The Project

What is the goal of the study?

The main question in this project is how politicians form their perceptions of the public opinion.

Why is this question important?

In a representative democracy like Switzerland, politicians are elected to represent the interests of their electorate. This is not an easy task for either side. From existing research, we know quite a bit about how voters form their opinion for elections. However, we know much less about how politicians form their opinion about what the public wants. This is the key question of democratic theories we are studying in this project.

How do we conduct this study?

In 2018, we focused on surveying Swiss politicians from the National Council ("Nationalrat") and the Council of States ("Ständerat") as well as regional politicians from the Great Councils of Geneva and Berne. As part of our study, we asked politicians to estimate what percentage of the population is in favor (or against) a specific and timely policy proposal. An exceptionally high number of 368 Swiss politicians participated in our study (61-88% per parliament).

We also conducted a representative survey among 10'000 Swiss citizens to learn what they think about very specific policy proposals. About 47% of the people we contacted participated in the study.

By combining the information from citizens and politicians, we are able to answer our research question.

A new round of suveys (with both citizens and elected representatives) wa launched in Spring 2022.

Are the data and other results of the study accessible?

Of course. You can find all information we have gathered so far and how to access our data (for research purposes) under Findings and Data.

Who is conducting this study?

From 2017 to 2021, the Swiss part of the project was financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation [project number 100017_172559] and was conducted under the direction of Prof. Varone and Dr. Helfer at the Department for Political Science and International Relations at Geneva University (Switzerland). Prof. Varone and Dr. Helfer conducted the interviews with politicians, supported by an extended team (see "Team").

The complex survey of the Swiss population was conducted by the Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences (FORS) at Lausanne University on behalf of the project team.

Since 2022, Prof. Pirmin Bundi is coleading the projetc that is cofunded by the European Research Council (ERC granted to Prof. Stefaan Walgrave).

Is there an international collaboration?

Besides Switzerland, the study was conducted by project partners in other countries (Australia, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Canada, Portugual, Sweden and Czech Republic). These country's varying political systems, for example concerning the degree of direct democracy, allow us to discern whether those have effects on the estimations. You can find a list of the other involved researchers under The Team.