The Partisan Composition of Cantonal Governments in Switzerland, 1848‐2017. A New Data Set

Walter, André; Emmenegger, Patrick

doi:10.1111/spsr.12329

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…All data for the governing parties come from Walter and Emmenegger (2018). The main variable is the number of parties that gain representation in government, regardless of their seat share.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Taking the initiative: Direct democracy, coalition governments and welfare state expansion

Walter

2018

Journal of European Social Policy

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Direct democratic institutions have been adopted in a number of countries since the 1990s, especially in Latin America and Eastern Europe Research on welfare state development and direct democracy holds a pessimistic view: Direct democracy constrains welfare state development (mainly case studies on Switzerland) Research from economics about direct democracy and government spending provides similar findings: Referendums constrain; effect of initiatives is unclear

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Taking the initiative: Direct democracy, coalition governments and welfare state expansion

Walter

2018

Journal of European Social Policy

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“…Intra-elite competition is carried forward into the political arena if new elites are able to gain substantive representation in parliament or, in particular, government. In nineteenth century Swiss cantons, political power mainly rested with the cantonal executives, which consisted of up to 15 politicians (Walter & Emmenegger 2019b). Members of the executive were elected individually, which allowed for political competition.…”

Section: The Domestic Roots Of Direct Taxationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Higher values (closer to 1) indicate that new elites were increasingly able to enter cantonal governments and thus undermine the old elites' dominant position. Data on the partisan composition of cantonal executives comes from Walter and Emmenegger (2019b). 6 We rely on the Herfindahl index, because elite competition is often not restricted to two elite groups (e.g., Liberals vs. Conservatives).…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

No direct taxation without new elite representation: Industrialization and the domestic politics of taxation

Emmenegger

Leemann

Walter

2020

European J Political Res

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The nineteenth century marked the founding period of modern public finance. We examine the domestic and non-war related determinants of direct taxation in this early democratic period and in a state building context. We argue that the reasons for the expansion of direct taxation can be found in the political competition between different elite groups in the context of industrialization. Systematically differentiating between economic and political arenas, we show that intra-elite competition in industrializing economies leads to higher levels of direct taxation only if the new economic elites are able to translate their economic power into the political arena, either through the representative system or by extra-parliamentary means. In addition, we demonstrate that these processes are directly linked to public investments in policy areas related to the interests of new economic elites such as public education. Our analysis is based on novel subnational data from the period 1850 to 1910, enabling us to concentrate on the domestic determinants of direct taxation.

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“…Third, we rely on data on the political composition of cantonal governments for the period 1848-2017 (Walter and Emmenegger 2019). 10 In line with the previous literature (e.g.…”

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confidence: 99%

Direct democracy, coalition size and public spending

2020

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This article contributes to the literature on direct democracy and public spending in two ways. First, we explore how direct democratic institutions interact with a specific aspect of the representative system, the size of the governing coalition, to influence public spending. Second, based on newly collected data, we examine the relationship between three different direct democratic institutions, coalition size and public spending over the period from 1860 to 2015. Empirically, we find that initiatives increase the size of the public sector under single-party governments, but this positive relationship disappears as coalition size increases. In contrast, we find that financial referendums slow down the growth of public spending, while law referendums are not systematically associated with public spending. Finally, we find that the relationship between direct democratic institutions, coalition size and public spending does not change over time despite the long period under investigation.

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The Partisan Composition of Cantonal Governments in Switzerland, 1848‐2017. A New Data Set

Cited by 5 publications

References 26 publications

Taking the initiative: Direct democracy, coalition governments and welfare state expansion

Taking the initiative: Direct democracy, coalition governments and welfare state expansion

No direct taxation without new elite representation: Industrialization and the domestic politics of taxation

Direct democracy, coalition size and public spending

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