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.
Patrick Emmenegger 