ABSTRACT
Direct democracy has the capacity to affect electoral dynamics. Research has shown, for instance, that when individuals perceive issues voted through direct legislation as salient, their subsequent participation in elections is significantly higher (Lacey, 2005; Tolbert and Smith, 2005). Furthermore, strong evidence exists that direct legislation enhances citizens’ political knowledge (Tolbert et al., 2003; Nicholson, 2003; Lupia and Matsusaka, 2004) and the sentiment of political efficacy (Smith and Tolbert, 2007; Bowler and Donovan, 2002), which in turn have direct effects on electoral outcomes. In this sense, direct legislation has an intrinsic democratic value in that it encourages a stronger public engagement (Qvortrup, 2013). In Switzerland, citizens are significantly better informed when they have more extended political participation rights (i.e., when they live in cantons with larger direct-democratic opportunities; Benz and Stutzer, 2004). Moreover, Marquis and Bergman (2009) highlight that citizens’ general knowledge on political issues – a strong predictor of participation in elections – is directly related to the nature of political campaigns during direct-democratic ballots. On the other hand, when citizens are asked to vote too frequently, their aggregate mobilization drastically goes down; existence of such ‘voters’ fatigue’ has been confirmed for both elections (Rallings et al., 2003) and direct legislation (Nicholson, 2003; Kriesi, 2005). At the structural level, political parties and interest groups rely on direct legislation and policy propositions to put issues on the political agenda (Kriesi, 1994; Bowler et al., 2006), which could strategically strengthen their electoral position and ownership of specific issues. The November 2009 ‘minarets initiative’ in Switzerland represents a perfect example in this sense. The initiative, launched in 2007 and carried by a right-wing party coalition under the lead of the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), banned the construction of any new minarets on Swiss territory, and was accepted by an undisputable 57.5 per cent of voters (Hirter and Vatter, 2009). Beyond the shockwaves generated by this unexpected result, which can probably be compared – at a smaller, Swiss scale – to the 2016 Brexit vote and the 2016 US Presidential election (at least for the feeling of powerlessness of liberal elites), the ‘minarets initiative’ is instructive here because of the proximity of its launch (early 2007) to the federal elections of October of the same year. Many doubts were indeed raised that the ‘minarets initiative’ was simply proposed by the SVP in order to frame the electoral debate and put on the electoral agenda the issues of immigration control, Islam, and cultural assimilation of foreigners – issues on which the SVP has a clear ownership (e.g., Lachat, 2014; Lanz and Sciarini, 2016) and thus could easily transform into electoral grains. 1 These issues were at the core of the 2007 elections, in which the SVP increased its parliamentary presence (Dardanelli, 2008).
