Based on survey data for Switzerland, new empirical findings on direct democracy are presented. In the first part, the authors show that, on average, public employees receive lower financial compensation under more direct democratic institutions. However, top bureaucrats are more constrained in...

Institutional factors in the form of direct democracy (via initiatives and referenda) and federal structure (local autonomy) systematically and sizeably raise self-reported individual well-being in a cross-regional econometric analysis. This positive effect can be attributed to political...