Patrick Emmenegger

Department of Political Science / School of Economics and Political Science, University of St.Gallen

  • New contribution to DeFacto

    The blog DeFacto just published our summary of the paper “Vox Populi: Popular Support for the Popular Initiative” (in German). The post is entitled: “Vox Populi: Unterstützung des Volkes für die Volksinitiative” (with Lucas Leemann and André Walter). Here is the link.

  • Dataset on municipality-level outcomes of direct democratic votes now available

    The new dataset containing the municipality-level outcomes of all direct democratic votes in the period 1866 to 2023 is now publicly available. You find it on the Harvard Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/DDIVS8

  • New paper in SPSR

    The Swiss Political Science Review has accepted the paper, entitled “Municipality-Level Outcomes of Direct-Democratic Votes in Switzerland, 1866-2023” (with Lucas Leemann, Andreina Thoma, and André Walter). The paper introduces a new dataset of the municipality-level outcomes of all direct-democratic votes in Switzerland. The dataset will be made publicly available on the Harvard Dataverse.

  • Prize for Cecilia Ivardi

    Congratulations to Cecilia Ivardi from CPE@HSG for winning the 2024 Political Economy and Welfare network prize of the Council of European Studies (Lyon conference) for her single-authored paper on the role of the state in the transformation of vocational education and training! The paper will appear in the Journal of European Public Policy.

  • New Book with OUP

    Oxford University Press has accepted our manuscript “Stacking the Deck: The Party Politics of Electoral System Choice” (co-authored with André Walter) for publication. In the book, we analyze how incumbent parties contain new electoral threats by means of electoral alliances, gerrymandering, and malapportionment. Moreover, we show how the success of containment measures (or lack thereof) influences parties’ preferences for electoral system change. Finally, we show that also in PR systems, electoral district design is influenced by parties’ seat maximization interests. The book should be available as open access some time in 2025.

  • New paper in APSR

    Great news. The American Political Science Review has (conditionally) accepted our paper “Vox Populi: Popular Support for the Popular Initiative” (together with Lucas Leemann and André Walter). Here is the abstract of the paper:

    Direct democratic institutions are often introduced by popular vote, but there is little research on what motivates voters to support these new instruments. Using a unique data set on the ideological positions of voters and members of parliament, this paper examines support for the introduction of the initiative right in a popular vote. We find that voters support the initiative right when they are inadequately represented in parliament. Moreover, the analysis shows that the voting behavior is consistent with voters understanding the strategic implications of adopting the popular initiative. We demonstrate that voters support its adoption if they are ideologically more proximate to the median voter than they are to the median legislator. Finally, the paper shows that ideological distance matters for voters of the ruling party as well, which helps explain why a majority of voters support a political institution that limits the ruling party’s room for maneuver.

  • Report on European Industrial Policy

    I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the EU Industrial Policy Report 2024 by the LUISS Hub for New Industrial Policy and Economic Governance (LUHNIP). The contribution is entitled “A Continent in Search of Skills? Aiding the Twin Transition through Skill Formation Policy” and is co-authored with Niccolo Durazzi and Alina Felder. The entire report can be found here.

  • Annatina Aerne @ Trinity College Dublin

    Huge news! Former HSG PhD student and GOVPET postdoctoral researcher Annatina Aerne has just been appointed assistant professor in economic and organizational sociology at Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin. Congratulations and good start on the Emerald Isle!

  • Linda Wanklin @ DC dVET

    Congratulations to Linda Wanklin for starting her new position at the Donor Committee for Dual Vocational Education and Training. Luckily, Linda will continue to contribute to GOVPET research on a part-time basis!

  • New paper in BJPS

    The British Journal of Political Science just accepted our paper entitled “Who Counts? Non-Citizen Residents, Spatial Sorting, and Malapportionment” (with André Walter). Here is the abstract:

    Existing research argues that malapportionment primarily favors rural areas, resulting in conservative biases of electoral systems. In this paper, we provide a new perspective on the study of apportionment processes by identifying the institutional design under which malapportionment may favor other regions. Because of the geographical sorting of non-citizen residents, we argue that regions with high shares of non-citizen residents benefit from population-based apportionment, whereas the spatial sorting of non-citizens does not affect malapportionment in case of citizen-based apportionment. Empirically, we use sub-national data from ten advanced democracies to forward evidence that differences in apportionment mechanisms and district-level shares of non-citizen residents systematically influence malapportionment. Our findings suggest that the impact of malapportionment on political representation and public policies might be more heterogeneous than previously thought.