How minorities fare under referendums: a cross-national
study1
Daniel Bochsler2 and Simon Hug3
CIS and IPZ, Universität
Zürich
Département de science
politique, Université de Genève
First version: August 2008, this version: May 14, 2008
Abstract
The way in which minorities fare when referendums can be used has
preoccuppied scholars for a long time. Empirical studies, so far, have
tried to deal with this research question at the subnational level by
comparing either referendum or policy outcomes across subnational units.
These units are, however, often constrained by the national level of
government. Hence, to understand the full effect of referendums on
minority policies, cross-national comparisons are required. Relying on
game-theoretic models we thus test the proposition that also the area of
minority policies the effect of referendums depends on the voters'
preferences. We test this proposition with national-level information
on preferences and institutions as well as policy outcomes in the area
of minority policies. The set of countries used for the empirical
analysis spans the whole globe.
Footnotes:
1 Thanks are due to the Swiss National Science Foundation
(Grant No. 100012-108179) for generous funding.
2 Institut für Politikwissenschaft;
Universität Zürich; Hirschengraben 56; 8001 Zürich; Switzerland;
email: bochsler@ipz.uzh.ch
3 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@politic.unige.ch
File translated from
TEX
by
TTH,
version 3.12.
On 14 May 2008, 07:43.