A cross-national comparative study of the policy effects of referendums1

Karin Gilland Lutz2 and Simon Hug3 
CIS, IPZ, Universität Zürich

Paper prepared for presentation at the ECPR
General Conference Pisa, September 6-8, 2007
 
First preliminary version: May 14, 2008

May 14, 2008

Abstract

With the adoption of new constitutions in Eastern and Central Europe containing numerous provisions allowing for referendums, cross-national comparative work on the policy effects of referendums across the European continent have become possible. This allows us to close an important gap in the literature on referendums, namely to assess the consequences of these institutions at the national level. More precisely, we wish to assess whether the well-documented policy effects at the subnational level (e.g., in the United States or Switzerland) carry over to the national level. Some of these subnational studies support the theoretically derived implication that the possibility of referendums leads to policies more closely reflecting the voters' wishes. The present paper provides empirical tests of this, but contrary to other empirical studies so far, proposes a comparative analysis at the national level. For several policies in the domain of labor regulation we show that the presence of institutions allowing for referendums reduces the difference between policy outcomes and the voters' wishes as assessed in surveys. We carry out these tests on the basis of several datasets covering a range of mainly Western countries, and rely on a diverse set of methodologies to assess policy outcomes.

Footnotes:

1  Earlier versions of this paper (and parts thereof) were presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (Philadelphia, August 31 - September 3, 2006) and seminars at Oxford University and the London School of Economics. Helpful comments by the participants at these events, and especially Torun Dewan, as well as the financial support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant No. 100012-108179) is gratefully acknowledged.

2  Institut für Politikwissenschaft; Universität Zürich; Hirschengraben 56; 8001 Zürich; Switzerland; phone +41 (0)44 634 50 28; fax: +41 (0)44 634 50 98; email: gillandlutz@pwi.unizh.ch

3  Institut für Politikwissenschaft; Universität Zürich; Hirschengraben 56; 8001 Zürich; Switzerland; phone +41 (0)44 634 50 90/1; fax: +41 (0)44 634 50 98; email: simon.hug@access.unizh.ch

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