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Fakultäten » Philosophische Fakultät » Politikwissenschaft, Institut für » Prof. Dr. Simon Hug (ausgetreten) » Hug

Completed research project

Title / Titel The Political Effects of Referendums. A Systematic Cross-National Study
PDF Abstract (PDF, 14 KB)
Summary / Zusammenfassung The project focuses on the policy effects of referendums in a cross-national perspective (the EU, Switzerland, Norway). The central research question is whether the presence of direct-democratic institutions leads to a closer correspondence between public preferences (i.e., the median voter) and policy outcomes than what is otherwise the case; and, if so, whether different types of direct-democratic institutions have different effect in this respect. Our a priori assumption is that direct democracy does make policies more public-preference oriented, the more so the easier it is for citizens to launch a vote on a given issue. We use three types of information: measurements of policy outcomes (gleaned from Blanpain's /International Encyclopaedia for Labour Law and Industrial Relations/ analysed with 'Wordscores'); measurements of public opinion (taken from various cross-sectional surveys); and detailed information on existing direct-democratic institutional provisions.
Keywords / Suchbegriffe referendums, political institutions, policy effects
Project leadership and contacts /
Projektleitung und Kontakte
Prof. Dr. Simon Hug, PhD (Project Leader) hug@pwi.uzh.ch
Dr. Karin Gilland Lutz gilland@pwi.uzh.ch
Funding source(s) /
Unterstützt durch
SNF (Personen- und Projektförderung), Other Public Sources (e.g. Federal or Cantonal Agencies)
 
In collaboration with /
In Zusammenarbeit mit
George Tsebelis, UCLA
Initiative and Referendum Institute
United States

Alexander Trechsel, C2D, University of Geneva

Switzerland

Duration of Project / Projektdauer Mar 2005 to Feb 2007