Is direct democracy effective? Yes, if it is citizens who start the process

The EU referendum this week has sparked extensive debates about the pros and cons of direct democracy. But Lucas Leemann writes that landmark votes like this may be the most atypical – and arguably worst – examples of direct democracy. He indicates that in cases where citizens have the ability to launch initiatives and call for referendums, it can play an important role in resolving problems on non-redistributive issues

Strategy and Sample Selection -- A Strategic Selection Estimator

The development and proliferation of strategic estimators has narrowed the gap between theoretical models and empirical testing. But despite recent contributions that extend the basic strategic estimator, researchers have continued to neglect a classic social science phenomenon: selection. Compared to non-strategic estimators, strategic models are even more prone to selection effects. First, external shocks or omitted variables can lead to correlated errors. Second, because the systematic parts of actors? utilities usually overlap on certain key variables, the two sets of explanatory variables are correlated. As a result, both the systematic and the stochastic components can be correlated. However, given that the estimates for the first mover are computed based on the potentially biased predicted probabilities of the second actor, we also generate biased estimates for the first actor. In applied work researchers neglect the potential shortcomings due to selection bias. This paper presents an alternative strategic estimator that takes selection into account and allows scholars to obtain consistent, unbiased, and efficient estimates in the presence of both selection and strategic action. I present a Monte Carlo analysis as well as a real world application to illustrate the superior performance of this estimator relative to the standard practice

Prepaid postage using pre-stamped envelopes to affect turnout costs

Voter participation in elections is important for representational reasons but also because it helps to support the legitimacy of the election outcome. In a recent paper, Schelker and Schneiter (2017) show with data from only one Swiss canton that a small policy intervention (return envelopes with prepaid postage) can lead to substantially increased voter turnout rates. We revisit this finding and extend the analysis to all cantons that allow municipalities to offer free return postage. We find that a credible estimate of the effect is somewhat smaller but still positive and significant. We also document that this effect is not constant but stronger for larger municipalities than for smaller municipalities. Our interviews point to a likely mechanism. These results show that return envelopes with prepaid postage are an effective policy to increase participation, but mostly for large municipalitie

Direct Democracy - Institutional Origins, Initiative Usage, and Policy Consequences

This dissertation consist of three research papers on direct democracy. Each paper addresses a fundamental question about direct democracy. All three questions have a specific role in a larger research agenda on direct democratic institutions. To out rule any confusion up front I need to define direct democratic institutions. I refer to direct democratic institutions if they can be launched or triggered by citizens and political parties against the will of the executive and the legislature or if they are constitutionally required. The second qualification is that the outcome of the process or mechanism has to be binding. Direct democracy, according to this definition, exists on a national level in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Egypt, Ireland, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, USA (to change the constitution). In Italy, Liberia, Liechtenstein, the Philippines, and Switzerland the people can challenge government policies. Finally, in the US states, Switzerland, Swiss cantons, and also most German Länder there is a right to propose new laws (Hug, 2004). The purpose of limiting direct democracy to the most powerful subset of such institutions - the ones which can originate from the people and are binding for the government - provides us with specific enough set of institutions such that one can make meaningful statements about them. Direct democracy can be many things; its significant effects, variously for good or ill, have been widely acknowledged (Broder, 2000; Matsusaka, 1995). Do direct democratic institutions inevitably lead to inability of reform (as in California) or do direct democratic institutions constrain political elites and make them more responsive to the electorate (Hug, 2003)? These are the two extreme positions on whether direct democratic institutions are beneficial or disadvantageous. But a normative claim has to be rooted in a detailed understanding of how these institutions work. To that end, I ask three research questions which shed light on the direct democratic institutions within modern representative polities. The first paper asks why direct democratic institutions are introduced and extended. Why should politicians in power change the institutional setting in a unfavorable way for themselves? The motivation for this paper is that many scholars regard Switzerland as a peculiar and special case for direct democracy. There is an underlying understanding that there is a special cultural and historical affinity to direct democracy. This paper shows that most regions and cantons did not have direct democratic institutions two hundred years ago. The introduction and extension of direct democracy can be understood as a consequence of partisan motivations to restrict power of the party in government. Are direct democratic institutions the people's means of keeping politicians on a leash? The second paper shows how organized political groups exploit direct democratic institutions. The paper shows that the degree of partisan competition is the main driver of initiative frequency. This paper explains and illustrates how partisan competition is altered by the presence of direct democratic institutions. Finally, the results help to understand why initiatives often target social issues and moral value questions rather than redistribution issues. Finally, the third paper asks under which circumstances direct democratic institutions yield better policies for the median voter. Is the median voter always better off with direct democracy? The paper shows that the voter is usually not worse off but that the benefit from having direct democratic institutions depends on the specific cleavage structure in a country. The main relationship and recurrent theme of this dissertation is the cleavage structure and how that interacts with direct democracy. The first paper shows that the more cleavages are actively exploited the more likely introduction and extension of direct democracy becomes. The second paper shows that the cross-cutting cleavages yield the issues which will be exploited by parties in their quest to gain larger support in the next elections. The final paper shows that direct democracy will yield its largest effect when a polity has two cleavages which are cross-cutting and only one of them is relevant for the elections. What do we learn from these three papers? All three papers in this dissertation center around the cleavage structure. Whether the specific cleavage constellation proliferates direct democracy, or a new cross-cutting cleavage creates the incentives for parties to use direct democracy, or, finally, whether it is predicting when direct democracy will benefit the median voter most. Since the origins, the usage, but also the effects are contingent on the conflict structure within a society it is hard to study direct democracy in a comparative manner. The study of direct democracy has remained a somewhat neglected endeavor and has been mostly delegated to scholars of US state politics or Swiss politics (see Altman, 2011, for an exception). Part of the reason for this may be that it is hard to understand how direct democracy works because those very mechanics depend on the underlying conflict structure in a society. I believe that the study of direct democracy is central because it strikes at the core of democracy. It is a set of institutions which has the potential to create a more responsive government and to democratize democratic societies even further. At the same time, this comes with costs. The main aspect being that the people's will may very well violate basic liberal rights. Another critique which is often voiced doubts the ability of ordinary citizens to make policy decisions. However, I have never been too impressed in normative discussion when the people's ability to make rational choices was questioned. I do not fully disagree and I do think that people may make mistakes. But after all, this argument was used against general suffrage and proportional representation, two institutions which we nowadays believe to be fundamental democratic principles. Given the potential of these institutions, intensive study of them is warranted. But the study of direct democracy will only make a leap forward once we surpass the country studies and move on to a truly comparative analysis. Understanding the conditionality of effects and hence under- standing how these institutions exert differential effects depending on the societal and institutional environment they exist within is the next big step. This dissertation, hence, can be regarded as a product of the old times - but my aspiration is to also contribute to a newer wave of literature and to work towards the goal of a truly comparative study of direct democracy

The Democratic Effect of Direct Democracy

A key requirement of democratic governance is that policy outcomes and the majority pref- erence of the electorate are congruent. Many studies argue that the more direct democratic a system is, the more often voters get what they want, but the empirical evidence is mixed. This analysis explores the democratic effect of initiatives and referendums theoretically and empirically. The prediction of the formal model is that ?bad? representation (i.e., a large preference deviation between the electorate and the political elite) is good for the democratic effect of direct democracy. An empirical investigation of original voter and elite survey data, analyzed with multilevel modeling and post-stratification, supports this argument. Build- ing on the literature, the findings of the analysis suggest that the extent to which direct democratic institutions are conducive for policy congruence?and may thus be advisable as democratic correctives to representative systems?depends on the political conflict structure

Focal HIFU therapy for anterior compared to posterior prostate cancer lesions.

OBJECTIVE To compare cancer control in anterior compared to posterior prostate cancer lesions treated with a focal HIFU therapy approach. MATERIALS AND METHODS In a prospectively maintained national database, 598 patients underwent focal HIFU (Sonablate®500) (March/2007-November/2016). Follow-up occurred with 3-monthly clinic visits and PSA testing in the first year with PSA, every 6-12 months with mpMRI with biopsy for MRI-suspicion of recurrence. Treatment failure was any secondary treatment (ADT/chemotherapy, cryotherapy, EBRT, RRP, or re-HIFU), tumour recurrence with Gleason ≥ 3 + 4 on prostate biopsy without further treatment or metastases/prostate cancer-related mortality. Cases with anterior cancer were compared to those with posterior disease. RESULTS 267 patients were analysed following eligibility criteria. 45 had an anterior focal-HIFU and 222 had a posterior focal-HIFU. Median age was 64 years and 66 years, respectively, with similar PSA level of 7.5 ng/ml and 6.92 ng/ml. 84% and 82%, respectively, had Gleason 3 + 4, 16% in both groups had Gleason 4 + 3, 0% and 2% had Gleason 4 + 4. Prostate volume was similar (33 ml vs. 36 ml, p = 0.315); median number of positive cores in biopsies was different in anterior and posterior tumours (7 vs. 5, p = 0.009), while medium cancer core length, and maximal cancer percentage of core were comparable. 17/45 (37.8%) anterior focal-HIFU patients compared to 45/222 (20.3%) posterior focal-HIFU patients required further treatment (p = 0.019). CONCLUSION Treating anterior prostate cancer lesions with focal HIFU may be less effective compared to posterior tumours

A Systematic Approach to Study Electoral Fraud

Integrity of elections relies on fair procedures at di?erent stages of the election process, and fraud can occur in many instances and di?erent forms. This paper provides a general approach for the detection of fraud. While most existing contributions focus on a single instance and form of fraud, we propose a more encompassing approach, testing for several empirical implications of di?erent possible forms of fraud. To illustrate this approach we rely on a case of electoral irregularities in one of the oldest democracies: In a Swiss referendum in 2011, one in twelve municipalities irregularly destroyed the ballots, rendering a recount impossible. We do not know whether this happened due to sloppiness, or to cover possible fraudulent actions. However, one of our statistical tests leads to results, which points to irregularities in some of the municipalities, which lost their ballots: they reported significantly fewer empty ballots than the other municipalities. Relying on several tests leads to the well known multiple comparisons problem. We show two strategies and illustrate strengths and weaknesses of each potential way to deal with multiple tests

Survey data and multilevel modeling: advances and new tools

Traditional design-based survey inference is increasingly costly and impractical. Model-based survey inference has gained prominence in the last twenty years. Specifically, Multilevel regression with post-stratification (MrP) has become a standard for small area estimation. In this talk I will briefly sketch out what MrP can do and identify two weaknesses of the classic approach. First, the census-data constraint for the individual-level information. Second, the lack of disciplined feature selection and functional form. But both of these problems can be addressed. I will present MrsP (MrP’s better half) that is more flexible for individual-level information and then focus on autoMrP which leverages machine learning to produce an improved response model

Do natural disasters help the environment? How voters respond and what that means

This paper examines whether voters’ experience of extreme weather events such as flooding increases voting in favor of climate protection measures. While the large majority of individuals do not hold consistent opinions on climate issues, we argue that the experience of natural disasters can prime voters on climate change and affect political behavior. Using micro-level geospatial data on natural disasters, we exploit referendum votes in Switzerland, which allows us to obtain a behavioral rather than attitudinal measure of support for policies tackling climate change. Our findings indicate a sizeable effect for pro-climate voting after experiencing a flood: vote-share supporting pro-climate policies can increase by 20 percent. Our findings contribute to the literature exploring the impact of local conditions on electoral behavior