Empowering the Next Generation : The Role of Direct Democracy in Youth Enfranchisement

Anecdotal evidence on historical suffrage extensions suggests that voters are more reluctant to extend voting rights than politicians. In this paper, we systematically analyze whether and how the extent of direct democracy affects the willingness of the electorate to share political power with the young. We exploit a new municipality-level dataset of two Swiss federal referendums on lowering the voting age from 20 to 18. According to our difference-in-differences (DiD) estimates, the voters are more reluctant to lower the voting age when they have access to more direct-democratic instruments at the municipal level, and thus, more power to lose. Consistent with this explanation, the negative effect disappears and becomes even positive if the youngsters are already enfranchised on the local level at the time of the federal vote. We find evidence that the latter results from direct democracy enhancing the contact between the different groups. We further provide evidence of socio-demographic factors affecting the electorate’s willingness to lower the voting age