Isabelle Stadelmann-Steffen

• PhD
• Professor at University of Bern

This study explores the role of leaders’ gender and its interaction with political structures in shaping countries’ responses to the recent pandemic crisis, analysing data from over 150 countries. We investigate how leadership – during the early, peak and later stages of the crisis – impacted national strategies across various dimensions, including...

Conjoint experiments have gained popularity in political science, accompanied by methodological discussions. We contribute to these by investigating the impact of (randomly) offering an abstention option alongside the usual forced choice dependent variable. We explore the usage of abstention employing data from a novel experiment with 4466 responde...

New technologies are necessary for energy system transition and meeting climate targets. However, obstacles to social acceptance, often linked to limited understanding and awareness, impede their integration. This article focuses on the acceptance of seasonal thermal energy storage technologies. This energy technology enables the storage of surplus...

The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy presents a major challenge, with green taxes often seen as an efficient policy to promote environmentally friendly behaviour. However, these taxes are difficult to implement due to public concerns about immediate costs versus future environmental benefits. To address this, we conducted a survey e...

Solar photovoltaics (PV) on rooftops and existing infrastructure is a cost-effective and widely accepted technology that plays a crucial role in the energy transition. However, individual installations of PV systems are limited to property owners, excluding most tenants. This study focuses on a more inclusive type of PV, citizen-financed PV (CiFi P...

The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy presents a major challenge, with green taxes often seen as an efficient policy to promote environmentally friendly behavior. However, these taxes are difficult to implement due to public concerns about immediate costs versus future environmental benefits. To address this, we conducted a survey ex...

We feel honored to contribute the postface to this debate which reflects on the relevance and impact of our discipline for the Swiss Political Science Review . In what follows, we have summarized the “take‐home messages” that we identified when reading the debate. We have therefore synthesized those elements of the relevance and impact of political...

The Oxford Handbook of Swiss Politics provides a comprehensive analysis of the many different facets of the Swiss political system and of the major developments in modern Swiss politics. Its breadth offers analyses relevant not only to political science but also to international relations, European studies, history, sociology, law, and economics. T...

Public support for ambitious climate policies and carbon prices that have direct costs for voters may depend on policy sequencing. Policy sequencing theory suggests that the strategic ordering of policies into sequences that initially create benefits can subsequently increase support for higher carbon prices. However, systematic quantitative eviden...

This article presents an in-depth understanding of information selection strategies in referendums. It builds on the theories of motivated reasoning, cognitive dissonance, information utility, and social identity to examine selective exposure in the context of referendums, and highlights how individuals select information, opting for either congrue...

Which patterns of democracy perform best? Although a decades-long research tradition has fairly robustly suggested that consensual democracies outperform their Westminster-style majoritarian counterparts, the scope of previous studies has been limited to ‘normal times’. In this article, the endogenous context of the COVID-19 pandemic is leveraged t...

In an increasingly digitized world, vote advice applications (VAAs) seem to be effective in providing voters with personalized information about their own positions vis-à-vis parties’ positions and specific policies. Even though electoral research has increasingly paid attention to the role VAAs play in voter’s opinion formation, very few studies h...

Climate change is posing significant threats to human societies and developmental prospects. Governments continue to design and propose comprehensive climate policies aimed at tackling the climate crisis but often fail to successfully implement them. One reason is that securing public support for such policy instruments has proven to be challenging...

Economists advocate carbon pricing as the primary tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, very few governments have adopted a carbon tax high enough to meet international emission targets. Political challenges may stem from a number of areas, including political mobilization by policy opponents, consumers’ willingness to pay and the regre...

In 2021, as in the previous year, political dynamics in Switzerland were strongly influenced by the Covid‐19 pandemic. Institutionally, the ‘special situation’ according to the Federal Law of Epidemics affected the power distribution between federal government and the subnational units. Moreover, compared with the first pandemic year, 2021 was mark...

Studies have investigated the equalizing effect of childcare provision and parental leave schemes on gendered work patterns. However, as the relationship between policies and individual time allocations to paid work is complex and challenging to empirically assess, previous research has clarified single aspects of this complexity. The present study...

Numerous studies have demonstrated that the provision of early childhood education and childcare services (ECEC) is associated with higher women’s participation in the labor market. However, many questions about the causal relationship between the supply of childcare and patterns of female employment remain open. In an effort to overcome common end...

Die Schweiz mit ihren direktdemokratischen Institutionen steht für eine konsensuale Politik, die zwar durch kleine Schritte, dafür aber durch eine hohe Legitimität gekennzeichnet ist. Auch die kleinen Schritte, so wird oft gesagt, sind nicht unbedingt ein Problem, weil sie sozusagen stetig in die gleiche Richtung gehen, während beispielsweise in st...

Understanding the political consequences of digitalization is among the key challenges for modern societies. A pressing issue is the question whether political online activities make individuals more close‐minded and less willing to consider alternative arguments. We examine this question using a peculiarity of the Swiss electoral system – the poss...

Revenue recycling through lump-sum dividends may help mitigate public opposition to carbon taxes, yet evidence from real-world policies is lacking. Here we use survey data from Canada and Switzerland, the only countries with climate rebate programmes, to show low public awareness and substantial underestimation of climate rebate amounts in both cou...

We find limited evidence that individual or household rebates (also called dividends) have increased public support for carbon taxes in Canada and Switzerland. In the presence of partisan and interest group conflict over climate policy, policymakers should not assume that voter support for carbon pricing will automatically increase with the inclusi...

In the natural sciences, the concept of “(natural) tipping points” has become a hot topic in climate change research. To better understand and evaluate the possibilities for and the barriers to the fundamental societal transformations necessary for climate change mitigation, we suggest a social tipping dynamics framework. We contrast this framework...

This paper investigates time variations in the implementation of legislative requests by the Swiss government. Combining the literature on executive–legislative relations with findings from implementation research, we focus on the procedural level and argue that implementation delays can occur because the government does not want to, cannot or shou...

The last decade has witnessed the rise of populist parties and a number of actors that question liberal democracy. Many explanations of this rely on dissatisfied citizens. We ask in this article whether and how institutions allowing citizens to participate in policy-making affect differences in democratic satisfaction within varying representative...

In the wake of transitioning from fossil and nuclear energy systems to a renewable energy age, industrialized countries face many challenges related to the question of how to politically implement local renewable energy projects. In the present paper, we investigate if local populations are more likely to support local infrastructure projects if th...

Existing research has repeatedly discussed how citizens make up their minds when voting on direct-democratic proposals. While previous studies have emphasized the role of policy information and party cues on opinion formation, we explore the mechanisms behind policy and party effects in greater detail. We conceptualize vote decisions as multidimens...

The last decade has witnessed the raise of populist parties and a number of actors that question liberal democracy. Many explanations of this rely on dissatisfied citizens. We ask in this paper whether and how institutions allowing citizens to participate in policy-making affects differences in democratic satisfaction between varying representative...

Recent research and real-world processes suggest that effective climate change mitigation policies are not feasible without at least a certain degree of public support. Hence, we investigate the link between existing domestic energy policies and individual policy instrument preferences in 21 European countries. We assume a policy feedback perspecti...

In this chapter, I present findings from a conjoint experiment conducted in Switzerland and aimed at investigating the elasticity in the within-household division of paid and care work given varying policy contexts. Whereas in my previous research I have analysed similar questions mostly with respect to the role of family policies, in the present c...

This article explores the factors that hinder and promote the deployment of renewable energy generating infrastructure in/across the Swiss cantons (i.e., the country’s federal units). Using the example of small-scale hydropower, we shed light on how political regulations at the cantonal level interact with national policies and the local political...

The analysis of how weather conditions influence participation at the ballot and whether bad weather influences ballot decisions has recently gained momentum. This paper analyses the influence of rain on participation in the Landsgemeinde – the main decision-making body of two Swiss cantons, wherein citizens meet on the main square in order to deba...

The basic income (BI) scheme is a fundamental reform of the welfare state that has recently gained widespread attention. Proposals for different variants of BI schemes have emerged to account for varying political and societal goals. This study investigates what citizens think about the idea of a BI, and to what extent citizens’ perceptions depend...

Research on direct democracy is often entirely sub-national research or based on a single country study. That has consequences for the scope and opportunity to understand and learn about direct democratic institutions. In this paper we use a subnational cross- country comparative perspective to delve deeper into the relationship between direct demo...

The rising number of referendums on EU matters, such as the Brexit and the Catalonian independence votes, highlight the increasing importance of referendums as a problem‐solving mechanism in the EU. We argue that the Swiss case provides essential insights into understanding the dynamics behind referendums, which are often lacking when referendums a...

This contribution focuses on citizens’ attitudes towards new technologies in electricity trans-mission and asks how information provision affects citizens’ attitudes towards different tech-nological solutions. It is thereby assumed that the relevance of information is contingent on whether a technology is new or established, as well as on how the i...

Unequal participation is a persistent matter of concern both in electoral and direct democracy. In this contribution, we focus on direct democratic votes and investigate how vote characteristics such as overall turnout, complexity or ballot length affect participation by age and gender and reinforce or mitigate unequal participation. Empirically, t...

Citizens are the target group of sustainability policies, and their acceptance and subsequent behavioral change are key in transition processes. But what drives citizens to accept new instruments that will be added to a pre-existing instrument mix? To answer this question, we suggest an innovative combination of sustainability transitions and socia...

Die Schweiz hat sich ambitionierte Ziele in der Energiepolitik gesetzt. Das vorliegende Buch nimmt die aktuelle Debatte über die Erreichung der Ziele auf und untersucht die Chancen und Herausforderungen, die sich beim Ausbau der erneuerbaren Energien im Rahmen der Energiestrategie 2050 des Bundes ergeben. Ziel ist es, die Bestimmungsfaktoren der so...

Whereas ecological economists argue strongly in favor of incentive-based approaches to promote renewable energy sources and reduce energy consumption, those instruments have been shown to be particularly difficult to implement politically. We begin with a recognition that cost perceptions that inherently characterize incentive-based policy instrume...

This article asks whether political education at upper secondary school – i.e. shortly before or at the age when young people receive the right to vote – affects individual political interest as well as differences in political interest between social groups. Empirically, we use a novel data set combining individual student data with information on...

In recent decades, many studies have examined gender-related differences in paid employment and the reconciliation of family and employment. Considering perceptions of time conflicts with regards to work at home and leisure activities, this article contributes to a more encompassing understanding of attitudes toward reconciliation problems. Special...

The question of whether and how federalism influences a country's welfare state has been a longstanding concern of political scientists. However, no agreement exists on exactly how, and under what conditions, federal structures impact the welfare state. This article examines this controversy. It concludes theoretically that the specific constellati...

This chapter considers if and how social and political trust are affected by policy outputs and outcomes related to the welfare state. We survey how (dis)similar explanatory variables, causal mechanisms, and methodology are across four accumulations of studies. Specifically, we discuss contextual factors in “normal times” as well as effects of econ...

This paper analyses the difference between two specific forms of citizens' involvements, namely whether a vote is cast by ballot or in a citizens' assembly in which people gather in town halls to decide legislative questions in a deliberative manner. We show both theoretically and empirically how citizens' assemblies and decisions at the ballot box...

Die junge Generation will mitreden, ihre Stimme einbringen und ihre Ansichten äussern. Zwei von drei im Herbst 2015 erstmals Stimmberechtigte beabsichtigen, an den Wahlen teilzunehmen. Ihre politischen Überzeugungen unterscheiden sich dabei nicht grundsätzlich von denen der älteren Generationen. Dies ergab die landesweite Befragung 17-jähriger Juge...

Im Hinblick auf die eidgenössischen Wahlen vom Herbst 2015 hat die Eidg. Kommission für Kinder und Jugendfragen (EKKJ) der Universität Bern und dem Meinungsforschungsinstitut M.I.S. Trend den Auftrag erteilt, eine repräsentative Befragung bei 17-Jährigen aus allen Landesteilen der Schweiz durchzuführen. Die Jugendbefragung EKKJ 2015 umfasst ein bre...

Ausgangspunkt der vorliegenden Studie war die Frage, welche Einstellungen und Anliegen die 17-Jährigen in der Schweiz in wichtigen gesellschaftlichen und politischen Themen aufweisen. Aus den Analysen und nicht zuletzt aus dem Vergleich der befragten Jugendlichen mit der Gesamtbevölkerung und früheren Generationen lassen sich die folgenden zentrale...

Recent research shows that well-educated citizens are more supportive of minority rights in direct democratic votes than people with less education. This article however suggests that educational effects on minority rights only emerge under certain conditions. A Bayesian multilevel analysis of 39 referendums and initiatives on minority rights in Sw...

The 2011 Swiss federal elections represent a turning point in recent Swiss politics. The Swiss People's Party did not manage to increase further its vote share, after more than two decades of electoral successes. Also, the 2011 elections were characterized by the strong gains of two relatively new centrist parties, the Green Liberal Party and the C...

This paper investigates the relationship between socioeconomic resources and women's political participation, more precisely whether the distinction between individual and household resources helps to identify different mechanisms behind a possible “resource effect”. Based on a Bayesian multilevel analysis using the Swiss Election Study 2011, we sh...

This paper investigates whether integration policies influence immigrants' propensity to volunteer, the latter being an important element of immigrants' integration into the host society. By distinguishing different categories of integration policies at Switzerland's subnational level and applying a Bayesian multilevel approach, our results suggest...

Staffan Kumlin and Isabelle Stadelmann-Steffen bring together political scientists and sociologists from different and frequently separated research communities to examine policy feedback in European welfare states. In doing so, they offer a rich menu of different methodological approaches. The book demonstrates how long-term policy legacies and sh...

Volunteering rates in Switzerland vary substantially across language regions. In this article, we investigate the cultural roots of this variation by presenting and empirically testing two different conceptualizations of how linguistic culture is related to individual volunteering. Whereas the first perspective perceives the individual as belonging...

Migration policy regimes are mainly analysed from an international comparative perspective, whereas subnational policy variations, although they are particularly pronounced in federal states, remain largely neglected. By transferring an international concept of integration policy to Switzerland’s cantonal level, we show that cantonal variations of...

This article investigates the main political institutions in the sub-national democracies of Austria, Germany and Switzerland. It applies Lijphart’s approach to these German-speaking countries in Western Europe and expands it – following recent advances – by direct democracy. The main finding of the sub-national analysis is that, similar to Lijphar...

Isabelle.stadelmann-steffen@uni-konstanz.de Very first draft, December 15, 2009 This paper asks how the different education policies in the subnational units of Switzerland – the cantons – are associated with educational inequality. In so doing the article builds on previous research arguing that in order to properly evaluate education policy and i...

In unserem Beitrag untersuchen wir die Rolle der Religion für die Ausgestaltung der Familienpolitik. Während die „klassische“ Staatstätigkeitsforschung den Einfluss von Religion vornehmlich auf die Stärke christdemokratischer Parteien oder auf generelle kulturelle Ländermuster zurückführt, betonen „neuere“ Ansätze der Wohlfahrtsstaatsforschung die...

This paper takes the influential “direct democracy makes people happy”-research as a starting point and asks whether direct democracy impacts individual satisfaction. Unlike former studies we distinguish two aspects of individual satisfaction, namely satisfaction with life (“happiness”) and with how democracy works. Based on multilevel analysis of...

The search for and implementation of effective climate change policies is one of the crucial challenges of policy-makers. One strand of literature argues that domestic factors and in particular institutional prerequisites or veto points strongly influence the quality and pace of a country's policy innovation and adaptation. Focusing on a particular...

This article investigates whether and how family policy influences the probability and intensity of mothers' labor market participation. Unlike previous studies, this contribution focuses on group-specific policy effects, thereby accounting for the fact that, theoretically, women with different resources and preferences should respond differently t...

This article evaluates the relationship between welfare state institutions and informal voluntary activity. In particular, we wish to investigate the extent to which welfare state arrangements influence the individual's decision to volunteer informally. Focusing on informal volunteering – a vital, yet often neglected form of social capital – we rei...

This paper evaluates whether direct democracy supplements or undermines traditional representative democracy. While a first approach assumes that a culture of active direct democracy stimulates citizens’ political interest and ultimately bolsters participation in parliamentary elections, a competing hypothesis proposes a negative relationship betwe...

This article evaluates the influence of different models of democracy on individual volunteering in associations and organizations. More precisely, we investigate the extent to which the degree of liberal and participatory conceptions of democracy respectively shapes the conditions under which voluntary engagement thrives. We apply multilevel analy...

Since the publication of the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), scholarly interest in analysing the effectiveness and performance of education policy has risen again. The present article follows this path and presents the first empirical evaluation of the influence of national education policies on educational inequality...

This article evaluates the influence of welfare state policy on individual social volunteering. Unlike previous studies that have investigated the relationship between the welfare state and civic engagement, this contribution focuses on those areas of civil society that are most directly related to public welfare state activities. Moreover, it is a...

Since the publication of the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), scholarly interest in analysing the effectiveness and performance of education policy has risen again. The present article follows this path and presents the first empirical evaluation of the influence of national education policies on educational inequality...

Eine Vielzahl von Studien im Bereich der politischen Partizipation und des bürgerschaftlichen Engagements machen geltend, dass sich in den letzten Jahren Veränderungen v.a. in der Art und Häufigkeit der Teilnahme beobachten lassen. Demnach gibt es insbesondere einen Trend hin zu individuellen, unverbindlichen Engagementsformen. Eine solche „moderne...

The combination of cross-section and time dimension is a central issue in current comparative political research. The state-of-theart procedure in this context is pooled timeseries cross-section analysis (PTSCS), which is en vogue in today's relevant literature but not uncontested. An interesting option are multilevel designs, which allow the combi...

This article investigates the influence of political measures and instruments on women's employment in OECD countries. The policy dimension builds the central explanatory category filling the ‘black box’ between political institutions and the decision-making process on the one hand, and policy outcome on the other. Unlike former comparative studies...

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The combination of cross-section and time dimension is a central issue in current comparative political research. The state-of-the-art procedure in this context is pooled time-series cross-section analysis (PTSCS), which is en vogue in today's relevant literature but not uncontested. An interesting option are multilevel designs, which allow the com...

Im Zentrum des Beitrags steht die Frage, inwiefern sozial-politische Maßnahmen und Instrumente das individuelle Erwerbsverhalten einer Frau beeinflussen. Die Analyse unterscheidet sich in zwei Punkten von bisherigen Studien in diesem Gebiet. Erstens werden für die Erklärung des individuellen Erwerbsentscheids einer Frau individuelle Faktoren und de...

Ausgangspunkt dieses Beitrags ist die Frage, inwiefern zwischenmenschliches Vertrauen sowie informelle und formelle soziale Netzwerke das wirtschaftliche Wachstum beeinflussen. Ausgehend von der ökonomischen Theorie konditionaler Konvergenz argumentieren wir, dass ärmere Länder nur unter bestimmten politischen und kulturellen Bedingungen ihr Wachst...

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