The Swiss Policy Agendas Project

Abstract

This chapter describes the Swiss political system and adopts an issue attention approach to explore one of its defining institutions: direct democracy. By means of referenda and popular initiatives, voters regularly decide on the continuity and change of policies. Welfare and education (27%) and environment, energy, and transportation (21%) account for almost half of all the votes during the period 1990–2014. The direct democracy venue is often activated as a result of citizens’ pressure (“bottom-up”). However, the majority of these bottom-up proposals are refused by voters. Policy change through direct democracy occurs more frequently in a “top-down” manner, when political elites are required by constitutional rules to put the fate of some of their most important decisions to the ballot box.

Switzerland, Public Policy in

“…Policy scholars have applied the methodology of Baumgartner and Jones's (1993) punctuated equilibrium approach to measure the impact of direct democracy on Swiss policy agendas. Varone et al (2014) showed how the dramatic electoral rise of the Swiss People's Party (from 12% of vote shares in 1991 to 29% in 2007) is related to its programmatic reorientation towards a radical right party and to its strategic use of popular initiatives. Indeed, the Swiss People's Party has launched several popular initiatives on the dominant policy issues of its new electoral manifesto (e.g.…”