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Gabriel, Oscar W.; Schoen, Harald; Faden-Kuhne, Kristina

doi:10.3224/84740093a

Cited by 1 publication

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“…The few studies covering social stratification in direct democratic voting in the USA and in Switzerland show that—similar to participation in representative elections or other forms of political activities—voters from socio-economically better-off strata are also over-represented when it comes to referendum participation (e.g., Bechtel et al, 2016; Bechtel and Schmid 2021; Dermont and Stadelmann-Steffen 2018; Fatke 2015; Krämling et al 2022; Stadelmann Portmann, and Eichenberger 2015). 1 Although the institutional setting of referendums in Germany differs from the US and from Switzerland, similar results have already been found in the German case: Based on individual-level data, Gabriel, Schoen, and Faden-Kuhne (2014) showed such an educational bias for the statewide referendum on “Stuttgart 21” in Baden-Wuerttemberg. Similarly, Vetter and Velimsky (2019) reported such a bias in German local referendum participation by analyzing unemployment rates and referendum turnout in different city districts.…”

Section: Reducing Social Stratification Bias In Referendum Participationsupporting

confidence: 54%

Reducing Social Stratification Bias in Referendum Participation: Evidence from the German Local Level

Velimsky,

Vetter,

Bächtiger

2024

Political Research Quarterly

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Political participation is socially distorted: Socio-economic resources affecting the probability of individuals becoming politically active question the principle of political equality. Such inequality in participation based on social stratification is well documented for elections, while research on inequality in referendum participation is still scarce. Based on the observation that such inequality varies between referendums, this paper explores referendum-specific contextual factors that may affect socially distorted referendum participation. We leverage information from an original dataset covering 1788 districts in 35 German municipalities for 68 local referendums held between 2000 and 2019. The results of our multilevel models indicate that concurrent first-order elections boost referendum turnout and decrease social stratification, while the closeness of the decision increases turnout but does not affect stratification bias. Moreover, we find a curvilinear relationship between turnout and stratification, with stratification only diminishing from participation levels above 40–50%.

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