Switzerland: Political developments and data in 2020

The year 2020 was supposed to become a year of new parliamentary dynamics, given that the national elections in autumn 2019 had produced the largest shifts in the composition of Parliament for decades, most notably much higher shares of green and female MPs. However, in the first half of the year, party politics was put on hold when the Federal Council, in March 2020, and for the first time in its history, declared the ‘extraordinary situation’ under the Federal Law of Epidemics. While in June this situation was downgraded to the ‘special situation’ and Parliament and party politics regained relevance and visibility in the second half of the year, the pandemic clearly dominated many aspects of the political life in 2020

Does Satisfaction with Democracy Really Increase Happiness? Direct Democracy and Individual Satisfaction in Switzerland

This paper takes the influential "direct democracy makes people happy”-research as a starting point and asks whether direct democracy impacts individual satisfaction. Unlike former studies we distinguish two aspects of individual satisfaction, namely satisfaction with life ("happiness”) and with how democracy works. Based on multilevel analysis of the 26 Swiss cantons we show that the theoretical assumption on which the happiness hypothesis is based has to be questioned, as there is very little evidence for a robust relationship between satisfaction with democracy and life satisfaction. Furthermore, we do not find a substantive positive effect of direct democracy on happiness. However, with respect to satisfaction with democracy, our analysis shows some evidence for a procedural effect of direct democracy, i.e. positive effects related to using direct democratic rights, rather than these rights per s

Do households live the family model they prefer? Household’s work patterns across European policy regimes

Studies have investigated the equalizing effect of childcare provision and parental leave schemes on gendered work patterns. However, as the relationship between policies and individual time allocations to paid work is complex and challenging to empirically assess, previous research has clarified single aspects of this complexity. The present study theoretically and empirically combines a household perspective by considering the work behaviours of two partners within one household (i.e. a household’s lived family model) with a comparative approach to systematically analyse relationships between specific policy designs and households’ paid work patterns in a large sample. The findings imply that extensive childcare policies are systematically related to an egalitarian household organization, mostly among those with small children. This association can be observed across households with varying levels of egalitarian norms. Conversely, the findings suggest that the current design of parental leave policies in the 21 European countries does not allow for a true assessment of the potential of leave schemes to influence the within-household division of labor

Voting in the Echo Chamber? Patterns of Political Online Activities and Voting Behavior in Switzerland

Understanding the political consequences of digitalization is among the key challenges for modern societies. A pressing issue is the question whether political online activities make individuals more close-minded and less willing to consider alternative arguments. We examine this question using a peculiarity of the Swiss electoral system – the possibility to split votes – as a behavioral outcome measure. We argue that political online activities might either make individuals less likely to split votes (“echo chamber”-argument) or more likely to spread their votes across parties (“deliberation”-argument). Empirically, we use data from the Swiss Election Study Selects 2019 to test these arguments. The results of a hierarchical logistic regression analysis do not support any of the conflicting arguments. Yet, additional analyses suggest that political interest moderates the relationship between online activities and vote splitting: political interest makes online activists more likely to split votes

Satisfaction with Democracy: When Government by the People Brings Electoral Winners and Losers Together

Research on direct democracy is often entirely sub-national research focusing on a single country or cross-national with limited variance in direct democratic institutions. That has consequences for the scope and opportunity to understand and learn about direct democratic institutions, in particular how they interact with representative democracy. In this paper we use a subnational cross-country comparative perspective to delve deeper into the relationship between direct democracy and individual satisfaction with democracy. To that end we propose a measure of direct democratic institutions for 101 sub-national units that allows to measure the extent of these institutions across various contexts. Comparing the subnational units of the United States, Switzerland, Germany and Austria, we do not find a general relationship between direct democratic institutions and democratic satisfaction. However, we find that direct democracy has the potential to decrease the difference between electoral winners and losers, whereby this mechanism can be observed across different representative systems

Space and time in comparative political research: pooled time-series cross-section analysis and multilevel designs compared

'Die Kombination von Längs- und Querschnittvergleich ist ein zentrales Thema in der vergleichenden Politikwissenschaft. In aller Regel wird ein gepooltes Zeitreihen-Design angewandt, um verschiedene politische Einheiten über die Zeit und miteinander zu vergleichen. Diese Methode, obwohl sehr in Mode, ist allerdings nicht unumstritten. Eine interessante Alternative stellt die Mehrebenenanalyse dar, welche ebenfalls die Kombination von Zeit und Raum zulässt, indem sie Beobachtungen in der Zeitachse quasi als Eigenschaften verschiedener länderspezifischer Kontexte betrachtet. Das Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es, die Vorteile eines Mehrebenen-Designs für die vergleichende Politikforschung zu illustrieren. Diese ergeben sich v.a. in Bezug auf die Modellierung zeit-invarianter Variablen, die Unterscheidung zwischen querschnitt- und zeitbedingter Varianz sowie die Möglichkeit, Heterogenität zu modellieren statt lediglich zu korrigieren. Als praktisches Anwendungsbeispiel werden die öffentlichen Bildungsausgaben in den 26 Schweizer Kantonen zwischen 1978 und 2003 analysiert. Es zeigt sich, dass die Mehrebenenanalyse sowohl aus statistischen Gründen, aber auch aufgrund ihrer konzeptuellen Vorteile tatsächlich eine viel versprechende Alternative zu gepoolten Zeitreihen-Designs darstellt.' (Autorenreferat)'The combination of cross-section and time dimension is a central issue in current comparative political research. The state-of-the-art procedure in this context is pooled time-series cross-section analysis (PTSCS), which is en vogue in today's relevant literature but not uncontested. An interesting option are multilevel designs, which allow the combination of time and space by considering observations over time nested within country-specific contexts. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the advantages of multilevel designs in comparative political research, which mainly concern the modeling of time-invariant variables, the possible distinction between cross-sectional and time related variance in the data, and the possibility to model heterogeneity instead of just correcting it. Using the example of an analysis of public education expenditure in the 26 Swiss cantons between 1978 and 2003, it can be shown that multilevel analysis - mainly due to its statistical and conceptual advantages - is indeed a promising alternative to PTSCS.' (author's abstract)

Is the problem or the solution riskier? Predictors of carbon tax policy support

Climate change is posing significant threats to human societies and developmental prospects. Governments continue to design and propose comprehensive climate policies aimed at tackling the climate crisis but often fail to successfully implement them. One reason is that securing public support for such policy instruments has proven to be challenging. While public opinion research has often documented a positive correlation between beliefs in climate change and policy support, it has also become clear that the presence of such beliefs is in many situations not enough for policy support. This is the starting point of our study in which we delve deeper into the link between climate change beliefs and policy support by specifically integrating risk perceptions related to climate change but also related to policy solutions. Empirically, we leverage survey data from the United States and Switzerland and employ the random forest technique to further explore the mechanisms that link climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, and policy support. We use the case of carbon taxation, which is considered a particularly effective instrument by ecological economists but seems to be particularly unpopular politically. The results of this study suggest that beliefs and risk perceptions are very important predictors of support for carbon tax policies. Furthermore, they unveil the strongest predictors and specific patterns that generate the highest support in the United States and Switzerland

Voting in the rain – the impact of rain on participation in open-air assemblies

The analysis of how weather conditions influence participation at the ballot and whether bad weather influences ballot decisions has recently gained momentum. Because most of these studies have focused on ballot votes, very little is known about the influence of rain on open-air citizen assemblies. In the effort to fill this gap, this paper analyses the influence of rain on participation in the Landsgemeinde - the main decision-making body of two Swiss cantons, wherein citizens meet on the main square in order to debate and decide bindingly on political matters of all sorts. We rely on a survey with an in-built conjoint experiment that presents citizens with several hypothetical Landsgemeinde situations. In order to reveal causal mechanisms, we expose survey participants to a randomly varied combination of weather and other conditions such as outcome favorability, the expected closeness of the vote and the company available during the event. Drawing from the literature on political mobilization, we find that rain not only decreases overall participation but it also lowers participation when votes are expected to be uncontested and for individuals who do not primarily attend the Landsgemeinde for political reasons. However, there is one exception: if voters are expected to meet friends, rain does no longer decrease participation