Suchergebnisse

This paper investigates whether popular initiatives signed by a larger share of the population have higher acceptance rates at the subsequent vote. The main analysis is based on all Swiss federal initiatives voted between 1978 and 2000 with a panel of aggregate voting data at cantonal level. The results suggest that petition signing is positively and significantly related to acceptance rates at ballot. I address potential omitted variable bias from underlying preferences which might be driving both signatures and acceptance rates in three ways. First, the panel structure of the data allows to control for time-constant preferences via fixed effects. Second, results are robust to various proxies for voter preferences. Third, using the doubling of the signature requirement in 1978 as an instrumental variable confirms the above result. The findings imply that petition signing can serve as an effective partisan campaigning tool.

We use a change in the voting procedures of one of the two chambers of the Swiss parliament to explore how transparency affects the voting behavior of its members. Until 2013, the Council of States (Ständerat) had voted by a show of hands. While publicly observable at the time of the vote, legislators' decisions could only be verified ex post through the time-consuming screening of online videos. In 2014, halfway through the legislative period, the chamber switched to electronic voting. Since then, the individual votes of legislators have become more transparent and observable as their votes are now recorded electronically and, in some cases, published online. Our analysis is based on individual voting behavior in all final passage votes during the 2011-2015 legislative period. In a difference-in-difference framework, the larger chamber, the National Council (Nationalrat), serves as a control group. Not only have the voting procedures of the National Council remained unchanged since 2007 but also the legislative texts on which both chambers vote are the same. This unique framework makes it possible to estimate the causal effects of voting procedures on legislators' choices. Since the voting system reform, members of the Council of States are significantly less likely to deviate from their party line. Our results reflect the increased observability of legislators' votes and the greater conformity pressure exerted by political parties, as easier monitoring enables them to enforce discipline among their members.