Direct democracy in Switzerland - Springer Link

European Journal of Political Research 33: 99–124, 1998. c 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Direct democracy in Switzerland: Do elites matter? ALEXANDER H. TRECHSEL & PASCAL SCIARINI University of Geneva, Switzerland

Abstract. Direct democratic institutions, while centrepieces of the Swiss political system, find themselves under attack. In this article, we challenge the widespread criticism that popular rights increasingly limit the political elite’s control of the decision-making process. Our analysis is based on aggregate data of all acts voted on by the Swiss Parliament since 1947 – those brought about by popular initiatives or those subject to optional and mandatory referendum – and on individual survey data on most federal votes held since 1981. We underline the high support of government and the impact of elite consensus on the destiny of legislative acts in the plebiscitary phase (submitted to a vote or not, subsequently accepted or not). While congruent with the aggregate analysis, results obtained at the individual level are less clear-cut. The influence of voting recommendations and information channels on the voter’s decision appears rather weak.

Introduction Recently, referendums have attracted increased interest both in the scholarly community and in the political arena. Several popular decisions on European integration in the aftermath of the Maastricht treaty, and the recent wave of widening of the European Union, are at the basis of this interest. Some scholars envision referendums as a means to achieve political legitimation of the widening and deepening of the European Union, through an incremental delegation of national competencies (e.g., Luthardt 1992, 1993, 1994). At the same time, institutions of direct democracy are under growing attack in Switzerland, the country with the largest experience of direct legislation.1 According to many critics, direct democratic institutions increasingly limit the control of the decision-making process by the political elite.2 This control deficit – they claim – takes both a direct and indirect form: First, Swiss citizens increasingly have recourse to instruments of direct democracy in order to oppose the projects adopted by the elite; second, even the legislative acts that do pass through the decision-making process without popular contest have indirectly been affected by the existence of the referendum. Accordingly, direct democracy has been blamed for being responsible for the inefficiency of the Swiss political system, and more especially for its difficulties in coping

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ALEXANDER H. TRECHSEL & PASCAL SCIARINI

with the challenge of European integration (Germann 1975, 1994; Borner et al. 1990, 1994; Brunetti & Straubhaar 1991; Brunetti 1992). The goal of this article is to assess the relevance of these criticisms of direct democracy. We will try to show that elites remain powerful in Switzerland. Indeed, one should not underestimate the influence that they may exert on the outcome of political processes under direct democracy. One can distinguish between two types of influence: By using cooperative strategies in the preparliamentary and parliamentary phases, elites can try to avoid the occurrence of a vote, i.e., try to avoid the launching of an optional referendum, or can try to increase the probabilities of success at the polls; when a vote is called, the elite can try to influence opinion formation prior to the ballot by using vote recommendations and information campaigns. Both types of influence are considered in this article. We start our argument in section one by discussing the theoretical consequences of direct democratic institutions for the political process, and more specifically the consequences of these for the capacity of elites to influence political outcomes. In the empirical section of the article, we combine studies of aggregate and individual survey data. Based on a large data-set developed by the Research and Documentation Center on Direct Democracy at the University of Geneva, our aggregate analysis will try to test the first type of influence described above. Contrary to most previous studies, we do not exclusively focus on legislative acts that were submitted to a popular vote, but we consider all the optional and mandatory referendums as well as the popular initiatives voted on by the Swiss Parliament since 1947 (1,485 acts). We distinguish these acts according to the legislative period (12 legislatures between 1947 and 1995), the institution concerned (optional referendum, mandatory referendum and popular initiative), and the policy domain involved.3 After a description of the recourse to direct democracy and the evolution of government support over time, we study the impact of consensus among the elite on the destiny of legislative acts voted on by the Parliament, i.e., whether the level of consensus among the parliamentary elite is significantly linked with the probability of launching a referendum, or with the acceptance of a ballot. In a third section, we turn to individual survey data on most federal votes held between 1981 and 1995, to study the second type of elite influence: We analyse the impact of various political forces that are active in the voting campaigns and of information channels on the voter’s decision. The so-called VOX-surveys cover a high number of ballots but are unfortunately not of ideal quality with respect to the questions asked and the comparability of the whole data-set. Nonetheless, they will allow us to derive some interesting additional insights into opinion formation in a direct democracy, and more especially into the determinants of government support. In a concluding sec-

DIRECT DEMOCRACY IN SWITZERLAND

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tion, we review our main results at both the aggregate and individual levels and discuss them from the perspective of elite power in a direct democratic system.

The impact of direct democracy on the control of the political process by the elites The consequences of direct democratic institutions for elite control of decisionmaking processes are twofold (Hug & Sciarini 1995). First, such institutions create a new arena for direct intervention by the electorate in some decisions.4 One can distinguish between the so-called referendum, which exists in a mandatory and in an optional form, and the popular initiative. As soon as an act subject to the optional or mandatory referendum has been adopted by Parliament, the parliamentary elite – partially – loses its control over the political process. In the first case, any group may call for a final decision by the electorate, by collecting 50,000 signatures of citizens in 90 days (100 days since April 1997) against a bill voted on by the Parliament. In the second case, the referendum automatically takes place without popular impulsion.5 The lack of control on the process is still more pronounced with respect to the popular initiative. By collecting 100.000 signatures in 18 months, any group can put any issue on the political agenda and force the elite – and then the electorate – to vote on a constitutional amendment. The vote, when it takes place, inevitably introduces uncertainty into the political process (see Ossipow 1994). To be successful, the elites’ project has to overcome the referendum hurdle, that it rally either a majority of the citizens (in the case of optional referendums) or a majority of the voters and of the cantons (in the case of a mandatory referendum or of a popular initiative) to the elite sponsored-cause. The elites may arrive at an agreement, but the electorate can refuse to follow their leaders and reject the proposal. The restrictions which the instruments of direct democracy impose on elite power lie at the heart of Switzerland’s political system. Some scholars and political leaders, however, argue that elites have lost much of their influence on the Swiss legislative process. They claim support for this view from the multiplication of, on the one hand, optional referendums and popular initiatives,6 and of government defeats in popular votes, on the other. This thesis will be empirically challenged in the second section which is based on aggregate data. If a vote is scheduled, the elite always has the possibility of increasing its chances of success by seeking to influence opinion formation through vote recommendations and information campaigns. During a voting campaign, most political actors adopt positions on the ballot: The government, political parties, labour unions, employers’ associations, economic associations,

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NGOs etc. make their respective recommendations to the voter. In addition, and depending on the issue, these actors may actively take part in the campaign and try to convince voters of their point of view. If the parliamentary majority had a perfect control over their respective electorates, the referendum arena would be meaningless. The evaluation of the scope and limits of political influence is in itself an empirical question, to which we will turn in the third section using individual survey data. The second – indirect – type of direct democratic institution is a function of the risk that a proposal could be defeated in a popular vote. According to the famous hypothesis put forward by Neidhart (1970), the referendum has had indirect effects of great significance for the functioning of the Swiss political system in general, and for the political process in particular. By occurring at the end of the political process, the referendum has a veto function, allowing people to refuse unsatisfactory bills proposed by their elites. Like the sword of Damocles, it hangs as a permanent threat over the political actions of the elite. This has led – according to Neidhart – to the development of the initial phase of the legislative process – the so-called pre-parliamentary phase – and strengthened the preferences of the elites for cooperative behaviour. Every political actor able to threaten in a credible way the whole process is invited to take part in this legislative phase, either in ‘expert’ commissions supposed to elaborate a first ‘embryo’ of consensus, or through consultative procedures aiming at analysing and compiling the positions of all interested parties, interest groups or cantons. Hence, the preparliamentary phase has transformed, according to Neidhart (1970), the Swiss ‘plebiscitarian democracy’ into a ‘bargaining democracy’.7 Again, direct democratic institutions do not leave the elites without influence on the political process: Through strategies of compromise they can still try to reduce the risks of being vetoed by successful use of the optional referendum and/or overruled by defeat in a popular vote. One should, however, note that such strategies of compromise are subject to ‘transaction costs’ (Lehner 1984), in the sense that the legislative process is often a time-consuming one and typically produces watered-down compromises which, because they take major interests into account, try to avoid the referendum threat. In other words, the Swiss legislative consensus has a price in terms of both the elite’s room for manoeuvre and the quality of the decision arrived at. Adversaries of direct democracy put forward this argument to blame direct legislation for the slowness and rigidity of the Swiss political system and ask accordingly for a limitation of the popular rights (Borner et al.1990, 1994; Germann 1994). There are, however, good reasons to question this unilateral explanation, which treats direct democratic institutions as the main – not to say unique – factor of the search for consensus and the subsequent inefficiency of the


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Swiss political system (Kriesi 1995: 181–186; Sciarini 1994: 39-43). Without going into details, we would like to stress that other factors can contribute to elite preference for decisions based on consensus. Cooperative decisionmaking processes also dominate in other small western European countries where there are no (or less used) direct democratic institutions. According to Katzenstein (1984, 1985), it is the economic openness and the related vulnerability of the small European countries that lead through corporatist arrangements to national consensus and political stability. Similarly, Switzerland appears as the paradigmatic case of consensus democracy in Lijphart’s (1984) classification, even though direct democracy does not belong to the criteria selected by the author.8 That being said, one should add that measuring the impact of the various institutional and informal factors that may favour consensus is an extremely difficult empirical and methodological task. For instance, testing the indirect effects of popular rights would need a detailed study of the political process of all acts concerned. Such a study is far beyond the scope of this article. We will nonetheless provide an original contribution in studying the impact of consensus among the elite on the popular acceptability of an act.

Analysis based on aggregate data The use of direct democracy Switzerland certainly is the leader in the use of direct democratic devices at the national level. Butler and Ranney (1994) identified 728 popular votes held around the world between 1900 and 1993. Almost half of them (357) took place in Switzerland. Table 1 shows that this is mainly due to the votes held after World War II. Between 1947 and 1995 289 popular votes were held in Switzerland. Almost half of them were mandatory, whereas the number of popular initiatives and optional referendums has been roughly the same. Moreover, the number of popular votes has strongly increased during the post-war period, especially since the early seventies: more than two-thirds of the votes were held during the last six legislatures. Finally, this increase is not due to one specific direct democratic institution, but to all of them simultaneously.9 While Table 1 shows a strong increase of the use of optional referendums in absolute terms, it also reveals that the percentage of bills that were actually attacked through the optional referendum among all legislative acts subject to this institution remains highly stable at a very low level: 5.9 percent on average during the whole period.10 Stressing the high stability of optional referendums submitted to popular votes, in relative terms, is therefore as

289

Total

146

6 5 9 9 6 8 19 19 13 15 14 23 143

9 12 8 6 3 4 15 25 10 17 19 15 132

5b 7 13 7 5 8 22 17c 3 14 4 17d 97

3 4 8 6 5 7 17 11 10 10 3 13 35

2 3 5 1 0 1 5 6 3 4 1 4 1271

86 80 87 82 89 86 111 99 112 103 137 199 75

6 6 1 5 2 2 5 12 3 7 14 12 43

2 1 1 3 1 1 2 8 2 4 10 8 32

4 5 0 2 1 1 3 4 1 3 4 4 150

5 10 10 5 3 12 19 10 23 18 15 20 82

4 4 3 3 2 2 7 15 7 11 15 9 6

1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 2

76

2 2 7 15 6 10 14 7

3 4 3

Popular initiatives Qualified for Voted Accepted Rejected ballota

follows: 46 initiatives have been withdrawn, 4 were invalidated, one was dropped and one was accepted by the Federal Assembly. 17 popular initiatives that qualified for ballot between 1991 and 1995 are still pending. Note that of the 150 initiatives that qualified for ballot since 1947 only 81 were voted. The total number of 82 initiatives in the column ‘voted’ contains one initiative that qualified for ballot before 1947, but which was voted by the people and the cantons during the first legislative period under consideration. b During this legislative period, one act submitted to the mandatory referendum was not voted, but replaced by another act. c During this legislative period, one act submitted to the mandatory referendum was not voted, but replaced by another act. d During the legislative period 1991-1995, the exact number of adopted acts submitted to the mandatory referendum is 21. Four of these acts will be voted during the legislative period 1996–1999. Sources: Federal Chancellery (Bern), Research and Documentation Centre on Direct Democracy (C2D, University of Geneva) and own calculations.

a The difference between the number of initiatives which qualified for ballot and the number of voted initiatives can be explained as

15 17 17 15 9 12 34 44 23 32 33 38

Mandatory referendums

Optional referendums Potentially submitted Voted Accepted Rejected Voted Accepted Rejected objects Voted Accepted Rejected

Total of popular votes

1947–51 1951–55 1955–59 1959–63 1963–67 1967–71 1971–75 1975–79 1979–83 1983–87 1987–91 1991–95

Legislature

Table 1. Acts voted by the Federal Parliament and the people between 1947 and 1995 (by legislature)

104 ALEXANDER H. TRECHSEL & PASCAL SCIARINI


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Figure 1. Legislative acts by policy domains.

relevant as emphasising the increase of its use in absolute terms. In that sense, the increase in the number of optional referendums launched could be considered a pure consequence of the intensification of legislative production and thus of the growing opportunities to make use of the direct democratic institution. More substantially; one reason for the intensified use of direct democratic institutions certainly has to do with the general complexification of modern politics (Trechsel & Kriesi 1996). It is no secret that the political, social and economic environment profoundly changed during the second part of this century: New issues, such as the protection of environment, the globalisation of economy, trade, and financial markets, new forms of energy, and increased individual mobility are just a few examples that illustrate the growing complexity of modern politics. As a result, there was an ongoing need for adaptation of the Constitution and for legislation in new issue areas. The use of direct democratic institutions by policy domains. Figure 1 gives the overall picture of the issues that have been raised by referendums and initiatives since 1947. First, one can note that the three direct democratic

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institutions do not apply to the same extent in all policy domains. Starting with the mandatory referendum, Figure 1 shows that it was most often used in the domain of financial and economic issues. This is not surprising given the fact that these two domains are often linked to a process of transfer of authority to the Confederation or of the creation of new competencies at this level, which requires amendments to the Constitution. With respect to the optional referendums our data show both the domain of issues covered by the acts subject to this institution and the issues mainly concerned by its actual use. One can see that the scope of the optional referendum is more equally divided into different domains than is the case for the mandatory referendum or the initiative; it concerns a broad set of institutional, economic, social and foreign policy issues. With regard to its actual use, the optional referendum is most frequently used to challenge projects in the areas of institutions, finance and environment-land-energy-transportation. By contrast, social and foreign policy issues are more likely to escape the referendum use. Finally, initiatives involved mainly two issues: the environment-energy-land-transportation and the social domains. This is most of all due to the fact that parties of the Left and social movements often make use of the initiative in order to give new impulses to the Swiss welfare state. The ecology movement has used the initiative quite frequently, too, since the 1970s, especially in the domain of nuclear energy. Support of government. To measure the evolution of government support (i.e., acceptance of the proposal supported by the government and the majority of the Parliament) across time we compute the percentage of legislative acts for which the outcome at the polls (acceptance/rejection) was identical to the one at the final vote in Parliament, and this for each of the three direct democratic institutions (Figure 2).11 Between 1947 and 1995 the average support of government amounts to 77 percent (93 percent in the case of popular initiatives, 78 percent in the case of mandatory referendum, and 57 percent in the case of optional referendums). Concerning the popular initiative one may note that government support has been at the top level of 100 percent for several legislatures. Nowadays, this percentage stays around 90 percent which at a first sight indicates a rather limited threat of the initiative for government.12 The higher level of governmental support in the case of mandatory referendums than in the case of optional referendums can be explained by the different logics of these institutions. In the former case, it is not rare that Swiss citizens have to vote on constitutional amendments of a purely technical character, on which almost everyone agrees. In the latter case, quite to the contrary, proposals submitted to popular votes are by definition – though to various degrees –


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Figure 2. Government support by institution and legislature.

controversial. In the previous subsection, we highlighted the very low level of optional referendums that were successfully launched across time. Figure 2 nevertheless reveals that when the optional referendum is actually used, the risk for the official proposal of being rejected by a popular vote is far from nil. Still, the main information of this figure is certainly that – with one exception – the support of government has exceeded 60 percent for each institution since the late 1970s. These results are in sharp contrast with the elite claim that the federal authorities have been increasingly sanctioned in popular votes since the 1970s. Together with Papadopoulos (1994, 1996), we thus tend to stress convergence between the political choices of both voters and elites. The constancy of government support, together with the observation of the previous section concerning the actual use of optional referendums, lead us to question the hypothesis of a growing loss of control of the elites over the political process.13 The impact of consensus among the political elite While the Swiss government can rely on significant support – at the level of the actual use of optional referendums or in popular votes – there are cases where it is defeated. One of our main goals is to assess the influence of a consensual decision among the parliamentary elite on the destiny of a legislative act in the subsequent plebiscitary arena. As a first step, we briefly describe the

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Figure 3. Percentage of yes-votes in the National Council by institution (1947–1995).

evolution of consensus in the National Council (the lower Chamber of the Swiss Parliament). We then analyse the link between the degree of consensus in the National Council and both the probability of successful utilisation of the optional referendum, and the probability of parliamentary elite’s success at the polls for each direct democratic institution. Evolution of consensus among the parliamentary elite. We use the percentage of yes-votes expressed in the National Council14 to measure the degree of consensus among the political elite. Admittedly, this choice is a simplification, but the lower Chamber is elected through proportional vote and therefore serves as a more accurate mirror of the political forces in Swiss politics than the second federal Chamber, which represents the cantons (the Council of the States). Figure 3 shows the evolution of consensus in the National Council for each direct democratic institution. We can see from Figure 3 that the percentage of yes-vote in the National Council for bills subject to the optional and the mandatory referendum remains very high during the whole post-war period. Despite a slight decrease since the early 1980s it is never lower than 90 percent in the case of optional referendums and never falls below 80 percent in the case of mandatory referendums.15 These results lead us to emphasise the high and stable level of consensus among the parliamentary elite. Concordance democracy seems to stay alive in Switzerland in both the pre-parliamentary and the parliamentary phases of the political process: The economic and political actors present in the lower Chamber are able to garner surprisingly wide-reaching coalitions.


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This becomes all the more remarkable if one considers the fragmentation of the Swiss party system and the weakness of party discipline in the country (Kerr 1981). This conclusion is in sharp contrast with the one of other scholars writing on this topic: On the basis of the study of roll-call votes in the 1970s and 1980s, Lüthi et al. (1991) and Kobach (1993) stress increasing polarisation among Swiss deputies, especially among the governing coalition. However, their data are questionable: As Kobach (1993) himself points out, ‘the issues subject to roll-call tend to be the most polarised ones’ (p. 168) and ‘the exclusive consideration of roll-call votes ignores less-controversial bills, the majority of which produce consensus among the four governing parties’ (p. 166). More generally, our emphasis on the existing high consensus among the political elite opposes the dominant thesis in the literature, according to which Swiss concordance democracy reached its high point in the 1950s and 1960s, but has significantly weakened since that time (Delley 1987; Germann 1994; Kriesi 1991, 1995; Linder 1994; Papadopoulos 1996). To justify their argument, these authors put forward the growing use of the optional referendum since the 1970s, especially on important laws (on planning, formation or social policy). Besides the fact that the use of the optional referendum has not actually increased quantitatively if one considers the figures in relative rather than in absolute terms (see above), it is methodologically and empirically extremely difficult to measure the ‘importance’ of an act. Focusing on an arbitrary selection of bills which are presumed to be important might lead to erroneous conclusions. In addition, the hypothesis of a growing polarisation on important issues has never been tested systematically, and hence at present this question remains open. The picture is more balanced with respect to popular initiatives. While the intra-elite consensus remains very high for a long period of time, the level of conflict has increased significantly since the late 1970s. As an explanation for this, one can put forward the growing heterogeneity of the National Council and the emergence of new political parties that frequently use the initiative as well as the growing use and support of popular initiatives by the political left, including the governing socialist party (Papadopoulos 1996: 20). The impact of elite consensus on the use of optional referendums. We now get to the core of our study of the link between intra-elite consensus and the destiny of the legislative acts in the referendum phase. To begin with, we examine the conditions that favour the successful use of the optional referendum (Figure 4).16 There is a strong link between the percentage of yes-votes in the National Council and the successful launch of the optional referendum (standardised

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Figure 4. Probability of a successful launch of the optional referendum by the percentage of yes-votes in the National Council.

coefficient R = 0.42). Figure 4 shows that the higher the consensus among the elites the smaller the probability of a successful launch of the optional referendum. For instance, if a legislative act is supported by 65 percent of the National Council, the probability of a successful recourse to the optional referendum is about 50 percent; if the percentage of yes-votes is about 80 percent, the probability of the optional referendum to be used is lower than 20 percent; finally, the risk of a referendum to be launched is almost zero when the National Council votes unanimously in favour of the bill.17 To sum up, the threat of the optional referendum does not leave the Swiss elites powerless with respect to the outcome of a political process. As Neidhart (1970) has already suggested, the strategy of finding a large consensus in the pre-parliamentary and parliamentary phases is always a winning one. In other words, while the existence of the optional referendum pushes the elites to more compromising behaviour, it provides them simultaneously with a highly valid tool for overcoming the threat of being attacked by the use of this institution. Not only does our study support the ongoing relevance of the link between intra-elite consensus and the use of the optional referendum implicit in Neidhart’s thesis, it also allows us to quantify the threshold of probability that a referendum be held: To limit the risk of a referendum to less than one chance in two, a legislative act has to be supported by a majority of more than two-thirds of the deputies in the National Council. Thus, the strategy that aims at avoiding the use of optional referendums is demanding, since it requires parliamentary support that largely surpasses the


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Figure 5. Probability of success iii a popular vote by the percentage of yes-votes in the National Council.

level of simple majority. Hence, as Lehner (1984) pointed out, the existence of direct democracy forces the Swiss elites to form broader coalitions than the ‘minimal winning coalitions’ that theory would expect in a decision making system based on majority rule. The impact of consensus among the elites on the popular vote. Is the impact of the intra-elite consensus limited to the use of the optional referendum, or does it also concern the outcome of a popular vote? Figure 5 shows that the link is strong in the case of both mandatory referendums and popular initiatives, but very weak in the case of optional referendum ballots. For instance, with respect to mandatory referendums the probability of a popular yes-vote is about 30 percent when the elite is strongly divided (50 percent of yes-vote in the national Council); an enhanced intra-elite consensus, however, quickly increases the probability of popular acceptance. This relation is still stronger in the case of the popular initiative.18 The picture is different for the acts subject to the optional referendum. Here, Figure 5 shows that the result of the popular vote is almost totally independent of the degree of consensus among the elites: There is a 50 percent probability of a yes-vote on a referendum if the bill has been supported by 60 percent of the National Council; this figure hardly increases when the National Council is more consensual. In other words, whereas the intra-elite consensus has a direct influence on the use of the optional referendum, it then loses most of

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its impact on the issue of the ballot. We will return to this interesting result later on.

Analysis based on individual data In the preceding pages we have tried to measure the impact of intra-elite consensus on the probability that a referendum takes place (for the case of optional referendums), as well as on the popular vote itself. We found that the degree of intra-parliamentary consensus indeed plays a significant role in the direct democratic arena of the Swiss legislative process. In general, the odds of popular ratification of a legal act are in favour of the elites if the effort of finding a large intra-parliamentary consensus has been achieved. However, as we mentioned earlier, the elite’s possibilities of influencing the legislative process are not limited to parliamentary consensus, but also concern the opinion-formation process during an electoral campaign. In order to test the influence of the elite on the voters’ decision we assess in this section the impact of various information channels used by the voter, as well as that of the political actors’ voting recommendations, on the individual decision at the polls. The use and influence of information channels on the voting behaviour With regard to campaign activities, the case of the government is a special one. Since the end of the 1970s the Swiss government has printed a ballot pamphlet for every federal vote. A couple of weeks before the vote takes place, every Swiss voter automatically receives this pamphlet together with a personal ballot paper. The pamphlet contains not only the legal text on which the vote is based, but also government-edited comments on the issue. If the vote concerns a popular initiative or an optional referendum, the committees’ arguments are included as well. The question arises as to whether citizens use this booklet – as well as other channels such as newspapers, TV programs, radio transmissions, ads, etc. – in order to get information on the issues at stake. This question has been studied by Kriesi (1994) using a data-set including individual data on 7 federal voting-weekends between 1990 and 1992.19 We decided to enlarge this data-set and to include 10 more recent votes into our database. Our results presented in Table 2 are not in perfect accordance with the ones found by Kriesi. We generally find higher frequencies in the use of the different channels even though the order is the same. This difference is due to the fact that we focus on the effective voters exclusively, whereas Kriesi included all respondents – whether they did vote or not. From our point


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Table 2. Use of information sources among voters N

%

Newspaper articles TV Radio Ballot pamphlet Advertisements Reader’s letters Printed matters Placards Canvassing at stalls

8317 7646 6127 6088 4282 4087 3061 2265 561

81.2 74.6 59.8 59.4 41.8 39.9 29.9 22.1 5.5

Mean

4.141

of view it is more interesting though to know which information channels an actual voter uses. From September 1990 to June 1995 the Swiss had to vote on 17 different weekends on a total of 60 proposals. Table 2 shows that 4 out of 5 voters used newspaper articles as a source of information for these 17 voting dates; 75% used TV programmes and 50% radio transmissions. Following Kriesi (1994) we would like to underline this rather surprising result, considering the fact that telecasting and broadcasting have nowadays become extremely serious competitors for the written press. Furthermore, 59% of voters stated that they used the government edited pamphlet as a source of information on the issues. From the government’s point of view this result is rather encouraging, as they can rely on the fact that a majority of voters are listening to their views. Of course, this result does not mean that if a voter uses the government’s booklet he will also vote according to the government’s recommendation. As we mentioned above, the initiative and referendum committees’ points of view are printed as well and of course may be more convincing to a voter than the elites’ one. Nevertheless, our result indicates that it is of major importance for the government and the majority of Parliament to make a special effort when it comes down to their arguments in the booklet because almost two out of three voters use this text as an information source on the issues. In addition, Table 2 also shows that advertisements as well as ‘letters to the editor’ in newspapers and magazines play important roles as information channels. To a lesser extent, printed matters, placards and finally canvassing also serve to provide voters with knowledge about ballot proposals. The use of these different information channels has remained relatively stable over the past five years. We may note that the government’s booklet

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Figure 6. Evolution of the average number of information channels used.

shows a slight upward trend in its popularity. However, overall voter attitudes toward information gathering are constant. Last but not least, different information channels are used at the same time by most voters. On the average, more than four different information sources have been consulted per voting weekend. This diversity in the use of information channels has also been shown by Kriesi (1994).20 In Figure 6 we depict the evolution of the average number of information channels used by voters as well as by all individuals included in the surveys. As we can see in Figure 6, the average number of information channels used is rather stable over time. Furthermore, one should note that without any exception voters distinguish themselves by the use of more diversified information channels than non-voters.21 We now turn to the examination of the hypothetical relationship between information channels and the voters’ decision at the polls, more especially between information channels and the voters’ support for governmental proposals: Does the use of one or several specific information sources lead the voter towards a pro- or anti-government decision? In Switzerland, it is not uncommon that several votes are submitted to the electorate at the same time. Given that the question concerning the use of information sources covers all votes held on the same day simultaneously, it is not possible to differentiate one specific proposition from another. Thus, we decided to consider only voters who either voted on every proposition in accordance with the govern-


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Table 3. The point of view considered by voters to be the most important N

%

Government Political parties Labour unions Employers’ associations Association of small businesses Farmers’ associations Others None

4331 4144 522 481 388 2024 8019 6290

16.5 15.8 2.0 1.8 1.5 7.7 30.6 24.0

Total

26199

100.0

ment’s recommendation, or on the other hand rejected all propositions for which the government recommended a yes-vote.22 The impact of information channels on support of government is generally very limited.23 This conclusion confirms the results put forward by Kriesi (1994: 59) on the basis of single votes. Only one source of information has a significant impact on the voter’s decision, namely the ballot pamphlet which is sent out to every citizen.24 People who use this information channel are more likely to follow governmental recommendations. The coefficients for all the other information channels are either null or extremely weak. All in all, and despite the limited influence of the ballot pamphlet, we believe that during electoral campaigns citizens rely on additional sources of information such as discussions with family, friends and colleagues.25 The impact of the elite on the voting behaviour As we saw above, the government’s publication has not only an important audience, but also a significant impact on the vote when it is used as an information document. We may add that the government is not limited to this booklet in its effort to gather support for its viewpoint. During the voting campaign, all the other information channels may also be used by the political elite. Thus, the issue is whose point of view is considered by effective voters as being the most important one. In order to answer this question we had to rely on another data-set, of individuals’ answers concerning 58 different votes that took place between June 1981 and December 1992. People asked in the survey had to chose the most important recommendation from those of a set of actors (Table 3).26

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Table 4. Impact on government support of the view considered most important by voters Government Political parties Labour unions Employers’ associations Swiss trade union Farmers’ associations Others None

73.7 59.8 53.1 60.9 60.3 51.2 55.7 55.6

Mean n individuals n votations Cramers’ V

59.1 (15472) (58) 0.140

First, we note that the categories ‘others’ and ‘none’ contain more than half of the voters’ answers. The item ‘others’ often is composed of ad-hoc referendum or initiative committees, churches, interest groups etc., varying from one vote to the next. For this reason we unfortunately had to assemble these items into one single category, thus losing a considerable amount of information.27 In addition, one out of five voters declares himself to be completely independent of any kind of organisation when it comes to his personal opinion formation process. Table 3 shows that one out of seven voters only thinks that the government’s point of view is the most important one. The political parties’ arguments altogether are even less taken into consideration than those of the government. This finding generally confirms the ones of Kriesi (1994) and Hug (1994a).28 Finally, labour unions, employers’ associations, the association of small businesses as well as farmers’ associations are mostly disregarded by the voters. This first analysis leaves us with ambiguous results: On the one hand, the government and the political parties appear to be more influential than any other collective actors in the opinion formation; on the other hand, they seem to be challenged by a lot of ad hoc actors. But from the perspective of elite control these results do not yet show whether the points of view taken into consideration by voters are also congruent with concrete voting behaviour at the polls. Therefore, we have related this variable with the actual voters’ decision (government support). Table 4 shows that there is only one point of view (if taken into consideration) which has a clearly pro-governmental impact on the vote, namely the governments’ point of view itself. All the other categories only show slight differences from the overall mean of governmental support (59%). This can

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Table 5. The impact of party identification on support of government, by institution (logistic regression R-values) Party identification

Overall

Optional referendum

Compulsory referendum

Popular initiatives

Socialist party Centre-right governmental parties Non-governmental parties

–0.04*** 0.08*** –0.03***

–0.02* 0.00 –0.02*

0.07*** 0.05*** 0.03***

–0.14*** 0.15*** –0.08***

n

26609

7022

8427

11160

p < 0:01; p < 0:001. p < 0:1; Note: The reference category is composed of all the voters without any party identification.

be explained by the fact that all these organisations may equally well recommend acceptation or refusal of a government supported proposition. Thus, even if the impact may be important from vote to vote, the aggregate analysis probably hides the real influence which political organisations may actually have on the voters’ decision. Additionally, and with regard to political parties, we should note that the influence of party arguments on the voter may vary among the different parties. Indeed, the item ‘political parties’ in Table 4 is an aggregation of all political parties’ points of view, independent of their respective voting recommendations. With respect to political parties we nevertheless may refine our global analysis. We are able to do so by examining the variable ‘voters’ party identification’ contained in our data-set. The most notable difference is to be expected between voters identifying with one of the four governmental parties and voters attracted by a political party of the extra-governmental opposition. Further we will take into account the special position of the Swiss Socialist party, which – even though fully sharing executive responsibilities among its governmental partners – often resolutely takes anti-government political stands. Therefore, we will also consider its supporters separately. As Table 5 shows, party identification influences voting behaviour, although more clearly in the case of initiatives and mandatory referendums than in the case of optional referendums. At the overall level, the influence of partisanship on government support is rather weak. This confirms the result of the previous section on the impact of party recommendations. At a more detailed level, however, our study leads to different results according to the direct democratic institution at stake. Indeed, whereas partisanship actually matters in the two cases of popular initiatives and – to a lesser extent – of mandatory referendums, its impact is null in the case of optional referendums. With respect to mandatory referendums, being a supporter of a government party – of the left or of the right – increases the

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likelihood of a vote in support of the official proposal.29 The relation between partisanship and support of government is still stronger in the case of popular initiatives: While the followers of right-wing governmental parties tend to follow the government recommendation – which most often means rejecting the initiative – voters close to the socialist party tend to oppose the same. This result confirms the particular position of the socialist party which, as we have seen, frequently supports or even makes use of popular initiatives. These results should be related to the findings of the section based on aggregate data. There we noted that the impact of intra-elite consensus on the outcome of a vote was important with regard to mandatory referendums and popular initiatives, but almost nil in the case of optional referendums. Hence, while yielding less clear-cut findings, the analysis based on individual data also highlights the elite’s greater influence on the outcome of a popular vote in the case of mandatory referendums and popular initiatives than in the case of optional referendums. How can we explain the above phenomenon? One explanation would be a dysfunction between elite preference as expressed in the final parliamentary vote on a bill and subsequent elite positions when such a bill comes up for popular approval. Thus, one reason for a lack of correlation between parliamentary consensus and popular voting outcomes in an optional referendum situation could be inconsistency of elite support for a given measure. Contrary to the case of mandatory referendums and popular initiatives, where the popular vote directly follows the parliamentary vote, the process is divided into two phases in the case of optional referendums: In the first phase, the group that launched the referendum tries to collect the necessary 50,000 signatures; if it is successful the voting campaign takes place. We assume that this two-stage process favours inconsistency among the elites: The opinion expressed by (part of) the elite at the final vote in Parliament may not be definitive, but can either change or be challenged by intra-party deviations, thus reducing the overall influence of the elite on the opinion formation and the outcome of the popular vote. While this assumption is difficult to test, some empirical results do partly confirm our reasoning. First, the fact that conflict in popular votes is higher for the optional referendums than for mandatory referendums and popular initiatives shows that the uncertainty of the vote is usually higher in the former case. Second, the analysis of intra-party coherence indicates that national party recommendations are more often challenged by cantonal deviations in the case of optional referendums than in the cases of mandatory referendums and popular initiatives:30 52 percent for the optional referendum, 38 percent for the mandatory referendum, and 36 percent for the popular initiative on average for the time period from 1970 to 1987.31


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Conclusion In this article we tested the received opinion that political elites are suffering increased loss of control over direct democratic legislation in Switzerland. As is consistent with the literature, our analysis shows an important increase in the number of direct democratic decisions taken at the polls since 1970. However, we contend that this does not mean the political elite is losing its power over the legislative process. Unlike other authors who conceive of increased recourse to the optional referendum as system-blocking, we stress the very low and stable proportion of bills which are attacked through this direct democratic institution. In addition, the support of government in popular votes has tended to increase since the 1970s, independently of the direct democratic institution concerned. Furthermore, we have showed that the elite may significantly influence the destiny of an act in the plebiscitary phase, depending on the level of consensus reached in the parliamentary arena. When applied to the use of the optional referendum, our analysis is straightforward:32 A large consensus among the elite, elaborated during the pre-parliamentary and the parliamentary phases of the legislative process, significantly reduces the probability that a political actor shall attack a bill, forcing a popular vote. In addition, the intra-parliamentary consensus also has a strong impact on the outcome of popular votes in the case of mandatory referendums and popular initiatives: The higher the parliamentary consensus, the higher the probability of governmental success at the polls. On the other hand, the outcome of the popular vote in the case of optional referendums seems to be completely independent of the level of consensus among the elite at the final vote in the lower Chamber. We did not stop our investigations at this point but enlarged our analysis to individual data, trying to find similar effects for elite influence on the opinion-formation process during voting campaigns. However, this second type of influence appears much weaker. First, while voters heavily rely on newspapers, TV, radio broadcasting and the government-edited ballot pamphlet when gathering information about a ballot proposition, most of these information channels have a limited impact on the voter’s decision; only the ballot pamphlet has a significant pro-governmental influence. Second, only for a minority of voters are elite viewpoints (i.e., government and party recommendations) the deciding argument during the campaign. If, on the other hand, the government recommendation is the main argument for the voter, he has a rather high probability of voting in favour of the government. In refining our analysis, we showed that the impact of party recommendations, although weak at the general level, varies according to the juridical type of the vote. The results here reveal interesting parallels with the aggregate analysis: Political parties are more influential in the case of mandatory referendums and initia-

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tives than in the case of optional referendums. In our attempt to explain this phenomenon we formulated the hypothesis of a consistency deficit among the political elite when it comes to optional referendums. In other words, we believe that the political elite’s consistency may fade once a legislative act is successfully challenged by an optional referendum. The picture we paint of the situation is rather positive: The main trump of the Swiss direct democratic system is the possibility of popular opposition intervening at any given moment. However, this does not mean that the people constantly try to block the action of their representatives through direct legislation. Swiss direct democracy does not prevent the political elite from exercising power in the decision-making process. To a large extent, elites still matter in Switzerland. One could even add that the influence which the elites can exert on the political process in direct democracy indirectly enhances the significance of national elections. In Switzerland the national elections are admittedly of limited importance because of the presence of strong direct democratic institutions (Germann 1994: 200): Such elections no longer alter the distribution of government seats between parties, which has in fact remained fixed since the 1959 ‘magic formula’, and the threat of repeated initiatives and referenda against government policy, has made necessary the integration of wider elite circles into government. However, this study highlighted the significant impact that the elites can have on the destiny of legislative acts in the post-parliamentary phase. In that sense, the question of who are the national representatives of Swiss citizens is by no means irrelevant. Acknowledgments We would like to thank Andreas Auer, Jean-Daniel Delley, Simon Hug, Hanspeter Kriesi, as well as all the participants of the ECPR workshop ‘Issues, the Voters and the Media’ (Oslo, April 1996) – especially the two workshop directors Peter Schrott and Hermann Schmitt, and the two discussants Jan Kleinnijenhuis and Jan A. de Ridder – for their most valuable comments on earlier versions of this article. We also thank Eoghan Peavoy for his help in editing this text. Notes 1. For general contributions on the Swiss political system or more specifically on direct legislation, see Delley (1978), Kobach (1993), Kriesi (1995), and Linder (1994). 2. In this article, the political elite essentially refers to the parliamentary elite, more precisely the elite that shapes a majority on a given bill in parliament. Often consisting of governmental parties’ deputies, this majority can obviously receive support of MPs


3.

4.

5. 6. 7.

8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

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from other political groups, too. As the political actor who submitted the acts then voted on by parliament, the Swiss government (the so-called ‘federal council’ also belongs to the political elite – even though its proposals may be amended by parliament. Conversely, the term ‘support of government’ refers to support for the government’s and the parliamentary majority’s legislative proposal. We distinguish the following issue areas: economy, finance, social, environment-landenergy-transport, institutions, culture, foreign policy, security policy and miscellaneous. This classification is very close to that used by Papadopoulos et al. (1994). Needless to say, such a classification is a subjective and difficult task. In fact, an important number of ballot issues could be classified into several categories at the same time, which means that we have had to make some arbitrary decisions in attributing one or the other object to the various categories. Even in the absence of direct democratic institutions, the parliamentary elite is obviously not totally isolated from pressures of the electorate: Since the elite is dependent upon the electorate for its election, it must also take into account its preferences. In other words, the existence of a ‘bottom-up’ control is not specific to direct democracy. By offering citizens direct access to the decision-making process, direct democratic institutions provide them with additional resources for withdrawing choices made for them by the political elite. In that sense, ‘bottom-up’ control is strengthened in a direct democracy, while the ‘topdown’ control is weakened (Papadopoulos 1991, 1995). It applies for instance for every amendment of the Constitution. While initiatives introduce a real openness into the Swiss political system (Delley 1978), some critics argue that this institution limits even further the role played by the elites and puts the political system under ‘stress’. Even the composition of the government is a result of this integrative function of the referendum. Since the end of the last century, all important political parties which were able to use the optional referendum against a proposed bill have been successively coopted into government. Since 1959, Switzerland has been governed by a grand coalition of the four major political parties, the so-called ‘magic formula’. The well disseminated conception of Switzerland as being an example of consociational democracy also challenges the role of direct democratic institutions. Indeed, the latter are not present in the definition of consociationalism, which required the presence of two elements: A cultural segmentation/pillarisation of the society and a cooperative behaviour of the political elite. Counter to this argument, however, runs the fact that the presence of direct democratic institutions makes the docility implied by consociational theory problematic and hence, questions the application of the model to Switzerland (Papadopoulos 1991: 10; Hug & Sciarini 1995). A more detailed analysis confirms that the percentage of popular initiatives, optional and mandatory referendums in the total of votes is highly stable across time (Sciarini & Trechsel 1996: 211–212). This percentage is only slightly higher if one considers the situation since the creation of the optional referendum in 1874: 6.9 percent in average (Trechsel & Kriesi 1996). There is only one case in our data set for which the Swiss government and Parliament recommended the adoption of a popular initiative, i.e., the one which asked for a holiday on the national celebration day (first of August). Even though 9 out of 10 initiatives are passed accordingly to the governments’ recommendation (which means that they usually get defeated), this does not mean that the initiative is a powerless instrument that fails to exert pressure on the elite. Even though an initiative may be defeated, there are indirect effects on the government which can be very important (for a discussion of these indirect effects see Delley 1978 and Werder 1978). This and other reasons lead us to oppose the proposal of the Swiss government (Conseil Fédéal 1995) whose aim is – among others – to limit the actual use of optional referendums and popular initiatives in the future (Sciarini & Trechsel 1996).

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14. Hence, we do not take into account the absentees or the abstentionists, whose number has only been systematically recorded since 1994. 15. One can note that 64 percent of all acts subject to the optional referendum and 27 percent of those subject to the mandatory referendum were accepted unanimously by the National Council. 16. To measure the link between the percentage of yes-votes in the National Council and the successful/unsuccessful launch of the optional referendum, we rely on a bivariate logistic regression. A transformation of the results of the logistic regression allows us to express the probability that a referendum will be successfully launched as a function of the percentage of yes-votes in the National Council. 17. The impact of the yes-vote in the National Council is strong whatever the policy domain. 18. These results confirm and extend Lehner’s (1984: 38–39) findings, based on the study of 58 decision-making processes in the field of economic and fiscal policy. Note, however, that Lehner did not distinguish the three direct democratic institutions. 19. The survey question was formulated as follows: ‘How did you get information on the ballot questions during the voting campaign? Please name all the information channels that you used among the following list’. 20. From 1990 to 1992 the average number of information channels used was more than three. Again, this difference with our results is not due to the larger data-set we use, but rather to the different sub-samples which we considered. 21. A bivariate logistic regression analysis with the dichotomous variable ‘participation at the polls’ as the dependent variable and a constructed scale measuring the number of information channels used by an individual as the independent variable – the scale ranges from 0 (no information channel used) to 9 (9 information channels used) – shows a relatively strong association between the two concepts (R=0.31; n=16,908). Thus, it appears that the more a citizen uses different information channels, the higher the probability that he/she will participate at the polls. 22. This represents 4302 voters or 42 percent of all voters in our sample (sample size = 10,247 voters). 23. For this analysis we considered all information channels. Through logistic regressions we measured the impacts of their use on governmental support. 24. R = 0.12; p < 0:001; n = 4302. 25. To go one step further, it would be interesting to test whether the influence of information channels is dependent on the issues at stake or on the juridical type of text. As we mentioned earlier, however, the question used in the surveys considered does not allow such distinctions. 26. The question of the survey was formulated as follows: ‘Before every federal vote you read several points of view and recommendations about how one should vote. Here is a list of groups, organisations and persons who generally express themselves before a vote. Which point of view is generally the most important one for you?’ 27. This may of course hide certain indirect influences of the other political actors, e.g., parties, actively supporting one or the other organisation coded under the item ‘others’. 28. The impact of party recommendations on the voter’s decision in Switzerland appears even more limited if one considers the fact that only about half of the Swiss do have a party preference and that only half of those who prefer a party know the recommendation of their preferred party (Kriesi 1994: 67–68): Taking this into account, the party recommendation constitutes the crucial information for only about 6 percent of the citizens. Hug (1994a: 176), examining the impact of party recommendations between 1970 and 1987 on aggregate voting behaviour, also shows that a proposal has to find the support of all or almost all parties present in the voting parliament to be assured of certain acceptance in the popular vote. Proposals supported by fewer parties, for instance the ones present in government, were defeated on average every fifth time between 1970 and 1987. 29. Interestingly the same is true for supporters of non-governmental parties, which can be interpreted as a sign of the far-reaching consensus that the elites arrive at in those cases.


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30. The Swiss party system is to a great extent based on regional and even cantonal partisan forces. Most of the federal political parties have a decentralised structure, i.e., are composed of several cantonal sections more or less influential. Thus, it may appear that cantonal sections do not follow their federal counterparts when giving out their voting recommendations. 31. This analysis is based on data contained in Hug (1994b: 100) and covers the years 1970 to 1987. 32. Contrary to another widespread thesis, we found that the level of consensus among the elite on acts subject to the optional or mandatory referendum is extremely high and stable across time. Only in the case of popular initiatives we found a tendency towards a more sustained conflictuality among the members of the lower Chamber.

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