Modelling the strategic interactions in representative democracies with referendums 1

Simon Hug2 and Lucas Leemann3
Département de science politique, Université de Genève
Columbia University
 
Paper prepared for presentation at the Annual Conference of the
Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, April 22-25, 2010

First version: December 2009, this version: Nov 23, 2009

Abstract

There is a general understanding that direct democratic institutions can enrich representative systems. The goal of this project is to develop an appropriate statistical framework to test hypothesis regarding referendums. There is a gap between the acknowledgment of the strategic character of the interaction of government and opposition if institutions allowing for referendums are present and the statistical models.

Where the formal models address the strategic nature of the phenomena, the statistical models assume conditional independence of observations. The assumed monotonic effects in common statistical models are hardly met if the actors behave strategically (Signorino, 1999). Therefore, this project is based on quantal response models (McKelvey and Palfrey, 1995, 1996, 1998 and Signorino 1999, 2003).

Such a model allows compare the impact of preference structures on the political behavior of actors. Under what circumstances do oppositional groups trigger a referendums? Is the likelihood of calling for a referendum a direct function of the people's preferences? Are there any mitigating effects of factors not related to the preference structure? Based on Swiss data it is possible to answer questions as outlined.

Footnotes:

1  Simon acknowledges the financial support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grants No 100012- 108179 and No 100012-111909).

2  Département de science politique, Faculté des sciences économiques et sociales; Université de Genève; 40 Bd du Pont d'Arve; 1211 Genève 4; Switzerland; phone ++41 22 379 83 78; email: simon.hug@unige.ch

3  Columbia University; email: lleemann@gmail.com

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On 23 Nov 2009, 19:46.