The Political Effects of Referendums
A Systematic Cross-national Study¹

Simon Hug²
CIS, IPZ, Universität Zürich

Research funded by the FNRS (Grant No. 100012-108179)

Abstract

The proposed project aims at studying systematically the policy effects of referendums in a cross-national perspective. Focusing on the current member countries of the European Union as well as Switzerland and Norway the project will assess whether institutions allowing for referendums make voters better off or not. To do so the project will collect information on the following elements:

• policy outcomes in a series of policy areas cross-nationally, relying on the one hand on aggregate measures and on the other on content analyses of laws in a set of policy areas;

• preferences of voters in the selected policy areas as measured in cross-national surveys (e.g., Eurobarometers, World Values Survey, European Values Survey, European Social Survey);

• detailed information on the institutional provisions allowing for referendums and the campaigns.

Together these three pieces of information allow for a systematic empirical test of the theoretically derived hypothesis that the presence of institutions allowing for referendums biases policy outcomes toward the preferred outcome of the median voter. In addition, we will also test the hypotheses that this policy effect depends on the exact type of referendums possible and that this effect is diminished by the difficulty to launch a referendum.

Publications

• Gilland Lutz, Karin, and Simon Hug, eds. (2009a). Financing referendum campaigns London: Palgrave
• Gilland Lutz, Karin, and Simon Hug (2009b). Introduction. in Financing referendum campaigns Gilland Lutz, Karin, and Simon Hug, eds. London: Palgrave, pp. 1-8.
• Gilland Lutz, Karin, and Simon Hug (2009c). Conclusion. in Financing referendum campaigns Gilland Lutz, Karin, and Simon Hug, eds. London: Palgrave, pp. 228-232.
• Hug, Simon. (2009). Some Thoughts About Referendums, Representative Democracy, and Separation of Powers. Constitutional Political Economy 20(3/4) 251-266.
• Hug, Simon (2009, forthcoming). Minderheiten und direktdemokratische Institutionen. in Sachunmittelbare Demokratie im interdisziplinären und internationalen Kontext Peter Neumann and Denise Renger, eds. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
• Hug, Simon (2010, forthcoming). Policy Consequences of Direct Legislation. Theory, Empirical Models and Evidence Quality & Quantity

Working Papers

• Gilland Lutz, Karin, and Simon Hug (2007). A cross-national comparative study of the policy effects of referendumsPaper prepared for presentation at the ECPR General Conference Pisa, September 6-8, 2007
• Hug, Simon and Franziska Spoerri (2007). Referendums, Trust, and Tax Evasion Paper prepared for presentation at the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops in Helsinki (May 7 - 12 2007).
• Häfliger, Ursula and Simon Hug (2007). Policy consequences of referendums in Switzerland Paper prepared for presentation at the International Conference Direct Democracy in Latin America, Buenos Aires, 14/15 March 2007 Faculty of Law, University of Buenos Aires.
• Bochsler, Daniel and Simon Hug (2008). How minorities fare under referendums
• Bochsler, Daniel (2008). When and why do Latin American countries introduce direct democratic instruments
• Hug, Simon (2008). The citizens' voice. Referendums in representative democracies book project

Footnotes:

¹  I gratefully acknowledge the preparatory work by Ladina Caluori, Thomas Christin, David McCoy and Silika Tereschenko in putting together this research proposal.

²  Center for Comparative and International Studies, Institut für Politikwissenschaft; Universität Zürich; Hirschengraben 56; 8001 Zürich; Switzerland; phone +41 (0)44 634 50 90/1; fax: +41 (0)44 634 50 98; email: simon.hug@access.unizh.ch