Political Participation in Direct Democracies: Theoretical, Methodological, and Empirical considerations of participatory effects of Direct Democratic Institutions

This paper scrutinizes the relationship between direct democratic institutions and political participation. Proponents of direct democracy often claim “educative effects” for society, i.e. in direct democracies citizens are more inclined to vote, more knowledgeable, more efficacious, etc. (Smith and Tolbert, 2004). If, however, direct democracy functions as means of civic education, this effect should on the one hand depend on individual characteristics such as level of education: is the educative effect of direct democracy different or the same for highly educated and less educated alike? On the other hand, individual determinants should affect political participation depending on the direct democratic context: do direct democratic institutions mediate or increase the effects of age, education, income, etc. on participation? Both hypotheses are formulated within participatory theory of civic voluntarism (Verba et al., 1995). I test these assertions by estimating cross-level interaction effects in multi-level models with individual data from the Switzerland. The Swiss cantons as contextual units exhibit a great degree as well as variation of both direct democratic institutions (rules-in-form) and practice (rules-in-use). Answering these question not only contributes to the understanding of societal impacts of direct democracy, but gives a more fine-grained picture of the participatory and educative effects of institutions.