The Political Effects of Referendums. A Systematic Cross-National Study

Completed Research Project

Title / Titel: The Political Effects of Referendums. A Systematic Cross-National Study

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