This paper analyzes a recent ballot in which two virtually identical popular initiatives, both demanding a decrease in the legal age of retirement in Switzerland, led to differences in approval rates of nearly seven percentage points. Based on this unique natural experiment, the existence of...

We study popular initiatives as an important element of direct democracy. The initiative process is modelled as a sequential game under uncertainty: petitioners collect signatures to qualify the initiative and elicit information about the initiative's winning probability. Politicians decide...