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Does Direct Democracy Enhance Politicians’ Perceptions of Constituents’ Opinions? Evidence from Switzerland
Author(s) -
Helfer Luzia,
Wäspi Flurina,
Varone Frédéric
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
swiss political science review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.632
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1662-6370
pISSN - 1424-7755
DOI - 10.1111/spsr.12495
Subject(s) - referendum , ballot , direct democracy , parliament , democracy , perception , representative democracy , politics , representation (politics) , political science , public administration , variety (cybernetics) , voting , public economics , law , psychology , economics , computer science , neuroscience , artificial intelligence
Elected members of parliament (MPs) are supposed to represent their constituents and, thus, to have an accurate perception of citizens’ policy preferences. It is often assumed that direct democracy instruments, such as the popular initiative and the referendum, have a positive impact on MPs’ perceptual accuracy. This study assesses whether direct democracy has the expected positive effect in Switzerland. It measures how accurately MPs perceive their constituents’ opinions on a variety of policy proposals through a parallel survey of 97 national MPs and 4677 citizens. Empirical evidence shows that MPs perceive policy proposals that have been subjected to a direct democracy vote more accurately. Furthermore, MPs have a higher perceptual accuracy if the policy proposal submitted to a popular vote was conflictual with a narrow ballot outcome. Direct democracy thus fosters political representation as popular votes constitute an important source of information and sustain MPs’ ability to accurately assess citizens’ preferences.