Voting for Direct Democracy: Evidence from a Unique Popular Initiative in Bavaria

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. We analyze a constitutional change in the German State of Bavaria where citizens, not politicians, granted themselves more say in politics at the local level through a constitutional initiative at the state level. This institutional setting allows us to focus on revealed preferences for direct democracy and to identify factors which explain this preference. Empirical results suggests support for direct democracy is rather related to dissatisfaction with representative democracy in general than with an elected governing party. Terms of use: Documents in

An Alternative to Representation: Explaining Preferences for Citizens as Political Decision-Makers

“…We also checked for the effect of age since several studies showed that younger people favor direct democracy more strongly than older citizens (Dalton et al 2001;Jeydel & Steel 2002;Donovan & Karp 2006;Rose & Borz 2013;Arnold et al 2014).…”

“…This approach is in line with several empirical studies in the field. For example, there is a difference within the representative system between government and parliament (among other institutions such as parties) (Christensen, 2017) or political dissatisfaction can be differentiated between representative democracy in general and institutions of representative democracy (Arnold et al, 2014).…”