Wem nützt direkte Demokratie? Policy-Effekte direkter Demokratie und Folgerungen für die Forschung zu Deutschland

Töller, Annette Elisabeth; Vollmer, Annette

doi:10.1007/s12286-013-0169-2

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…He concludes that "the main fiscal effect of the voter initiative is not smaller government generally speaking, but it is lower and more unequal education spending" (Berry 2014: 18). Töller and Vollmer (2013), as well as Schäfer and Schoen (2013), come to similar pessimistic conclusions when analyzing a small number of direct democratic votes in Germany such as the educational reform in Hamburg in 2010. They show that resourceful groups are better able to enforce their interests and thereby hinder redistribution, an effect that is reinforced by the disproportionately higher turnout of the better-off.…”

Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 62%

“…This result is especially interesting since it stands in contrast with the somewhat negative view on direct democracy that is advocated by a large number of authors. These previous studies arrive at their negative evaluations either based on state comparisons for the US and Switzerland, or theoretical arguments with an emphasis on single, prominent cases where direct democratic decisions have fostered inequality such as the minaret decision in Switzerland (2009) or the educational reform in Hamburg, Germany (2010) (Merkel 2011;Töller and Vollmer 2013;Schäfer and Schoen 2013). It turns out that the negative view on direct democracy and its impact on equality cannot hold for our more comprehensive analytical framework where all nationallevel direct democratic decisions in Europe from 1990 to 2015 are considered.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Against this background, Töller and Vollmer (2013) emphasize the general necessity to further examine the effects of direct democracy on modern societies -especially for countries other than the US and Switzerland. This paper will take a look at direct democratic bills in Europe from 1990 to 2015 and provide an explorative overview of how many aimed at promoting or hindering equality -and how many were not related to it at all.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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More or less equality? Direct democracy in Europe from 1990 to 2015

2019

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Within the last decades, western democracies have experienced a rise of inequality, with the gap between lower and upper class citizens steadily increasing and a widespread sentiment of growing inequalities also in the political sphere. Against this background, and in the context of the current "crisis of democracy", democratic innovations such as direct democratic instruments are discussed as a very popular means to bring citizens back in. However, research on direct democracy has produced rather inconsistent results with regard to the question of which effects referenda and initiatives have on equality. Studies in this field are often limited to single countries and certain aspects of equality. Moreover, most existing studies look at the mere availability of direct democratic instruments instead of actual bills that are put to a vote. This paper aims to take a first step to fill these gaps by giving an explorative overview of the outputs of direct democratic bills on multiple equality dimensions, analyzing all national referenda and initiatives in European democracies between 1990 and 2015. How many pro-and contra-equality bills have been put to a vote, how many of those succeeded at the ballot, and are there differences between country groups? Our findings show that a majority of direct democratic bills was not related to equality at all. Regarding the successful bills, we detect some regional differences along with the general tendency that there are more pro-than contra-equality bills. Our paper sheds new light on the question if direct democracy can serve as an appropriate means to complement representative democracy and to shape democratic institutions in the future. The potential of direct democracy in fostering or impeding equality should be an important criterion for the assessment of claims to extend decision-making by citizens.

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Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 62%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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More or less equality? Direct democracy in Europe from 1990 to 2015

2019

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“…Regarding the legal and political dimensions of equality, some scholars are more optimistic, once again arguing with the median voter perspective: in their view, the output of direct democracy for minorities should depend on the attitudes of the majority of the voters regarding the respective minority. Therefore, direct democracy is expected to lead to minority-friendlier policies if voters support these policies more than political decisionmakers do, and expected to disadvantage minorities if voters oppose minority-friendly ruling (Matsusaka, 2004;Töller & Vollmer, 2013;Vatter & Danaci, 2010). So, as attitudes towards certain minority groups may vary between different regions or countries, so may the outputs of direct democratic decisions in light of legal and political equality.…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For the first part-namely regarding the impact of direct democracy on socioeconomic equality-it can be said that the negative assumption by Wolfgang Merkel (2011Merkel ( , 2015 is backed up by a number of empirical results: educative spending is lower in US states with direct democratic options and resourceful groups benefitted at the expense of worse-off in some German direct democratic votes (Berry, 2014;Schäfer & Schoen, 2013;Töller & Vollmer, 2013). Also, several studies found that Swiss cantons or US states with more direct democratic options invest less in social spending (Berry, 2009;Feld & Kirchgässner, 2000;Freitag & Vatter, 2006;Matsusaka, 2004;Moser & Obinger, 2007;Wagschal & Obinger, 2000).…”

Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

It Depends…Different Direct Democratic Instruments and Equality in Europe from 1990 to 2015

Geißel

Krämling

Paulus

2019

PaG

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Despite the popularity of direct democracy in recent decades, research on the actual output effects of popular decision-making is rare. This is especially true with regard to equality, where there are at least three major research gaps: 1) a lack of cross-national analyses; 2) insufficient investigation of the differential effects of different direct democratic instruments on equality; and 3) a failure to distinguish between different aspects of equality, i.e., socioeconomic, legal and political equality. This article takes a first step to tackle these shortcomings by looking at all national referenda in European democracies between 1990 and 2015, differentiating between mandatory, bottom-up and top-down referenda. We find that a large majority of successful direct democratic bills—regardless of which instrument is employed—are not related to equality issues. Of the remaining ones, there are generally more successful pro-equality bills than contra-equality ones, but the differences are rather marginal. Mandatory referenda tend to produce pro-equality outputs, but no clear patterns emerge for bottom-up and top-down referenda. Our results offer interesting, preliminary insights to the current debate on direct democracy, pointing to the conclusion that popular decision-making via any type of direct democratic instrument is neither curse nor blessing with regard to equality. Instead, it is necessary to look at other factors such as context conditions or possible indirect effects in order to get a clearer picture of the impacts of direct democracy on equality.

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Direkte Demokratie: Theorie und Praxis

Kersting

2015

Zeitgenössische Demokratietheorie

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Wem nützt direkte Demokratie? Policy-Effekte direkter Demokratie und Folgerungen für die Forschung zu Deutschland

Cited by 10 publications

References 32 publications

More or less equality? Direct democracy in Europe from 1990 to 2015

More or less equality? Direct democracy in Europe from 1990 to 2015

It Depends…Different Direct Democratic Instruments and Equality in Europe from 1990 to 2015

Direkte Demokratie: Theorie und Praxis

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