The Contradictory Effects of Consensus Democracy on the Size of Government: Evidence from the Swiss Cantons

2007 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 359-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
ADRIAN VATTER ◽  
MARKUS FREITAG
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Government Size ◽  
Size Of Government ◽  
Suitable Alternative ◽  
Government Action ◽  
Consensus Democracy ◽  
Broad Concept ◽  
Swiss Cantons

In this research note we have set ourselves the following three principal objectives. First, we show that the well-known concept of consensus democracy, which covers various forms of the division of power, involves analytical problems. Confusion may arise when relating consensus democracy to government action, because the institutions subsumed under the broad concept of consensus democracy, such as executive power-sharing, the multiparty system and federalism, are likely to have different and contradictory effects on the size of government. In this vein, we provide considerable evidence that different aspects of consensus democracy have contradictory effects on government size. In doing so, we endorse the view that it is only variance in the type of democracy (majoritarian versus consensus democracy) that causes systematic differences in government action. Secondly, in scrutinizing the contradictory effects of various aspects of consensus democracy on government size, we distinguish and operationalize the three different analytical views of Crepaz, Lijphart and Tsebelis on how political institutions may be distinguished with regard to their veto nature. Thirdly, we try to close a gap in understanding comparative politics, by quantifying and comparing the veto potential of direct democracy. International comparative investigations of the effects of direct democracy on public policy are hardly possible. The Swiss cantons present themselves as a suitable alternative source of evidence, given that they vary considerably with respect to their plebiscitary elements.To understand why consensus democracies have a contradictory effect on government size, it is crucial to bear in mind that there are two separate dimensions of the majoritarian–consensual contrast.

scholarly journals The Comparative Politics of Climate Change

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Harrison ◽  
Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Economic Costs ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Government Action ◽  
Institutional Conditions ◽  
Change Leaders ◽  
Abatement Policies ◽  
Mitigate Climate Change

The authors use a comparative politics framework, examining electoral interests, policy-maker's own normative commitments, and domestic political institutions as factors influencing Annex 1 countries' decisions on Kyoto Protocol ratification and adoption of national policies to mitigate climate change. Economic costs and electoral interests matter a great deal, even when policy-makers are morally motivated to take action on climate change. Leaders' normative commitments may carry the day under centralized institutional conditions, but these commitments can be reversed when leaders change. Electoral systems, federalism, and executive-legislative institutional configurations all influence ratification decisions and subsequent policy adoption. Although institutional configurations may facilitate or hinder government action, high levels of voter concern can trump institutional obstacles. Governments' decisions to ratify, and the reduction targets they face upon ratification, do not necessarily determine their approach to carbon emissions abatement policies: for example, ratifying countries that accept demanding targets may fail to take significant action.

scholarly journals Lijphart expanded: three dimensions of democracy in advanced OECD countries?

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Vatter
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Recent Period ◽  
Consensus Democracy ◽  
Case Selection ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
The Relationship

This article attempts to examine the relationship between the most important political institutions and direct democracy in 23 modern OECD democracies by expanding Lijphart’s concept of majoritarian and consensus democracy. The article updates Lijphart’s data collection for the most recent period (1997–2006); it responds to criticisms of Lijphart’s measurement of a number of variables and of case selection, and it integrates direct democracy as an additional variable. Based on factor analysis, the main finding is that there are not just two, but three dimensions of democracy in advanced democracies. The horizontal dimension comprises the disproportionality of the electoral system, the number of parties, the executive–legislative relationship, the interest groups, and the degree of central bank independence. In the vertical dimension of democracy, we find federalism, decentralization, bicameralism, the rigidity of constitutional provisions, and the strength of judicial review. The top-to-bottom dimension of democracy comprises the type of cabinet government and the strength of direct democracy. In contrast to earlier research, our empirical analysis furnishes the hypothesis that direct democracy is not a variable that is independent of all other political institutions. While active direct democracy goes hand-in-hand with broadly supported multi-party governments, purely representative constitutions frequently appear in conjunction with minimal winning cabinets.

Direct Democracy and Public Policy

2019 ◽  
pp. 362-379
Author(s):  
John Matsusaka
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Median Voter ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Fiscal Policies ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
American States ◽  
Conservative Policy ◽  
Initiative Process ◽  
Swiss Cantons

An extensive literature seeks to measure the effect of the initiative and referendum on public policies. Several conclusions emerge: The initiative and referendum have different effects on policy. Requiring popular approval of fiscal policies (mandatory referendums) results in lower expenditure, taxes, and debt. The initiative process gives voters more power and results in policies closer to the median voter preference; this often has reduced spending (American states, Swiss cantons), but sometimes has increased spending (cities). The initiative is associated with more socially conservative policy choices. Spurious correlation is a concern in many studies, and more research on causality is needed.

scholarly journals The integrative force of political institutions? Direct democracy and voter turnout across ethnic and nativity groups

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Manatschal
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
First Generation ◽  
The Us ◽  
Alternative Measures ◽  
Hispanic Voters ◽  
Democratic Elections ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractMuch has been written on the positive effect of direct democracy (initiatives, referendums) on voter turnout. However, we have limited knowledge about potential differential effects on voters belonging to various ethnic groups. The paper argues that depending on a group’s responsiveness to the political context, direct democracy can (dis-)integrate voters (from) into the electorate. Empirical analysis of Current Population Survey (CPS) voting supplement survey data, together with data on the absolute use of direct democracy across US states, corroborates this theoretical expectation, however lending more support for the disintegrating assumption. Frequent direct democratic elections further widen the negative voting gap between first-generation Asian voters and voters living in the US for three generations or longer, whereas they tend to diminish this voting gap for first-generation Hispanic voters. The disintegrative pattern for first-generation Asian voters remains even significant when excluding California from the state sample, yet not the integrative tendency for first-generation Hispanics. Additional analyses using alternative measures of direct democracy and voting, and applying statistical adjustments to address causality concerns, confirm the robustness of these findings, which shed light on the so-far underexplored (dis-)integrative potential of political institutions.

Open Democracy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hélène Landemore
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Democratic Representation ◽  
The People ◽  
Laws And Policies ◽  
The Right ◽  
Turn Over ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Ordinary Citizens

To the ancient Greeks, democracy meant gathering in public and debating laws set by a randomly selected assembly of several hundred citizens. To the Icelandic Vikings, democracy meant meeting every summer in a field to discuss issues until consensus was reached. Our contemporary representative democracies are very different. Modern parliaments are gated and guarded, and it seems as if only certain people — with the right suit, accent, wealth, and connections — are welcome. Diagnosing what is wrong with representative government and aiming to recover some of the lost openness of ancient democracies, this book presents a new paradigm of democracy in which power is genuinely accessible to ordinary citizens. This book favors the ideal of “representing and being represented in turn” over direct-democracy approaches. Supporting a fresh nonelectoral understanding of democratic representation, the book recommends centering political institutions around the “open mini-public” — a large, jury-like body of randomly selected citizens gathered to define laws and policies for the polity, in connection with the larger public. It also defends five institutional principles as the foundations of an open democracy: participatory rights, deliberation, the majoritarian principle, democratic representation, and transparency. The book demonstrates that placing ordinary citizens, rather than elites, at the heart of democratic power is not only the true meaning of a government of, by, and for the people, but also feasible and, today more than ever, urgently needed.

scholarly journals Institutions, Ideologies, and Comparative Political Theory

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 423-438
Author(s):  
Joshua Simon
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Comparative Political Theory ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Institutional Contexts ◽  
Methodological Reflection ◽  
Insight Into

The growing prominence of comparative political theory has inspired extensive and fruitful methodological reflection, raising important questions about the procedures that political theorists should apply when they select texts for study, interpret their passages, and assess their arguments. But, notably, comparative political theorists have mainly rejected the comparative methods used in the subfield of comparative politics, because they argue that applying the comparative method would compromise both the interpretive and the critical projects that comparative political theory should pursue. In this article, I describe a comparative approach for the study of political ideas that offers unique insight into how the intellectual and institutional contexts that political thinkers occupy influence their ideas. By systematically describing how political thinking varies across time and over space in relation to the contexts within which political thinkers live and work, the comparative method can serve as the foundation for both deconstructive critiques, which reveal the partial interests that political ideas presented as universally advantageous actually serve, and reconstructive critiques, which identify particular thinkers or traditions of political thought that, because of the contexts in which they developed, offer compelling critical perspectives on existing political institutions.

A Comparative Politics of Gender Symposium Introduction: Comparative Politics and the Logics of a Comparative Politics of Gender

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Beckwith
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Women's Studies ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Administrative Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Studies ◽  
Women’S Studies ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Sex Equality

This symposium is the culmination of work that began in October 2007, when fourteen scholars from Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States convened at Case Western Reserve University to participate in the research conference Toward a Comparative Politics of Gender: Advancing the Discipline along Interdisciplinary Boundaries. The conference was funded by a Presidential Initiative Grant from the University and further supported by an ACES grant. Dr. Gregory Eastwood made available the Library of the Inamori Center for Ethnics and Excellence for our conference meetings. Many thanks to Linda Gilmore, Tonae Bolton-Dove, Gail Papay, Shelley White, and Sharon Skowronski for their expert administrative support. Professors Dorothy Miller (Women's Studies), Rosalind Simson (Philosophy, Law and Women's Studies), and Kelly McMann (Political Science and International Studies) served as discussants of the conference papers. To Theda Skocpol, who presented remarks at the opening dinner of the conference, and to the scholars who participated in the CPG conference and whose contributions are included in this symposium, I offer my deepest appreciation and gratitude.What do we mean by a comparative politics of gender? How would a comparative politics of gender advance our understanding of politics generally? What would it take to develop a gendered comparative political analysis? In the essays that follow, Teri Caraway, Louise Chappell, Leslie Schwindt-Bayer, and Aili Mari Tripp elaborate their understandings of a comparative politics of gender. Five additional essays focus specifically on issues of democratization (Lisa Baldez, Georgina Waylen), political institutions and representation (Mili Caul Kittilson, Mona Lena Krook), and comparative sex equality policies (Mala Htun and Laurel Weldon). In this introductory essay, I discuss what I mean by “gender” in the context of comparative politics. Briefly enumerating the advantages of comparative politics as a subfield for a gendered analysis of political phenomena, I discuss how a comparative politics of gender can serve to advance our understanding of politics generally, and I provide an example of subfield research—the study of political violence—where gender as a metaconcept may be particularly useful. I conclude by considering what it would mean to our study of gender and of comparative politics to place gender as a central concept in comparative political research and to move to a comparative politics of gender.

scholarly journals From Comparative Public Policy to Political Economy

1995 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
JONAS PONTUSSON
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Institutional Analysis ◽  
Comparative Political Economy ◽  
Comparative Public Policy ◽  
Collective Actors ◽  
Structural Variables

The historical institutionalist tradition in comparative politics commonly assigns analytical primacy to political institutions. Whereas this polity-centeredness may be quite justifiable for purposes of comparative public policy, students of comparative political economy should pay systematic attention not only to economic institutions but also to a range of economic-structural variables that lie beyond the conventional confines of institutional analysis. Providing the basis for an analysis of collective actors and their interests, such an approach is needed to account for institutional change and policy realignments within stable institutions.

scholarly journals Editorial Announcement

2008 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-259
Author(s):  
TAKASHI INOGUCHI
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Science Citation Index ◽  
Editorial Office ◽  
Political Behaviour ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Geographical Locations

We are pleased that starting with Volume 8 (2008), the journal is to be included in the Thomson/ISI Social Science Citation Index. This is a milestone for the journal which started in 2000 published by Cambridge University Press. We are most grateful to those who have helped us, especially Ken Firmalio Anno who has efficiently and often single-handedly run the editorial office, our contributors, and referees. Our deep gratitude also goes to those who, in their capacity as editors, associate editors, and advisors, have repeatedly rescued us with their spirit of academic solidarity of seeking truth, with disregard to differences of backgrounds and creeds, despite their geographical locations. On this occasion I would like to reiterate the journal's key characteristics: the journal covers all fields of the discipline, especially where these have a conceptual thrust, including political theory, comparative politics, political behaviour, political institutions, public policy and international institutions. At the same time, the journal seeks the best comparative articles featuring Japan or East Asia. The indexing began with Volume 8 Part 1 in April 2007 and JJPS is expected to receive its first impact factor in 2009.

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