Suchergebnisse

AbstractUse of initiative, referendum and recall in California municipalities aids in extension of principles to state.

AbstractCorrect voting in elections has been extensively analysed in the recent past. However, thus far, correct voting in direct legislation has hardly been investigated. This is all the more surprising since direct legislation is a more demanding form of democracy and, thus, to vote one's true preferences in direct legislation represents a greater challenge than picking the "right" party or the "right" candidate at elections. Moreover, the few researches on the correctness of individual referendum votes used a measurement method that we think has some methodological shortfalls. Instead, we want to propose another better‐suited method of measuring correct voting in direct legislation settings. This method makes use of voters' stances on the issue at stake. Besides, we will scrutinize the share of correct voting as well as its determinants on the Swiss popular vote of November 2009, which included three rather different propositions. The study shows that a majority of Swiss voters are indeed able to vote their true preferences. The ability to vote correctly depends primarily on the individual voter's project‐specific knowledge, but also, under certain circumstances, on the use of heuristics.

The United States has now had a half-century's experience with the process customarily denominated direct legislation. The phrase usually means, and is so used here, the power of the electorate to participate in the law-making function by voting for or against particular proposals submitted at regular or special elections. The proposals may have originated in the legislative assembly or they may have been submitted through the action of the electorate. There are other procedural details in which the processes in particular states may vary, but here the concern is with the general operation of the system. Perhaps more attention has been devoted to that situation in which the legislature has the option of submitting a proposal or not as it sees fit. It is not thought, however, that this detail would cause any serious difference in the conclusions that are drawn here or the suggestions that are made.Direct legislation has been associated with the Progressive movement which was active at the turn into the present century. The movement was a protest against a number of activities which were prevalent among the states at that time. One of the protests alleged that the legislatures had become wholly "corrupt" and that consequently it was necessary to "clean" them up. This line of analysis also postulated that the people were "incorrupt" and that if given the opportunity they would "purify" the political activity of their states and even the nation. Direct legislation was looked upon as one of the most significant means by which these goals were to be accomplished.

Among the experiments in government which have taken place in post-war Germany, one of the most varied in form is to be found in the theory and practice of direct legislation. The referendum, initiative, and a type of recall exist in national, state, and local governments. The experience of the German people with these constitutional practices has been treated occasionally in studies of the national and municipal governments, and this note is designed to perform a similar service with regard to the German states.Studies of the constitutional convention at Weimar seem to indicate that direct legislation was adopted for the national constitution without a great deal of study. The Germans had, however, been acquainted with the idea of direct legislation for some time, and a proposal for its use had found expression in theErfurter Programof the Social Democratic party. The provisional arrangements for the national government during the revolutionary period included machinery for an appeal to the electorate in cases of disagreement between the ordinary organs of government. But the widest use of the various forms of direct legislation is first to be found in the provisional constitutions of the states.

AbstractIn elections, voters sometimes compensate for post‐election bargaining processes by electing parties that are more extreme than themselves. We investigate compensatory voting in direct democracy. Our goals are to develop and test a measure of compensatory voting in direct legislation and assess its extent of compensatory voting. Empirically, we draw on the case of Switzerland, a country with frequent popular votes. We operationalize compensatory voting as voting 'yes' on a popular initiative in spite of endorsing arguments that speak against this initiative, under the condition of being well‐informed about the initiative. Using data from post‐ballot surveys on 17'570 individuals having voted on 63 popular initiatives in the period 1993 to 2015, our analysis shows that compensatory voting has not significantly increased in Switzerland in this period.