Through direct democracy, California voters pass local and state initiative measures, assuming the role of the legislature and many times mandating how government should act or spend funds. But are voters really getting what they want through the initiative process? Initiatives known as...

Abstract Does the state ballot initiative process affect American states’ ability to meet widely accepted standards of “good governance?” This question is relevant in many places, but especially in California which makes the heaviest use of the popular initiative. While much recent...

Abstract Voters are thought to rely on elite endorsements in helping them make decisions. Their ability to use these endorsements is especially important in direct democracy, since ballot measures are complex policy proposals that lack partisan cues printed on the ballot. Using an exit survey,...

Summary Most German states changed their local constitutions during the 1990s in order to become more citizen-friendly. To reach that goal, many local constitutions now allow for the direct election of mayors, initiatives and referenda, and vote-aggregation as well as vote-splitting....

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...

This is the first study that assesses the economic effects of direct democratic institutions on a cross country basis. Its results are based on up to six new measures produced to reflect the legislative basis for using direct democratic institutions as well as their factual use. In addition, a...

How a sustainable fiscal policy can be performed in a federal system is not only a Swiss problem but is also discussed in other federal countries like Germany and Austria, and in the European Union. Contrary to most other countries, the Swiss fiscal system is characterised by an extensive fiscal...

In this paper, the introduction of direct-democratic decision-making in all EU decisions is considered when it is feasible without prohibitively increasing decision-making costs. We start with the contractarian argument that each constitution is a contract joining the citizens of a state and...

In existing models of direct democratic institutions, the median voter benefits, but representative politicians are harmed since their policy choices can be overridden. This is a puzzle, since representative politicians were instrumental in creating these institutions. I build a model of direct...

Using data of Swiss referenda from 1981 to 1999, this paper presents new empirical results which allow us to discriminate better between the decision and mobilisation hypotheses of electoral participation. First, theoretical considerations which lead to these hypotheses are presented as well as...