Abstract:Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht die weit verbreitete These, dass Deutschschweizer Kantone vor allem radikaldemokratische Merkmale aufweisen, w€ ahrend die lateinischen Kantone st€ arker liberal-repr€ asentative Demokratieformen besitzen. Die empirische und mehrdimensionale Messung der Demokratiequalit€ at in den Kantonen zeigt, dass die pauschale These der direktdemokratisch-partizipatorischen Deutschschweizer Kantone auf der einen Seite und der repr€ asentativdemokratischen St€ ande der lateinischen Schwei… Show more
“…In line with the hypothesis, this finding can be interpreted to capture the different understanding of representation and roles in the Latin vis‐à‐vis to the German‐speaking part of Switzerland (Bühlmann et al. ).…”
Section: Discussionsupporting
confidence: 72%
“…Direct democracy and the direct involvement of citizens in the political process are by contrast given more importance in the German part of Switzerland (Bühlmann et al. ). We expect such differences in the relative importance of representative democracy to be reflected in the degree of engagement of MPs. H 4 : MPs from cantons in the Latin linguistic part of Switzerland are more professionalized than MPs from the German‐speaking cantons .…”
Section: Explaining Professionalization In the Swiss Subnational Legimentioning
In this article, we consider the question of how professionalized the cantonal parliamentarians are and which factors are related to this professionalization. By definition, Swiss parliamentarians exert an occupation in parallel to their mandate. We argue that parliamentarians who spend more time for their mandate have more resources to do so and, more importantly, intend to pursue a political career. In doing so, we analyze data gathered from a survey that was conducted among all Swiss cantonal parliaments in 2014. Our multi-level analysis shows that parliamentarians who run for office at the national level spend significantly more time for their parliamentary mandate than their colleagues. This effect decreases with the parliamentarians' age. This finding could be relevant in order to understand the career paths of Swiss parliamentarians. In addition, the study contributes to the discussion of the future development of the militia system in Switzerland.
“…In line with the hypothesis, this finding can be interpreted to capture the different understanding of representation and roles in the Latin vis‐à‐vis to the German‐speaking part of Switzerland (Bühlmann et al. ).…”
Section: Discussionsupporting
confidence: 72%
“…Direct democracy and the direct involvement of citizens in the political process are by contrast given more importance in the German part of Switzerland (Bühlmann et al. ). We expect such differences in the relative importance of representative democracy to be reflected in the degree of engagement of MPs. H 4 : MPs from cantons in the Latin linguistic part of Switzerland are more professionalized than MPs from the German‐speaking cantons .…”
Section: Explaining Professionalization In the Swiss Subnational Legimentioning
In this article, we consider the question of how professionalized the cantonal parliamentarians are and which factors are related to this professionalization. By definition, Swiss parliamentarians exert an occupation in parallel to their mandate. We argue that parliamentarians who spend more time for their mandate have more resources to do so and, more importantly, intend to pursue a political career. In doing so, we analyze data gathered from a survey that was conducted among all Swiss cantonal parliaments in 2014. Our multi-level analysis shows that parliamentarians who run for office at the national level spend significantly more time for their parliamentary mandate than their colleagues. This effect decreases with the parliamentarians' age. This finding could be relevant in order to understand the career paths of Swiss parliamentarians. In addition, the study contributes to the discussion of the future development of the militia system in Switzerland.
“…; Bühlmann et al. ; Lachat and Kriesi ; Walter and Emmenegger ). On the other hand, given that the Swiss political system is highly decentralized, cantons have wide‐ranging autonomy over political, economic and social matters such as public budgets (e.g.…”
Scholars increasingly use Swiss cantons to examine the effect of democratic processes and institutions on political, economic and social outcomes. However, the availability of political indicators at the cantonal level is limited, in particular for longer periods of time. We introduce a novel data set on the ideological and partisan composition of cantonal governments, covering the period 1848-2017 for most cantons. In this research note, we describe our data collection efforts and present some descriptives on the political development of cantonal governments in order to illustrate the data's potential. In particular, we look at the political strength of different parties and factions, the number of parties in government, government volatility and the nationalization of the party system. Our data thus provide new opportunities to examine political, economic and social outcomes as well as the formation of party systems in the Swiss cantons.
“…In our contribution, we re-investigate the relationship between political–institutional power diffusion and the quality of democracy for two reasons. First, Lijphart’s (2012) measures are rather minimalistic (Munck and Verkuilen, 2002) and do not adequately incorporate the multidimensionality of the concept ‘quality of democracy’ (Bühlmann et al , 2013). Relatedly, the assumption that consensus democracy affects all elements of democratic quality in the same beneficial way is untenable, as a trade-off between inclusiveness and effective implementation seems to exist (Powell, 2000).…”
Democracies come in all shapes and sizes. Which configuration of political institutions produces the highest democratic quality is a notorious debate. The lineup of contenders includes ‘consensus’, ‘Westminster’, and ‘centripetal’ democracy. A trend in the evaluation of the relationship between empirical patterns of democracy and its quality is that the multidimensional nature of both concepts is increasingly taken into account. This article tests the assertion that certain centripetal configurations of proportionality in party systems and government, and unitarism in the remaining state structure, might outperform all other alternatives both in terms of inclusiveness and effectiveness. Analyzing 33 democracies, the results of interactive regression models only partially support this claim. Proportional–unitary democracies have the best track record in terms of representation, but there are little differences in participation, transparency, and government capability compared with other models.
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