Representatives’ Support for Direct Democracy: Intrinsic Policy-Seeking or just a New Instrument of Power-Seeking?

Representatives’ support for direct democratic procedures is counterintuitive at first glance: From a strategic perspective, political elites should be careful to expand citizen participation in the decision making process since they would undermine their own sphere of influence and an important source of power. Yet empirical evidence demonstrates that political elites in industrialized countries show increased willingness to introduce direct democratic procedures or to use the available constitutional mechanisms for the first time. But what motives do they pursue in this regard? The rational choice approach offers an intriguing explanation for reform willingness in the field of electoral reforms: Political elites seek reforms expecting short or long term benefits in the power distribution for their party. As self-interested cost-minimizing actors parties and their representatives pursue mainly vote- or office-seeking motives (Benoit 2004; Müller / Strøm 1999). Thus at second glance, institutional reforms present a welcome opportunity for political elites to form the rules of the game to their advantage. At the same time, reform willingness of parties sends an important signal towards the electorate responding to current public demands as well as criticism of the current system and as such improves the chances of winning votes. Conversely, the motivation of policy-seeking is frequently discussed in the literature and research on electoral reforms shows that political elites are also guided by general values and ideological predispositions (Birch & al. 2002; Bol 2013; Renwick 2011). This view represents a contrast explanation of the support for institutional changes and assumes value-based intrinsic motives in comparison to a rational-strategic orientation on electoral outcomes. The paper confronts the rational-choice approach with a cultural-ideological perspective and tests it in connection with support for direct democracy. The general assumption of the rational-strategic view is that support for democratic reforms is related to the current distribution of legislative power and thus, changing electoral performance of parties should result in a change of the support for direct democratic procedures. In contrast, the cultural-ideological explanation assumes a constant position of parties and their representatives towards democratic reforms over time as it is based on strong and stable ideological ties. These assumptions are tested using four consecutive studies on parliamentary candidates in Germany in the period from 2002 till 2013 which are part of the German Longitudinal Election Study and the forerunner studies. The dataset offers a natural variation of power constellations, as the governing coalitions changed in the four examined electoral periods. Each electoral period is analyzed separately to compare the effects of electoral performance on support for direct democracy considering the ideological influences as a competing explanation. Additionally, a pooled analysis combining all periods will be performed. In this way, the paper contributes to the debate on legislative reforms and furthermore advances the understanding of motivations of political elites.