It is not, as in the case of the referendum, a normal method or procedure of voting applied on a general system to certain classes of legislation. It is sometimes used in England to decide questions of municipal rates or other local questions, and extensively in the Dominions and the United States on certain local or State questions. In Europe its use has been almost wholly political and national.
In that sense it is a method of ascertaining the general desire of the inhabitants of a given territory or area. As a means of the destination of populations and territories, this method was first used in the French Revolution to defend the wholesale annexations of territory made by the conquering French Republic, and subsequently by Napoleon I. It was revived by Napoleon III.
and applied (successfully for him) in the case of Nice and Savoy, and (successfully for Victor Emmanuel) in the duchies of north Italy during the years 1859-60.
The Peace Conference of 1919 proposed the taking of 17 plebiscites to settle difficult national questions of which eight were actually held. Of these the Turkish plebiscite in Transcaucasia was a farce. Others, which decided the fate of Allenstein Marien werder, of the Burgenland, of Klagenfurt, the economic destiny of Luxembourg, the attribution of the northern and southern zones of Slesvig, and the partition of Upper Silesia had substantial and important results, which are noted elsewhere under the indi vidual articles. The Versailles Treaty provided for a plebiscite of the Saar district in 1935 to decide the future of the region.