No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Party unity in federal disunity: determinants of decentralised policy-seeking in Switzerland
Abstract
Federalism and decentralisation offer political parties the opportunity to tailor their policy-seeking behaviour to different regional electorates. These electorates often possess different political preferences. However, the regional branches of nationwide parties must be careful not to dilute or even betray the core values of their party, for equally often they remain dependent on central support. This article studies the ensuing tension between regional deviations from national unity by analysing all vote recommendations of the four major Swiss parties on all 251 national referendums held between 1987 and 2015. Vote recommendations constitute an important guidance for voters. Analytically, the article focuses on the conditions of cantonal deviations from federal recommendations as a proxy for decentralised policy-seeking. It finds that ideological (socialism), temporal, vote-specific (distance to next election) as well as vote- and canton-specific factors (regional turnout and contestation) all influence party unity, with some effects varying by policy area and vote type.
... Thus, the reason why the compromise solution is not supported by the Bavarian government is more likely to be found in the fact that the compromise criticises a bill put forward by a federal minister affiliated with the CSU. Supporting the compromise would have threatened the coherence between the federal and the regional branch of the party (see Müller and Bernauer 2017;Turner and Rowe 2013). ...
... Second, in contrast to the federal party, some regional branches of the party could support the compromise solution either because they have intrinsically changed their position on GMOs or because they react to real or perceived threats of electoral loss due to negative public opinion (see Mortensen 2012;Seifert 2006: 18;Wenzelburger 2011;Zohlnhöfer 2007). At any rate, the analysis showed that federal polities do offer an opportunity to regional-level political parties for policy-seeking behaviour (see Müller 2009;Müller and Bernauer 2017;Tosun 2017), but whether they can successfully make use of multi-level structures depends on additional factors like coalition politics or public opinion at the regional level (see van Haute and Deschouwer 2017). ...
... The main take-away message from this study is that the decentralisation of legal competences can increase democratic responsiveness, but this, in turn, can also result in a policy-making process where political parties engage in strategic action (see also Däubler et al. 2017), attempts at passing the buck between different government levels (see also León et al. 2017), and regional differentiation of the policy-seeking behaviour of political parties (see Müller and Bernauer 2017). All this can then result in decision-making that is overtly lengthy and less transparent, and public policies that are differentiated at the subnational level even though there is no need for that, or worse, where the regional differentiation leads to suboptimal policy outcomes. ...
... Thus, the reason why the compromise solution is not supported by the Bavarian government is more likely to be found in the fact that the compromise criticises a bill put forward by a federal minister affiliated with the CSU. Supporting the compromise would have threatened the coherence between the federal and the regional branch of the party (see Müller and Bernauer 2017;Turner and Rowe 2013). ...
... Second, in contrast to the federal party, some regional branches of the party could support the compromise solution either because they have intrinsically changed their position on GMOs or because they react to real or perceived threats of electoral loss due to negative public opinion (see Mortensen 2012;Seifert 2006: 18;Wenzelburger 2011;Zohlnhöfer 2007). At any rate, the analysis showed that federal polities do offer an opportunity to regional-level political parties for policy-seeking behaviour (see Müller 2009;Müller and Bernauer 2017;Tosun 2017), but whether they can successfully make use of multi-level structures depends on additional factors like coalition politics or public opinion at the regional level (see van Haute and Deschouwer 2017). ...
... The main take-away message from this study is that the decentralisation of legal competences can increase democratic responsiveness, but this, in turn, can also result in a policy-making process where political parties engage in strategic action (see also Däubler et al. 2017), attempts at passing the buck between different government levels (see also León et al. 2017), and regional differentiation of the policy-seeking behaviour of political parties (see Müller and Bernauer 2017). All this can then result in decision-making that is overtly lengthy and less transparent, and public policies that are differentiated at the subnational level even though there is no need for that, or worse, where the regional differentiation leads to suboptimal policy outcomes. ...
The adoption of Directive 2015/412 marks a turning point in policy-making in the European Union since for the first time the legal competence for a regulatory area has been passed from the EU to the member states. The member states can now request their territory to be excluded from authorisation for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for commercial cultivation. In the first step of the analysis, the article shows that higher levels of public support for GMOs decrease the likelihood of member states filing an opt-out request, while controlling for other potential explanatory factors. In the second step, it concentrates on the controversy between the federal and the state level in Germany regarding the transposition of the new directive. It is found that the directive offers some degree of strategic opportunity for pro-GMO political parties to pursue a regulatory approach that would otherwise be impeded by negative public opinion.
... In fact, each cantonal party is very independent and decides on its own what kind of strategy it wants to follow and which ideological alignment is chosen. This leads to 26 different party systems throughout the country and can mount up to 26 different official attitudes within one party, if the parties are politically active in every single canton (see Mueller and Bernauer 2018;Vatter 2002). While it is uncontroversial that there is heterogeneity within the parties on the subnational level (see also Giger et al. 2011;Hug 1994), the variety itself has not been looked at extensively. ...
... 8 This suggests that different political cultures shape the politics within the cantons. Also, this backs the argument that the SVP, while politicizing more and more homogeneous over the last decades, still remains heterogeneouseven after the split into two parties (see Giger et al. 2011 andBernauer 2018). Additionally, on the cantonal level the BDP only holds branches in 16 cantons. ...
This article studies the heterogeneity of cantonal SVP branches in terms of populism and relates it to individual populist attitudes around the 2015 National Council elections. Quantitative text analysis of party manifestos delivers measures of populism for 24 cantonal branches of the SVP. These estimates are related to individual‐level 2015 Selects survey data. The results indicate that there is still a variety of populism between the different cantonal branches of the SVP, even after the split into two parties (BDP and SVP). Evidence for general correspondence between contextual populism (supply side) and individual‐level populist attitudes (demand side) is limited, but some patterns related to the existence of the BDP emerge.
... In turn, if members of different linguistic communities inhabiting the same state had identical political attitudes, that case would be weakened. At the very least, we would then have grounds to investigate the conditions under which linguistic differences sometimes vanish for the purposes of political behaviour and do not inspire separate political parties, e.g. in Switzerland (see Mueller and Bernauer 2018), whereas elsewhere they do, e.g. in Belgium (e.g. Popelier 2021), and how this connects to crises. ...
... We use the term 'country' to refer to the national level and 'state' to refer to the subnational (regional) level. 2. Subnational party branches have some leverage in positioning themselves in the political space; however, research consistently shows that they do not position themselves very far from their national party organizations (Giger et al., 2011;Gross & Jankowski, 2020;Mueller & Bernauer, 2018;Müller, 2009Müller, , 2013Nyhuis & König, 2018;Stecker, 2015). Additionally, in some countries such as Belgium or Spain, subnational party branches must use some parts of so-called 'framework programmes' written by upper-level party organizations (Cabeza et al., 2017;van de Wardt, 2018). ...
Elections are at the heart of representative democracies. Whereas the study of national elections is a prominent field in comparative politics, we still know little about subnational political actors’ behaviour. We seek to close this gap by applying a dictionary coding approach to analyse parties’ issue-based content of 743 subnational manifestos in Austria and Germany. We show that subnational parties emphasize regional topics less if regional elections happen close to national elections but focus more on both regional and mixed topics if their national party organization is in government. This has important implications for electoral competition in multilevel systems.
... The party's cantonal and local branches have retained some degree of autonomy due to the highly decentralized political system, which means that complete internal and external coherence and absolute dominance of federal party organs over cantonal branches remain out of reach. Indeed, programmatic differences between national and cantonal branches of the party are common (Storz & Bernauer, 2018), and cantonal branches sometimes deviate from national voting recommendations, depending on intra-cantonal cleavages, to meet the preferences of their core electoral clientele (Giger et al., 2011;Mueller & Bernauer, 2018). ...
The Swiss People’s Party (Schweizerische Volkspartei [SVP]) has increased its territorial extensiveness and organisational intensiveness in recent years, and has professionalised its strategies of communication. This article analyses the dynamics characterising the SVP’s organisation. It shows that with its locally rooted presence and its effort to generate ideological coherence, the party has embraced the “mass party” organisational model. It additionally assesses the extent to which the SVP’s centralised power at the federal level is conducive to the party’s further electoral success. Having considered both the party at national level and three of its most important cantonal branches, the article argues that the organisational dominance of the SVP’s central leadership was beneficial for the party’s electoral strength but will lead to tensions with cantonal and local branches, which are largely in charge, to build and maintain an active base.
... Strøm 1997), we could thus equally well imagine that the constituency, and not a second mandate, is responsible for an MP's behaviour. In short, cantonal initiatives incentivise all MPs elected in the proposing canton to approve due to territorial homophily, i.e. congruence between the submitter and the MP's constituency (Mueller and Bernauer 2018; cf. section 2.2). ...
Regional and local units try to influence national decision-making in various ways. This paper analyses one particular channel of subnational influence: multiple-mandate holders. These are members of the national Parliament (MPs) who at the same time hold an elected office at regional or local level. Focusing on Switzerland, we first assess the extent of this phenomenon over time and subnational space. We then test for its impact on MPs’ actual vote choices, analyzing whether an MP’s subnational loyalty outweighs party pressure on policy proposals submitted by a Swiss canton. Our analyses draw on a new, original dataset covering all ca. 1,000 Swiss MPs between 1985 and 2018. In the main, we find that it is rather territorial homophily – the congruence of constituency and submitting canton – than holding dual mandates that plays a role when it comes to an individual MP’s vote decision. However, territorial interests are indeed capable of outweighing partisan ties.
... permits enhancing the policy congruence between the voters and their elected representatives (van Haute and Deschouwer 2017). It allows a recognition and empowerment of territorial diversity via the access to power of ethnoregionalist parties (Schakel and Massetti 2017) as well as the development of specific policy programmes for regional branches of national parties, deviating from national mainstream politics (Müller and Bernauer 2017). 1 Yet this exponential increase of elected offices in multilayered polities raises the question of 'who governs?' (Dahl 1961). This corresponds to Powell's third stage of the chain of responsiveness -i.e. ...
... This perspective is informed by research in comparative politics, which offers helpful insights in policy-making by its sub-discipline of party politics and legislative studies. For example, research on party competition in multilevel systems has shown that political parties seek to appear ideologically consistent regardless of the political level at which they operate (Müller & Bernauer, 2018), which requires coordination among the various units of the parties. ...
Coordination has attracted considerable attention in
the various sub-disciplines of political science. For
example, public choice research on collective action
problems acknowledges coordination as a situation
in which ‘cheating’ among actors is not rewarded.
Assuming that we have a game between two players A
and B, both players are rewarded if they jointly choose
either strategy ‘a’ or strategy ‘b’. If they fail to coordinate
their strategies, and one player goes for ‘a’ and
the other one for ‘b’, both receive a payoff of zero. This
need to align decisions with one another represents the
basic logic of the ‘coordination game’ (see Holzinger,
2001). In comparative political economy, coordination
also plays an important role (Hall & Gingerich, 2009;
Hall & Soskice, 2001). There the idea is that employers
coordinate among themselves to produce collective
goods, and in so doing, social institutions such as labour
unions support the employers (Regini, 2003). The
coordination or the lack of it in the economic domain
then has implications for adjacent policy domains such
as (higher) education (see Busemeyer & Trampusch,
2012).
Policy studies have elaborated on coordination as
a means to produce more effective and/or efficient
solutions to policy problems since these are typically
not limited to the actions taken in one policy domain,
but may require actions in two or more policy domains
(see Tosun & Lang, 2017). Public administration has
concentrated on institutions and procedures that are
conducive to coordination, such as centralised agencies
and leadership (e.g., May et al., 2011). Research
in public administration and public policy is broader
than the previous perspectives in the sense that the analytical
interest includes the proposing, adoption and
implementation of policies.
Coordination has been a research theme in studies
concentrating on specific types of policies such as climate
change, development cooperation and environmental
protection (see Tosun & Lang, 2017). In marked
contrast, and somewhat surprisingly, studies of social
welfare have paid little attention to coordination (but
see, e.g., Heidenreich & Rice, 2016). One of them is
the empirical investigation by Zimmermann, Aurich,
Graziano, and Fuertes (2014), in which the authors examine
to what extent the local-level public employment
services in Germany coordinate employment policies
with measures in other policy domains. This perspective
is insightful since, in many if not most cases, welfare
policy and service delivery require a coordination
of the measures in the different policy domains such
as education, economy, employment, family affairs,
housing and migration.
To reduce this knowledge gap, the theme of this
special issue is coordination. The key argument we
advance is that there exist various forms of coordination
and that each of these forms has the potential
to advance our understanding of how welfare-related
policies come about, how they are delivered and what
their effects are.
Why is it analytically rewarding to study coordination?
The myopic nature of policy-making makes it difficult
to pursue and attain coordination. As Jochim and
May (2010, p. 304) put it, ‘each of the relevant [policy]
subsystems provides a separate lens through which to
view problems’, which is complemented by separate
‘histories’ and the involvement of different interests.
Following this perspective, even if desirable, coordination
is not easy to attain and when it is attained it is
worth analysing how this is so.
In the next section, we introduce in detail our key
concepts and provide a rationale for the analytical
focus of this special issue. Subsequently, we explain
how the contributions relate to each other and which
insights we can gain from them regarding the overarching
theme. In the closing discussion section, we
offer some concluding remarks and develop a specific
research agenda for research on coordination in social
welfare.
... We also model party preferences, because parties are highly important in the Swiss semi-direct democracy for organizing and mobilizing voters (e.g. Ladner, 2014;Mueller & Bernauer, 2018), and because they exhibit different positions regarding Sovereignism (Trechsel, 2007;Linder & Mueller, 2017). More specifically, we expect SVP supporters to favour Sovereignism more strongly than all others. ...
Sovereignism is on the rise. Defending a nation’s political autonomy, fortifying its international borders, preserving cultural identity and shielding the domestic economy from the adverse effects of globalization are core demands. Often contained within research on populism or Euroscepticism, this article conceptualizes Sovereignism as an ideology on its own. Three separate, yet connected, dimensions of Sovereignism are distilled: political, which negates sharing ultimate decision-making with supranational bodies; economic, which concerns market access and trade liberalization; and cultural, which regards foreign citizens as a threat to national culture. Empirically, we track the impact of sovereigntist arguments on citizens’ voting behaviour, by analysing all 68 referendums held in Switzerland between 1983 and 2016 concerning supranational integration, economic ties, immigration, asylum and/or cultural demarcation. We rely on a multilevel analysis of post-vote survey replies to show how the three dimensions interact with party politics, values and contextual factors. Our main finding is that all three dimensions of Sovereignism continue to matter, but that values and party politics have in the meantime absorbed a big part of their impact.
... permits enhancing the policy congruence between the voters and their elected representatives (van Haute and Deschouwer 2017). It allows a recognition and empowerment of territorial diversity via the access to power of ethnoregionalist parties (Schakel and Massetti 2017) as well as the development of specific policy programmes for regional branches of national parties, deviating from national mainstream politics (Müller and Bernauer 2017). 1 Yet this exponential increase of elected offices in multilayered polities raises the question of 'who governs?' (Dahl 1961). This corresponds to Powell's third stage of the chain of responsiveness -i.e. ...
In multilevel systems, patterns of regional and national political careers reflect processes of regionalisation and federalisation. Yet the effects of regionalism on the orientation of legislative careers remain disputed. Such disputes result from the choice of the unit of analysis, the scarcity of comparative research across countries and over time, and bias in case selection. This article offers a systematic intranational comparative analysis of ‘sister regions’ in four countries that are examples of weak and strong regionalism. It tests the regionalism hypothesis based on an original comparative dataset of 4662 regional and national political careers in Belgium, Canada, Spain, and the UK. The results demonstrate that regionalism matters: regional legislative elites emerge more clearly in polities in which regionalism is stronger. The regionalism hypothesis is particularly supported in Spain and Canada, which have a longer history of regional institutions, but that trend is also confirmed in the UK and Belgium.
... The exact size and direction of this multi-level effect hinges on various conditions, among them the vertical integration of party organisations (Detterbeck 2012;Thorlakson 2013) and the power relations between different levels (Klingelhöfer 2016). While Switzerland may be regarded as a most likely case for region-specific party positions, Mueller and Bernauer (2017) in fact observe considerable homogeneity. Analysing parties' canton-level vote recommendations for 251 national referenda, they find that the regional context is far from determining cantonal parties' behaviour. ...
This article introduces the special issue ‘Assessing democratic representation in multi-level democracies’ from a conceptual perspective. It adapts Powell’s chain of responsiveness – as a model of the democratic process on the national level – to the context of multi-level systems and discusses conditions that might facilitate or hamper responsiveness in regional democracies. The theoretical reasoning identifies added complexity, multiple actors sharing the same label and cross-level interdependent decisions as the key challenges to multi-level democracy. Empirical illustrations focus on the first stage of the representation process. Here voters should form rational policy preferences and take informed voting decisions, and parties are expected to offer coherent policy platforms that are tailored to the specifics of the regional level. While the analysis of party manifesto data suggests that regional parties cover regional issues, and strategic incentives to focus on other levels appear limited, survey-based information illustrates the cognitive burden of multi-level democracy on voters. In combination with a synopsis of the other contributions assembled in this issue, the findings suggest that information, responsibility and accountability problems may be particular obstacles to responsiveness in multi-level systems.
... SNPs have some leeway in positioning themselves apart from the policy positions adopted by their national parties (Müller 2009; see also Müller and Bernauer 2017). We argue that this might also be the case for SNPs' positioning on European integration and EU Cohesion policy, depending on whether the region where SNPs are campaigning is benefiting from EU regional policy more than other regions in the country. ...
How does EU funding to European regions affect sub-national parties’ support for European integration? This paper aims at analysing whether the EU regional development policy contributes to setting up support for EU institutions and European integration and thus strengthens the whole ‘European idea’ among political parties. To answer this research question, the article analyses election manifestos of parties acting on the regional level in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK for two EU programming periods: 2007─2013 and 2014─2020. The results show that sub-national parties are more supportive of European integration if regions receive more EU funding and if the parties represent regions that are dependent on EU funding.
... SNPs have some leeway in positioning themselves apart from the policy positions adopted by their national parties (Müller 2009; see also Müller and Bernauer 2017). We argue that this might also be the case for SNPs' positioning on European integration and EU Cohesion policy, depending on whether the region where SNPs are campaigning is benefiting from EU regional policy more than other regions in the country. ...
A large number of studies in comparative politics demonstrate the impact of European integration on political decision-making in EU member states as well as in countries that wish to join the EU. What is surprisingly missing is a comparative analysis of how EU support affects the European policy preferences of parties from those regional units which directly benefit from EU funding. This paper aims at analysing whether the EU regional development programme contributes to setting up support for EU institutions and European integration and thus strengthens the whole ‘European idea’ among political parties. To answer this research question, we analyse election manifestos of parties acting on the regional level in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK. The results show that the positions of parties on European integration and EU regional policy become more positive if the parties represent regions that benefitted from EU regional funds. Changes of EU regional funding, however, do not have an impact on sub-national party positions. The empirical findings have implications for political representation on the regional level and EU multi-level governance.
Parties play an important role in the study of direct democracy, but mainly as independent variables. To start investigating the way in which parties position themselves in referendums, a new framework is presented and tested for plausibility. As case study the complex but well observed case of Swiss Direct Democracy was chosen. First, a differentiated understanding of what a party position in a referendum process is leads to the identification of four different stages of positioning for Swiss parties. The main message of the theoretical framework is that positioning logics of different parties in one vote can be similar when there are underlying mechanisms applying to all parties. Four ideal type models of party positioning show how. To explore their plausibility, an original data set of 162 single positions of five Swiss political parties in 37 national referendums between 2015 and 2019 is compiled. Using qualitative methods, first results show
that Swiss parties’ positioning in referendums is not as strongly dominated by policy as one could expect, given the strong polarization of the party system. In consequence, this demands for an update of our understanding of the interplay of direct democracy and political parties as a two�way channel.
Autrefois réputé pour sa grande stabilité, le système politique suisse a connu de profondes transformations au cours des trois dernières décennies. Ce livre se fait l’écho de ces changements, au travers d’un état des lieux complet et transdisciplinaire des connaissances sur la politique suisse en ce début de 21e siècle. Il traite tour à tour des institutions fondamentales (fédéralisme, neutralité, démocratie directe), des acteurs politiques étatiques (gouvernement, Parlement) et non étatiques (partis politiques, groupes d’intérêt), des processus de prise de décision, ainsi que des arcanes et des détenteurs du pouvoir. L’auteur adopte une approche résolument comparative et situe la politique suisse dans son environnement international et européen. D’une grande clarté, cet ouvrage vient pallier le manque d’un ouvrage de synthèse sur la politique suisse en langue française. Il s’adresse aux chercheuses et chercheurs et aux étudiantes et étudiants en sciences sociales et politiques, et plus généralement au public averti intéressé par la politique suisse.
Attempting to reconcile the diverse immigration policy demands of the ‘old’ working class and the ‘new’ middle class, social democratic parties struggle to take a clear position on immigration policy. Adopting more restrictive policies is a possible way forward, but this is likely to lead to electorally costly intra-party conflict. This article illuminates the conditions under which social democratic parties can unite behind more restrictive immigration policies and promote them consistently. Employing a most-similar systems design, it presents a comparative case study of the Austrian and Danish social democrats, from the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’ to 2020. The article argues that low levels of territorial decentralisation enabled the Danish social democrats to promote a restrictive stance on immigration top-down, while the Austrian social democrats’ federal party structure exacerbated internal disagreements between urban and rural leaders. These findings highlight the importance of internal party characteristics in explaining how parties respond to strategic trade-offs.
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2021.1975211 .
This chapter considers the evolving nature of power-sharing in Switzerland, paying particular attention to the institutions and actors responsible for creating and sustaining a politics of compromise. The chapter begins with an overview of the various cleavages that have animated Swiss politics since the mid-nineteenth century, explaining how the different cleavages—linguistic, religious, socio-demographic, economic and territorial—cut across each other, thereby weakening their effect. Four institutions—intra-executive collegialism, bicameralism, federalism and direct democracy—and two sets of political actors—political parties and cantons—are then assessed to explain how power-sharing actually operates. The chapter also outlines two challenges to contemporary Swiss power-sharing—polarization from within and Europeanization from without—and judges the extent to which these pose a danger to the structural features of Swiss democracy.
This paper shows that the role of national electoral dynamics on regional elections is highly mediated by institutional and electoral constraints at the regional level. Using data on statewide parties’ electoral competition in regional and national elections in Spain and Italy, results show that the contamination of regional elections is lower in regions where decentralization has travelled further and where strong regionalist parties dominate electoral competition. The paper also shows that these two channels -more regional authority and more regionalist competition- shape the regional manifestos of statewide parties by increasing their pro-regional positions. These findings represent a contribution to a better understanding of the extent to which regional elections are a separate electoral arena from the national one.
This article revisits the influential partisan alignment hypothesis, which posits that subnational governments aligned with central governments exhibit higher expenditures. To promote their own and their party’s re-election chances, central government politicians are believed to allocate more resources to their co-partisans at the subnational level, which relaxes subnational governments’ budget constraints and permits them to increase expenditures. The article examines alignment effects in subnational education spending. Unlike other expenditures, the allocation of education spending is discretionary and often does not follow precise formulas, making it a crucial test case. In contrast to previous single-case studies, this article uses a novel comparative dataset that includes 266 subnational regions in 14 countries over 20 years. The findings show that, controlling for rival explanations, alignment correlates with higher subnational education expenditures. Furthermore, alignment effects are stronger in countries where subnational governments have more discretion over education policy while lacking their own revenue sources.
One of the ways in which ‘good’ representation can be measured and assessed is by the degree of congruence between the preferences of the population and the preferences and policies of the political elite. One of the arguments for defending decentralisation is that governmental institutions on a smaller territorial scale can be closer to the population, and that they can provide policies that are more responsive to the population of the sub-states. This argument is often made in Belgium, where voters in Flanders traditionally vote centre-right, while the voters of Wallonia vote centre-left, and where federal coalitions need to reflect the preferences of both regions whereas regional governments can be responsive to their voters only. Using data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, this paper tests this assumption and compares the left–right orientation of the population and of governments at the different institutional levels and regions. The findings suggest that sub-state governments are partially more congruent to their sub-state voters than federal governments. However, congruence gaps are less related to constraints in government formation than to changes in behaviour of key political actors.
Cette contribution aborde le rôle de la langue dans la vie politique suisse en se penchant sur son influence sur les structures étatiques. À partir d’une approche méthodologique alliant l’analyse quantitative à celle qualitative, nous étudions les attitudes envers la dé/centralisation des pouvoirs publics soit dans les relations cantons-Confédération – dé/centralisation nationale – que dans celles cantons-communes – dé/centralisation cantonale. L’analyse quantitative montre qu’il y a une différence significative entre les cantons francophones et les cantons germanophones en ce qui concerne la dé/centralisation à la fois nationale et cantonale, les premiers préférant beaucoup plus que les derniers la centralisation. L’analyse qualitative quant à elle révèle que ce décalage est essentiellement le produit d’une différence de culture politique, entre les valeurs plutôt « républicains » des Romands et l’attachement à la subsidiarité des Alémaniques. Cette différence est étroitement liée à la langue et à l’influence exercée par la culture politique de la France véhiculée par la langue française : une influence qu’on peut également noter dans d’autres pays francophones. La singularité suisse, d’autre part, est que cette différence de culture politique est une des très peu qu’on puisse remarquer dans le pays car, d’un point de vue général, la culture politique suisse est très homogène d’une région linguistique à l’autre. Dans le cas suisse, on voit donc comment, même à l’intérieur d’une culture politique très largement partagée, la langue est liée à des différences non négligeables pour le fonctionnement du système politique et la vie des citoyens.
This article demonstrates that regional branches of national parties do not limit regional election campaigns to regional issues. On the contrary, they nationalize regional elections (i.e., emphasize national-level issues in regional campaigns) as an electoral strategy to win votes. The empirical evidence comes from the quantitative content analysis of regional-level manifestos of the two main national parties in Spain, PP, and PSOE, between 1998 and 2015. The percentage of references to the national government is taken as an indicator of nationalization. We find that parties nationalize regional elections under two situations: when the national co-partisans are in office enjoying high levels of popularity or when the national co-partisans are in opposition and the nationally governing party is unpopular. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the role of national parties in subordinating the regional arena to the national one in federal and decentralized states.
Full text: http://publius.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/09/26/publius.pjw030.full.pdf+html
This article has two objectives. Firstly, we test the theoretical assumptions about the repertoire of party strategies in a two-dimensional political space presented in the introduction to this special issue. We use a new dataset that content-analyzes electoral parties’ manifestos for regional elections in Spain and Great Britain (the Regional Manifestos Project) in order to see how well the theoretically-derived strategies approximate what parties in regional elections really do. Secondly, we develop tentative explanations of parties’ strategies: Which parties are more likely to use what type of strategy and under what circumstances? After running a multinomial logistic model we find that, in contrast to the niche party thesis, regionalist parties strategize simultaneously along the territorial and the economic dimensions of competition, while state-wide parties react to the presence of regionalist opponents by incorporating the territorial dimension into the agenda.
More than a century of scholarly attention to political parties has resulted in a substantial number of party models. Yet, so far all these party typologies have not accumulated into a more general theory on the genesis, development and transformation of political parties. This is caused primarily by the fact that most of the party models are seriously biased. First, most party models were developed in the context of western Europe and the United States of America, resulting in a limited ‘travelling capacity’ of these conceptualizations (Sartori, 1984) even across the Atlantic (see Ware, this volume). Secondly, most party models are very unidimensional in their approach, oftentimes focusing heavily or even exclusively on organizational aspects. Duverger (1954: xv) even argued that ‘present-day parties are distinguished far less by their programme or the class of their members than by the nature of their organization.
Over the last 40 years the institutional landscape in Western Europe has changed considerably. One of the most notable transformations of the state concerns processes of decentralization, federalization and regionalization. This development is well documented by the regional authority index (RAI) developed by Hooghe, Marks and Schakel (2010). For the 13 Western European countries which are the subject of research in this book, they observe that each of them underwent regional reform except for the Swiss cantons and the Faroe Islands. Not only has the authority exercised by regional governments increased but the biggest driver of this growth of regional authority has been the proliferation of elected institutions at the regional level (Marks et al., 2010).
▪ Abstract We take as our starting point the insights of Downs (1957) into two-party competition. A careful reading of Downs offers a much more sophisticated and nuanced portrait of the factors affecting party differentiation than the simplistic notion that, in plurality elections, we ought to expect party convergence to the views of the median voter. Later scholars have built on Downsian ideas to see what happens vis-à-vis party differentiation when we modify key assumptions found in the basic Downsian spatial model. Recent work allows us to turn what is taken to be the Downsian view on its head: Although there are pressures in two-party competition for the two parties to converge, in general we should expect nonconvergence. Moreover, contra the negative portrait offered by Green & Shapiro (1994) of the limited or nonexistent value of research on party competition models in the Downsian tradition, we argue that, when viewed as a whole, neo-Downsian models—especially those of the past decade—do allow us t...
Leaders of political parties often have to choose between conflicting objectives, such as influence on policy, control of the government, and support among the voters. This book examines the behaviour of political parties in situations where they experience conflict between two or more important objectives. The volume contains a theoretical introduction and case studies of party leaders in Germany, Italy, France and Spain as well as six smaller European democracies. Each case focuses on the behaviour of one of several parties in situations of goal conflict, such as the 'historic compromise' in Italy, the 1982 Wende in West Germany, the making of the new Swedish constitution in the 1970s, and the termination of the Austrian 'black-red' grand coalition. In their conclusions, the editors discuss how such leadership decisions can be understood and examine the causes of different choices among party leaders.
Leaders of political parties often have to choose between conflicting objectives, such as influence on policy, control of the government, and support among the voters. This book examines the behaviour of political parties in situations where they experience conflict between two or more important objectives. The volume contains a theoretical introduction and case studies of party leaders in Germany, Italy, France and Spain as well as six smaller European democracies. Each case focuses on the behaviour of one of several parties in situations of goal conflict, such as the 'historic compromise' in Italy, the 1982 Wende in West Germany, the making of the new Swedish constitution in the 1970s, and the termination of the Austrian 'black-red' grand coalition. In their conclusions, the editors discuss how such leadership decisions can be understood and examine the causes of different choices among party leaders.
Because of the redistributive nature of institutions and the availability of implementable alternatives with different distributive consequences, the desire of federation members to change institutional specifics in their favor is a permanent feature of the federal political process. This is so for two reasons. First, states or their equivalents in democratic federations usually can succeed in renegotiating the rules if they feel sufficiently motivated to do so. Second, in the case of a federation it is more or less clear who stands to benefit from any change in institutions. Thus, the existence of an equilibrium of constitutional legitimacy at the popular and elite levels cannot be taken for granted. The authors show that the presence in the political process of agents who are 'naturally committed' to the status-quo institutional arrangement can suffice to coordinate voters to act as if they support existing constitutional arrangements.
This article puts the self-interest hypothesis to an empirical test by analysing the 2004 referendum on fiscal equalisation in Switzerland. That vote put forth a series of reforms which created regional winners and loser in terms of having to pay or receiving unconditional funding. Although Switzerland is usually portrayed as a paradigmatic case in terms of inter-regional solidarity and national integration, we show that rational and selfish cost-benefit calculations strongly mattered for the end-result. We rely on a multi-level model with referendum and other data on more than 2700 municipalities and all 26 cantons. More broadly, our findings confirm that rational choice theory works well for voting on straightforward monetary issues with a clearly defined group of winners and losers. However, symbolic interests such as party strength and cultural predispositions against state intervention and in favour of subsidiarity also matter and need to be taken into account alongside.
Federalism and Regionalism in Western Europe seeks to clarify the relevance, problems and consequences of operating federal systems of government in Western Europe. The book analyzes and explains varieties in the allocation of resources, the decision-making process and problem-solving capacity of West-European federal and regional states.
The saying goes that Switzerland does not have just one party system; rather, it has 26 (i.e. one for each canton). Such a notion is certainly a bit exaggerated, and, as we will show below, clearly outdated. However, the 26 cantons cannot be disregarded when analyzing the creation of the party system in Switzerland. They have an exceptionally high level of importance in the political system of Switzerland; they exhibit far-reaching organizational and fiscal autonomy; and they account for a large share of the state fiscal revenue and expenditure. This is not only reflected in 26 different electoral systems for the cantonal elections but has also affected the structure of the national political parties, which were developing as loose federations of cantonal party branches. Previous research has outlined the important differences but also attempted to categorize the party systems in the 26 cantons (Gruner, 1977; Vatter, 2002; Ladner, 2004). However, Armingeon (1998) and Bochsler and Sciarini (2006) have highlighted the deepening integration of the Swiss party system and the increasing national electoral dynamics over the last two decades.
Claiming Society for God focuses on common strategies employed by religiously orthodox, fundamentalist movements around the world. Rather than employing terrorism, as much of post-9/11 thinking suggests, these movements use a patient, under-the-radar strategy of infiltrating and subtly transforming civil society. Nancy J. Davis and Robert V. Robinson tell the story of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Shas in Israel, Comunione e Liberazione in Italy, and the Salvation Army in the United States. They show how these movements build massive grassroots networks of religiously based social service agencies, hospitals, schools, and businesses to bring their own brand of faith to popular and political fronts. © 2012 by Nancy J. Davis and Robert V. Robinson. All rights reserved.
The study of secession generally stresses the causal influence of cultural identities, political preferences, or ecological factors. Whereas these different views are often considered to be mutually exclusive, this paper proposes a two-stage model in which they are complementary. We posit that cultural identities matter for explaining secessionism, but not because of primordial attachments. Rather, religious and linguistic groups matter because their members are imbued with cultural legacies that lead to distinct political preferences – in this case preferences over welfare statism. Further, ecological constraints such as geography and topography affect social interaction with like-minded individuals. On the basis of both these political preferences and ecological constraints, individuals then make rational choices about the desirability of secession. Instrumental considerations are therefore crucial in explaining the decision to secede, but not in a conventional pocketbook manner. To examine this theory, we analyze the 2013 referendum on the secession of the Jura Bernois region from the Canton of Berne in Switzerland, using municipal level census and referendum data. The results lend support to the theory and suggest one way in which the politics of identity, based on factors like language and religion, can be fused with the politics of interest (preferences for more or less state intervention into the polity and economy) to better understand group behavior.
In this conclusion, I attempt to provide a synthesis of the findings of this superb set of papers and put them into a broader perspective. For this purpose, I also rely on some other more recent assessments of Swiss politics - in particular on Sciarini, Fischer and Traber's (2015) replication of my own study of Swiss politics in the 1970s, which covers the most important political decision-making processes of 2000-2006, and on a recent special issue of the Swiss Political Science Review (SPSR 2014) that is dedicated to the 2011 Swiss Elections. I proceed in four steps: first, I discuss the guiding theme of this collection of papers - the increasing party competition and the related polarization of Swiss politics, as well as the drivers of this development. Then, I turn to the consequences of this development for Swiss politics and Swiss policies. I conclude with a summary discussion, where I draw attention to the forgotten elephant in the room - the Great Recession and the Euro-crisis.
Large coalition governments, including all relevant parties, are at the heart of the consociational model of Swiss democracy. Until the 1990s, this model was characterised as “voluntary proportional”. It was based on a stable cooperation of two main blocs of political parties, and on elite-driven agreements on all-inclusive government formulas. Despite growing competition in governmental elections, all-party coalitions have survived in most cantons. This article explains that the political minority could keep and even improve its representation, as a consequence of the divisions in the political majority. While right-wing parties hold the majority in almost all Swiss cantons and at the federal level, they are no longer sufficiently cohesive to control the elections. As a consequence, elections have become more uncertain, and political minorities can capitalise on this in order to win seats. Empirically, this paper investigates elections for Swiss cantonal governments in the period 1971–2011. It combines data on the unity of political blocs with data on government formation. To measure the political unity of the blocs, the paper introduces a novel measure based on the voting recommendations issued by cantonal parties on the occasion of national referendums.
This Special Issue aims to (1) theorise party strategies in multi-dimensional policy spaces; and (2) apply the theory to party competition in multinational democracies characterised by a salient territorial dimension alongside a more established economic dimension. The introductory article brings together recent contributions treating spatial and salience theories as compatible and policy spaces as two-dimensional to propose four party strategies that can be ranked from one- to two-dimensional competitive behaviour: uni-dimensionality, blurring, subsuming, and two- dimensionality. The remaining contributions operationalise these strategies and draw on a variety of data sources ranging from manifestos to parliamentary bill proposals and expert surveys to describe when and explore why parties use these strategies in competition, focusing on patterns of party competition in multinational democracies, selected as typical cases of multi-dimensional competition.
Germany’s federalism imposes significant constraints on sub-national parties. They cannot
enact their ambitious policy agenda as most legislative powers are concentrated at
the federal level. This article demonstrates how sub-national parties use position-taking
strategies to escape these constraints. By position-taking, parties try to induce regional
voters and interest groups to judge them for what they stand for instead of blaming
them for the policies they cannot deliver. This argument is illustrated empirically by
analysing all 1,715 announcements of legislative initiatives in the Bundesrat in 562
electoral manifestos and coalition agreements that were published during all 92 regional
elections since 1990 and all 1,619 Land bills from the period between 1972 and
2013. It is shown that regional parties and governments that are in opposition at the
federal level announce and submit significantly more legislative initiatives that aim at
changing federal policies.
The design of federal states from Russia and the Ukraine to Canada and the European Union typically develops from a false set of assumptions regarding the institutional building blocks of such a state. Rather than any carefully delineated allocation of policy jurisdictions, the authors argue that a number of institutional variables, not normally associated with federal design, can be critical in determining federal success. (The variables are the content of regional charters and the extent to which public offices are filled by election rather than appointment.) © Mikhail Filippov, Peter C. Ordeshook, and Olga Shvetsova 2004.
Do sub-national parties reproduce the programmatic orientation of the party as a whole? Or are they able to adjust their programmatic orientation to their sub-national electorate? I seek to answer these questions based on the policy positions of German sub-national parties and survey data on voters' positions. Referring to these very similar parties – which all have to commit themselves to certain policy positions in the run-up to state elections – allows for a controlled analysis of sub-national parties' autonomy. The analyses reveal that the regional context does play a role; voters' preferences and the unemployment rate appear to influence the dynamics of party positions. However, the results also show that regional branches of the same party change their positions in a similar way and also seek not to distance themselves too far from the national party line. This indicates that German sub-national parties appear first and foremost to be regional party branches of national parties.
The literature is still undecided on whether sub-state elections conform more to a national or regional logic of voting. In this article, I argue that the impact of national politics on regional elections is contingent upon the level of decentralization. I hypothesize that the greater the number of policy areas and resources in the hands of regional governments, the lesser the influence of national coat-tails on regional elections. Using the electoral results of the Spanish Socialist Party in national and regional elections from 1979 to 2009, the empirical analysis shows that regional politicians' electoral performance is correlated to that of their national counterparts. However, this correlation has weakened as regional governments have gained greater decision-making and financing powers. This has been particularly evident in elections when the regional branch of the party rules a single-party government and competes against strong regionalist parties.
I think [my grandchildren] will be proud of two things. What I did for the Negro and seeing it through in Vietnam for all of Asia. The Negro cost me 15 points in the polls and Vietnam cost me 20.
Lyndon B. Johnson
With tenacious regularity over the last two and a half decades the Gallup Poll has posed to its cross-section samples of the American public the following query, “Do you approve or disapprove of the way (the incumbent) is handling his job as President?” The responses to this curious question form an index known as “Presidential popularity.” According to Richard Neustadt, the index is “widely taken to approximate reality” in Washington and reports about its behavior are “very widely read” there, including, the quotation above would suggest, the highest circles.
Plotted over time, the index forms probably the longest continuous trend line in polling history. This study seeks to analyze the behavior of this line for the period from the beginning of the Truman administration in 1945 to the end of the Johnson administration in January 1969 during which time the popularity question was asked some 300 times.
Four variables are used as predictors of a President's popularity. These include a measure of the length of time the incumbent has been in office as well as variables which attempt to estimate the influence on his rating of major international events, economic slump and war. To assess the independent impact of each of these variables as they interact in association with Presidential popularity, multiple regression analysis is used as the basic analytic technique.
Résumé
L'apparition de sections cantonales divergentes lors des votations populaires est un phénomène récurrent en Suisse. Toutefois, malgré l'intérêt de son analyse pour apprécier la cohésion interne des partis, ce phénomène a été délaissé par la littérature récente. Nous comblons ce manque par une analyse à la fois quantitative et qualitative des sections divergentes lors des votations populaires des deux dernières législatures (2003‐2007 et 2007‐2011). L'analyse quantitative illustre une stabilité, voire une légère diminution, du phénomène. L'analyse qualitative (études de cas) quant à elle, relativise son impact sur la cohésion des partis: ses manifestations les plus importantes sont circonscrites à des domaines spécifiques et sont provoquées par des configurations particulières, ou des causes spécifiques.
The article contends that the political elite play a crucial role not just in representative systems, but also in the direct-democratic process. On the basis of the Swiss experience, the empirical analysis shows that the outcome of the direct-democratic vote heavily depends on the issue-specific configuration of power in the political elite, and that the impact of the mobilization of its different parts is, indeed, more complex than is usually suggested by the critics of the direct-democratic process. The results support the idea that consensual elites readily get their way, but that the situation is more complex when elites are divided. In a nutshell, the analysis shows that the coalition formation among political elites is a key determinant of the outcome of direct-democratic votes.
Like father, unlike sons: German parties at the state level (Lander parties) not only differ with regard to their roots, their membership structure and their electoral successes, they also exhibit remarkably varied policy preferences. Although several case studies of parties and party systems in the Lander offer important insights, we still lack systematic knowledge about the causes of this variation in policy. This article seeks to fill that void by examining the ways in which socio-economic variables influence a party's policy positions. Based on a comprehensive dataset representing the policy positions of 77 parties over several electoral terms, I test hypotheses related to the cleavage theory and to the concept of the politicised social structure. The policy positions are estimated using the wordscore method. The results show that the proportion of Catholics, rurality and economic situation affect the parties' policy positions.
Most political parties operate on several territorial levels, but we have only limited theoretical understanding of multi-level party dynamics. This article presents a delegation framework for studying the interaction between the national leadership and regional branches in state-wide parties. Assuming a principal-agent relationship, the national leadership can obtain benefits from delegating tasks to a regional branch, but also faces possible costs in doing this. The rules and conventions regulating the multi-level interaction in parties are possible mechanisms by which to control the actions and policies of regional branches. These include formal party rules, informal party procedures and conventions, and state laws affecting party organizations. The framework provides an agenda and hypotheses for empirical research, research that should focus on crisis situations in parties, on what regional branches cannot do (instead of just documenting the activities of branches), and on the role of parties in shaping state laws and regulations.
A unidimensional spatial model of multiparty parliamentary elections under proportional representation is presented, in which parties project that the median parliamentary party will implement its policy position. The parties are assumed to be uncertain about the electoral impact of valence issues relating to party elites’ images of competence, integrity and charisma. The assumptions of the model, highlighting the importance of the median party in parliament, are consistent with empirical work by McDonald and Budge. Under them, the existence of a Nash equilibrium under quite general concavity conditions is proved and it is shown that parties will moderate their positions when their valence images deteriorate. Computations of party equilibria are reported. The model and its implications for policy-seeking parties with results on vote-seeking parties can be contrasted with that recently reported by Schofield and Sened.
Why do election results at national and regional parliamentary elections in Switzerland differ so widely? And why are these differences more pronounced in some constituencies than in others? This study discusses competing theoretical views of the linkage between elections held at multiple federal levels, and empirically tests their predictions using official election statistics and contextual data from Swiss national and cantonal elections between 1999 and 2003. Despite the spatially and temporally limited scope of this analysis, one conclusion suggests itself: current theories of the linkage suffer from their neglect of features of the electoral systems which may vary between different types of elections. Taking these institutional variations into account, we find a strong systematic relationship between election outcomes at different levels. Moreover, the linkage of election outcomes is, to some extent, contingent upon the degree to which regions are integrated into the national political system: while national trends in party support tend to drive election outcomes in nationally well-integrated cantons, election results ostensibly follow regional electoral developments in more peripheral cantons.
The relevance of the context for the programmatic positioning of Swiss cantonal parties Political parties acting in multilevel system are confronted with electorates that differ substantially in their socio-structural composition. As party competition - especially in federal countries - is foremost structured within the regions, parties are well advised to offer tailor-made policy proposals to these electorates. We evaluate these arguments for the Swiss case as a multilevel system with a highly heterogonous linguistic, confessional and socioeconomic structure where the electorates differ strongly from canton to canton. We analyze election manifestos at the subnational level to estimate cantonal party positions. Cantonal party manifestos are an optimal source for extracting party positions, which has not been used often in the Swiss case but which has a high potential in our view. The findings indicate that the socio structural characteristics of the cantonal electorates are indeed reflected in the programmatic positioning of the parties. Parties in the French speaking part of Switzerland take tentatively more leftist positions on economic issues whereas parties in rural cantons have more conservative positions in questions on the societal policy dimension.
Vertical integration is an important concept for political parties. In multi-level or federal contexts, it is said to affect party strength, national integration and federal stability. Despite this, difficulties with the conceptualization and operationalization of vertical integration and a lack of cross-national data impede research. This article clarifies the concept of vertical integration, distinguishing it from related concepts of strength, centralization and autonomy and distinguishing the indicators of integration from the effects of integration. It introduces the measures of vertical integration and autonomy used in the Party Organization in Multi-Level Systems (POMLS) dataset comprising data from survey responses from 204 state-level parties in eight countries. The data confirm the theoretical distinctions among forms of vertical integration and between vertical integration and autonomy and show that not all forms of vertical integration are mutually reinforcing.
In this article, I develop three measures of party organization in multi-level systems: vertical integration, influence and autonomy. I assess these in 27 parties in Canada, Australia, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the United States and Spain and investigate how parties respond to the incentives and opportunities created by their institutional environment. Clear patterns emerge between the form of federal state design and the predominant form of party organization: in decentralized federations with low coordination requirements between federal and state-level governments, a tendency can be found towards highly autonomous state parties. Where resources are centralized and intergovernmental coordination requirements are high, integrated parties with low autonomy can be found. However, neither aspect of institutional design has a significant relationship with `upward' influence of state-level parties in the governance structure of federal parties
Daniele Caramani describes the transformation of politics from an environment where voting behavior differs greatly between regions to one where it is homogeneous within nations. Looking at long-term evolution, spanning the mid-nineteenth century to the present, Caramani utilizes data on specific constituencies rather than on a national level. He demonstrates that a nation-wide homogeneous dimension emerged from national and industrial revolutions and replaced preindustrial territorial dimensions. His analysis is constructed along the lines of party families and reveals why countries currently exhibit different levels of homogeneity.
home/statistics/politics.html BK-Bundeskanzlei [Federal Chancellery], Chronology of Federal Votes
- Bfs-Bundesamt Für Statistik
BFS-Bundesamt Für Statistik [Federal Statistical Office] (February 2017), available at
https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/politics.html
BK-Bundeskanzlei [Federal Chancellery], Chronology of Federal Votes (February
2017), available at https://www.admin.ch/ch/d/pore/va/vab_2_2_4_1.html
Bochsler, Daniel, and Fabio Wasserfallen (2013). 'Switzerland: Moving toward a
Nationalized Party System', in Régis Dandoy and Arjan Schakel (eds.), Regional and
National Elections in Western Europe-Territoriality of the Vote in Thirteen Countries.
Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 234-53.
Ausgewählte Beiträge zur Schweizer Politik: Grundung und Entwicklung der BDP
- Marc Bühlmann
- Sabine Hohl
Bühlmann, Marc, and Sabine Hohl (2017). Ausgewählte Beiträge zur Schweizer Politik:
Grundung und Entwicklung der BDP, 2007-2014 [Selected contributions on Swiss
politics: Creation and development of the BDP, 2007-2014]. Bern: Année Politique
Suisse.