Pascal Sciarini

Referendums on European Integration Do Institutions Matter in the Voter's Decision?

Referendums have received increasing attention after the recent round of votes on the Maastricht treaty and the widening process of the European Union. Despite this increased interest in these instruments of decision making, scholarship has not provided us with insights into the relationship between the institutional characteristics and voters decision. The authors provide a theoretical argument on how the voters choice is affected by the nature of the referendum. Relevant factors are whether the referendum is required, whether the peoples decision has a binding character, or which government coalition is presently in power. These institutional features mediate the impact of political factors, above all partisanship, on voting behavior. The authors test their theoretical arguments on the basis of empirical material from 14 referendums on European integration and find consistent support for their theoretical contentions.

How Europe hits home: evidence from the Swiss case

This article contributes to the debate on the domestic consequences of European integration by focusing on three aspects often neglected in the literature. First, while most works deal with the policy dimension of Europeanization, we develop a set of research hypotheses on its polity and politics implications. Its consequences on the institutions of the decision-making process, on élite conflictuality and on domestic power configuration are examined. Secondly, close attention is paid to the transmission mechanisms at work by comparing the effects of ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ Europeanization to a control case where European influences are only minimal. Thirdly, we provide empirical evidence from a non-EU member country (Switzerland), a type of state for which the consequences of Europeanization are still little explored. Based on a quantitative network analysis, our empirical tests reveal some important differences in the effects of direct and indirect Europeanization.

Direct democracy in switzerland: do elites matter?

Direct democratic institutions, while centrepieces of the Swiss political system, find themselves under attack. In this article, we challenge the widespread criticism that popular rights increasingly limit the political elites control of the decision-making process. Our analysis is based on aggregate data of all acts voted on by the Swiss Parliament since 1947 – those brought about by popular initiatives or those subject to optional and mandatory referendum – and on individual survey data on most federal votes held since 1981. We underline the high support of government and the impact of elite consensus on the destiny of legislative acts in the plebiscitary phase (submitted to a vote or not, subsequently accepted or not). While congruent with the aggregate analysis, results obtained at the individual level are less clear-cut. The influence of voting recommendations and information channels on the voters decision appears rather weak.

Do the media set the parliamentary agenda? A comparative study in seven countries

A growing body of work has examined the relationship between media and politics from an agenda-setting perspective: Is attention for issues initiated by political elites with the media following suit, or is the reverse relation stronger? A long series of single-country studies has suggested a number of general agenda-setting patterns but these have never been confirmed in a comparative approach. In a comparative, longitudinal design including comparable media and politics evidence for seven European countries (Belgium, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), this study highlights a number of generic patterns. Additionally, it shows how the political system matters. Overall, the media are a stronger inspirer of political action in countries with single-party governments compared to those with multiple-party governments for opposition parties. But, government parties are more reactive to media under multiparty governments.

Party Unity in the Swiss Parliament: The Electoral Connection

This study investigates the connection between legislative and electoral politics in Switzerland. The authors postulate that party unity is higher in an election year, and more specifically in votes on issues that are important for the party platform and that are of greater visibility to voters. The authors analyse the entire voting record of the Swiss parliament (lower house) on legislative acts between 1996 and 2007, which consists of roll call votes as well as unpublished votes. The authors find a strong effect of elections on voting unity among certain parties, and also find encouraging support for the hypotheses that this effect is mediated by the visibility of the vote and related issue salience.

Eppure si muove: the changing nature of the Swiss consensus democracy

ABSTRACT Recent contributions have highlighted the stability of consensus, corporatism and consociationalism in Switzerland. Looking through finer-grained lenses, I analyse changes in decision-making processes and related power, co-operation and conflict structures. To that end, my research is grounded on an analysis of the most important processes of the early 2000s, and on a comparison with a similar study carried out in the 1970s. The data stem from a rich collection of more than 300 interviews carried out with members of the political élite, which I examine with tools from social network analysis. I identify some major changes with respect to both decision-making processes and structures, such as the weakening of corporatist arrangements in the preparatory phase and the reinforcement of Parliament, and the shift in the balance of power between governing parties and interest groups. My study highlights the changing nature of the Swiss consensus democracy and pinpoints the related driving factors, particularly Europeanization.

Europeanization and the inclusive strategies of executive actors

In Europeanized policy domains, executive actors are considered especially powerful because they are directly responsible for international negotiations. However, in order to avoid failing in the ratification process, they are also highly dependent on the support of domestic, non-state actors. We argue that in Europeanized decision-making processes, state actors are not passively lobbied, but actively seek collaboration with – and support from – domestic actors. We apply stochastic actor-based modelling for network dynamics to collaboration data on two successive bilateral agreements on the free movement of persons between Switzerland and the European Union (EU). Results confirm our hypotheses that state actors are not passively lobbied, but actively look for collaboration with other actors, and especially with potential veto players and euro-sceptical actors from both the conservative Right and the Left.

The Impact of Issue Preferences on Voting Choices in the Swiss Federal Elections, 1999

This Note presents a study of the impact of issue positions of political parties on electoral choice. Together with economic performance and the popularity of leaders and candidates, issue-specific considerations are the main ‘short-term’ forces influencing the voting choices of individual voters. Issue voting has been shown to matter in a large number of studies. Most recently, Alvarez et al. have demonstrated the power of issues in British general elections, which have long been known as an important case of class voting. They argue that one should no longer debate whether issues (and the economy) matter in British elections: ‘Instead, the focus should shift from whether to how much and to how their influence in particular elections compares to their influence on other British elections, and to elections in other nations.’ This Note contributes to this debate. Based on data from the 1999 Swiss election panel study, we show what kind of impact certain issues had on electoral choice. To that end, we elaborate on the classical work of Lazarsfeld et al. According to these authors, an electoral campaign can have three different effects: it can reinforce a prior decision, activate or crystallize latent predispositions, or modify a prior voting choice. While we have borrowed this theoretical framework from Lazarsfeld and his collaborators, we are innovating in applying it to issue-specific voting. Additionally, we take into account a fourth possible effect, namely that the electoral campaign can demobilize voters who initially had a particular voting intention. In our view, then, there are four mechanisms through which issue-specific considerations can influence the electoral choice: In addition to their contribution to a change in voting choice – the most spectacular but not the most frequent effect of an electoral campaign – issue preferences can reinforce the voters’ original intentions, activate or crystallize their latent predispositions, or demobilize them. We do not expect issues to have a consistent effect on voters’ decisions. Quite to the contrary, we assume that the impact of issue preferences varies both across issues and across political families. According to our first hypothesis, only issues that are highly familiar and polarizing, and which address a problem of the highest priority, have a strong short-term impact on voting choices. Next, we hypothesize that parties with a high profile on such crucial issues are most likely to benefit from the mechanisms of reinforcement, crystallization and conversion. However, such a high profile also has a price: according to our third hypothesis, parties with a high profile are likely to lose voters who initially intended to vote for them, but who do not share their issue preferences; such voters may either convert to another party or demobilize. By contrast, parties without high issue-specific

Switzerland and the European integration process: Engagement without marriage

The rapid expansion of the process of integration within the European Community since the mid-1980s has put the issue of economic and political relationships between Switzerland and the EC at the top of the Swiss political agenda. In particular, there has been much public discussion on the form and nature of the links to be developed with the EC. In this context, the government — Federal Council — has redefined its policy line and has tried to implement new strategies and tactics. These efforts have met considerable resistance, however, not only domestically but also on the external front, and have not brought the country as large and secure an access to the Single Market as is the case for all other Western European countries. How can one explain this course of events? A widespread interpretation focuses on the characteristics of the Swiss political system that grants strong assenting power to Eurosceptic citizens and the cantons. From this perspective, the government has little steering power and is constantly facing the threat of popular rejection of any new approach to the process of European integration, especially any approach that comes close to accession. A major case in point was the rejection of the treaty on the creation of a European Economic Area (EEA) in 1992, which has increased Switzerlands isolation in Western Europe. According to this view, major domestic institutional reforms are necessary before Switzerland can participate fully in the process of European integration. Without such reforms, especially in the area of direct democracy, the Swiss will not go beyond economic engagement with the EC. The following account aims to provide a more nuanced analysis of the sources of variation in foreign policy-making, one that carefully examines the influence of perceptions on the design of policy lines. Switzerlands stance towards the process of European integration, from the late 1950s to the late 1990s, can be seen as the result of trade-offs between perceived

The Relationship between Media and Political Agendas: Variations across Decision-Making Phases

Previous studies have demonstrated that the extent to which media coverage influences the issue priorities of policy makers is contingent on the type of issue, media, and political agenda. This article contends that the relationship between media and political agendas varies across the phases of the decision-making process. Based on a comprehensive dataset on issue attention in media coverage and various policy-making channels covering the years 1996–2003, the article analyses the level of media coverage and, more importantly, the distribution and correspondence of issue attention between media and political agendas across the four successive phases of the decision-making process (initiation, preparatory, parliamentary, and referendum phases) in Switzerland. Despite inversely distributed levels of attention for successive decision-making phases, both media and political agendas are concentrated on fewer issues in the initiation and referendum phases, and they are more strongly correlated in the most decisive stages of the process, that is, the preparatory and referendum phases.