Demand of direct democracy

The growing demand for referendum challenges the traditional model of representative democracy. In this paper we study under which conditions voters prefer a system of representative democracy to direct democracy. In direct democracies voters choose a policy among two alternatives, under uncertainty about which policy better fits the realized state of the world; in representative democracies voters select a candidate who, once elected, chooses a policy having observed which is the realized state of the world. Voters and politicians' payoffs depend on a common component which is positive only if the policy fits the state of the world, and on a private ideological bias towards one of the policies. In direct democracies voters are uncertain about the future state of the world, while in representative democracies they are uncertain about the degree of ideological bias of the candidates, even if they know towards which policy each candidate is biased. We show that representative democracy is preferred if (i) the majority of voters are pragmatic (the common component prevails), and (ii) society is ideologically polarized, meaning that the majority of voters are ideological (the private component prevails), but the median voter is pragmatic. Direct democracy is the preferred instrument for collective choices in societies in which the majority of voters and the median voter are ideological, implying that the majority of voters have the same ideological bias, as, for instance, it occurs when the populist rhetoric of people against the elite succeeds.     

The political economy of direct legislation: direct democracy and local decision–making

Local and regional governments account for an important share of total government spending and, given the decentralization trend in OECD nations, this is likely to increase. How should this spending be governed? This article argues that direct democracy is best suited to organize decision–making at the state and local level. To support this, we present the main theoretical arguments on why and how referenda and initiatives affect fiscal policy outcomes. The basic argument concerns voter control. Under representative democracy, citizens only have direct control at election time. With referenda and initiatives, citizens can selectively control their representatives on specific policies whenever they deviate sufficiently from citizens' preferences. As a result, fiscal policy outcomes are likely to more closely reflect voter preferences. We empirically test this on Swiss data since Switzerland provides a 'natural laboratory' for local governance. The governance structures of Swiss cantons and localities with respect to fiscal issues range from classic parliamentary democracy to pure direct democracy, and an important part of spending and taxation is controlled at these levels. Specifically, we estimate an econometric model of fiscal behaviour using data from 1986 to 1997 for the 26 Swiss cantons, and 1990 data on 134 local communities. It is shown that mandatory referenda on fiscal issues at both levels have a dampening effect on expenditure and revenue, and at the local level also on public debt. Combining this with existing empirical evidence leads to a relatively uncontested result, namely that elements of direct democracy are associated with sounder public finances, better economic performance and higher satisfaction of citizens.     

Direct Democracy and Local Public Finances under Cooperative Federalism

In this paper, we exploit the introduction of the right of local initiatives in the German state of Bavaria in 1995 in order to study the fiscal effects of direct democracy. Our identification strategy combines difference‐in‐differences and regression discontinuity methods: we compare municipal expenditure and revenue between pre‐ and post‐reform periods at population thresholds where the signatures needed to launch initiatives and minimum quorum requirements decrease discontinuously (difference‐in‐discontinuities design). The results suggest that stronger direct democratic institutions lead to an expansion of local government size.     

Voter preferences,direct democracy and government spending

This article uses unique voting data on 331 federal propositions to estimate voter preferences in Swiss cantons. We document that preferences vary systematically with cantonal characteristics. In particular, cantons whose voters are more conservative, less in favor of redistribution and less supportive of public spending tend to have stronger direct democracy. We show that voter preferences have a stable and sizable effect on government spending even conditional on many observable cantonal characteristics. We then revisit the relationship between direct democracy and public spending. Once we fully control for voter preferences, the cross-sectional correlation between direct democracy and government spending declines by roughly 20%. The results in this article provide empirical support for models, in which both voter preferences and direct democratic institutions are important determinants of the size of government.     

How to tame two Leviathans? Revisiting the effect of direct democracy on local public expenditure in a federation

We explore how the presence of direct democracy across hierarchical levels of government in a federation affects the level of public expenditure. In so doing we revisit the effect of direct democratic institutions on public policies. Particularly, we are interested whether the effect of upper-level (state) direct democratic institutions on lower-level expenditure varies with lower-level direct democracy. Empirically, we exploit the large institutional variation in the degree of direct democracy both for state (cantons) and local governments (municipalities) in Switzerland. Considering 119 municipalities belonging to 22 cantons for the period 1993–2007, we find that the cantonal fiscal referendum increases local spending for those municipalities without fiscal referenda, while this effect is significantly reduced for municipalities that also avail of referenda. This suggests that upper-level fiscal restraint can be undone by lower-level profligacy if direct-democratic control is limited to the upper level.     

Democracy in the neighborhood and foreign direct investment

The determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) have been extensively studied. Even though there is extensive research in the area, most of it is based on analyzing the effects of host country characteristics on FDI flows, and yet there is little research on how neighboring country characteristics play a role in facilitating FDI flows to host countries. This paper analyzes the association between the democracy level in neighboring countries and FDI flows to host countries. Using bilateral FDI flows from the OECD countries, with a large host country sample, we find that countries surrounded by democratic countries attract higher FDI flows. Furthermore, we find evidence that countries that are surrounded by neighboring countries with good institutions tend themselves to have better institutions, experience lower civil conflict, and have higher political stability and hence indirectly attract higher FDI flows. Our findings suggest that if neighboring countries act in such way as to become more democratic, FDI flows to these countries would be higher since not only does improving the quality of democracy attract more FDI inflows, but also being surrounded by neighboring advanced democratic countries will also lead to higher FDI flows to them.     

Direct democracy: obstacle to reform?

Swiss direct democracy is often accused of being an obstacle to reforms, with the strong influence of interest groups being the reason. Actually, the referendum has a retarding effect: it implies a status quo bias. On the other hand, the initiative has an accelerating effect. The influence of interest groups is hardly larger in direct compared to representative democratic systems. Thus, it is highly questionable whether the abolition of Switzerland’s direct democracy (at the federal level) would—in the long-run—really lead to political decisions which are more open to reforms.     

Overstrained citizens? The number of ballot propositions and the quality of the decision process in direct democracy

We study how the number of ballot propositions affects the quality of decision making in direct democracy, as reflected in citizens’ knowledge, voting behavior, and attitudes toward democracy. Using three comprehensive data sets from Switzerland with over 3,500 propositions, we exploit variation in the number of federal and cantonal propositions. Voters know the most about the content of federal propositions when they are exclusively presented and less with a high number of concurrent cantonal propositions on the ballot. Across other outcomes we find no consistent indications that – for the observed variation in the exposure to popular votes – a high number of propositions impedes the quality of decision making in Swiss federal direct democracy. In the medium to longer term, more federal propositions on the ballot rather relate to higher perceived political influence and satisfaction with democracy.     

A political economy perspective of direct democracy in ancient Athens

Using a political economy framework the paper argues that in ancient Athens direct democracy, absence of political parties and appointment to office by lot were inextricably linked. Direct rather than representative democracy was in the interest of the constitutional framer at the time of the transition to democracy. Deciding directly each policy issue under majority rule diminished the intermediation function of political parties, a tendency possibly reinforced by an integrative ideology of defending the polis. In the absence of political parties to fight elections and distribute rents from office, appointment of office-holders by lot randomized their selection, a process which yielded an accurate representation of individual preferences, and distributed rents irrespective of the private wealth of individual citizens.     

Forms of democracy and economic growth volatility

Using a panel of 140 countries over the 1975–2007 period, we disaggregate democracies across five institutional dimensions (government forms, electoral rules, state forms, number of veto players, and age of democracies), to study the precise forms of democracy that may explain the lower economic growth volatility (EGV) in democracies compared to dictatorships, usually emphasized by the literature. We find that, while all government forms decrease EGV to the same extent, proportional electoral rules outperform majoritarian and mixed electoral rules, suggesting a role for a more inclusive political decision-making process. In addition, EGV is significantly lower in unitary states, suggesting a role for a limited separation of power between the central government and the local authorities, while the effect of the number of veto players and the age of democracies is significant only in developed countries. Consequently, the choice between various forms of democracy may not be neutral for EGV, and, possibly, for countries' development path.     

Government Spending and Taxation in Democracies and Autocracies

The paper develops a theoretical rationale for a non-linear relationship between the level of democracy and government spending. A model is presented showing why and how political participation influences the spending behavior of opportunistic governments that can choose an optimal combination of rents and public goods to attract political support. If the level of democracy remains low, governments rationally prefer rents as an instrument to assure political support. With increasing democratic participation, however, rents become an increasingly expensive (per unit of political support) instrument while the provision of public goods becomes more and more efficient in ensuring the incumbent government's survival in power. As a consequence, an increase in democracy, which drives a country from a pure autocracy to a semi-participatory system, tends to reduce government spending, while an increase in political participation from a semi-participatory country to a full democracy tends to raise the size of the public sector.     

民间金融制度变迁的经济学解释——一个新政治经济学视角

作为民营经济支持的主力,民间金融有制度变迁的内在动力。我国民间金融制度的变迁同样表现出很强的制度变迁特征,而地方政府在制度变迁过程中的中间作用不容忽视。这其中折射出相关利益主体的反复博弈,并最终表现为需求诱致型制度变迁,推动民间金融通过法治化进程向民主化方向演进。     

Political Resource Allocation: Benefits and Costs of Voter Initiatives

This article explores the benefits and costs of the voter initiative,a direct democracy device that allows policy decisions to bemade by voters rather than their elected representatives. Previousresearch suggests that by introducing "competition" into theproposal process, the initiative leads to policies that arecloser to the median voter's ideal point. In our model, in contrast,the effect of the initiative is conditional on the severityof representative agency problems and uncertainty about voterpreferences. The initiative always makes the voter better offwhen representatives are faithful agents, but when voter preferencesare uncertain, initiatives can cause "shirking" representativesto choose policies farther from the voter's ideal point. Ourevidence shows that initiatives are more common in states withheterogeneous populations, and initiatives reduce state spendingwhen Democrats control the government and when citizens havediverse preferences.     

Democracy and Growth: Alternative Approaches

This article focuses on two previously unexamined aspects of the relationship between economic growth and democracy. First, the growth experiences of countries that experience significant changes in democracy are examined directly. Countries that democratize are found to grow faster than a priori similar countries, while countries that become less democratic grow more slowly than comparable countries. These differences do not seem to be due to differences in education or investment levels. Second, regression tree analysis suggests that democracy, along with initial income and literacy, contributes to the identification of regimes of countries facing similar aggregate production functions.     

When is the median voter paradigm a reasonable guide for policy choices in a representative democracy?

The median voter paradigm (MVP) has been widely used to study the interactions between economic and political behavior. While this approach is easy to work with, it abstracts from institutional detail. This paper explores whether the MVP leads on average to the same policies that would be chosen in a two-party representative democracy (RD). When it does not, the paper fully characterizes the size and magnitude of the average divergence (or bias) between policy choices in MVP and in RD in terms of the degree of polarization between the parties, their relative electoral prospects, and the distribution of electoral uncertainty. The results are then applied to the influential Meltzer and Richard (1981) theory of the size of government.     

Direct democracy and local government efficiency

This paper studies the role of direct democracy in ensuring efficient and cost-effective provision of goods and services in the public sector. The sample consists of the population of municipalities in the German State of Bavaria, where in the mid-1990s considerable direct democratic reforms granted citizens wide opportunities to directly participate in local affairs through binding initiatives. Using information on the municipal resources and the municipal provision of public goods, and applying a fully non-parametric approach to estimate local government overall efficiency, the analysis shows that more direct democratic activity is associated with higher government efficiency. This result suggests that more inclusive governance through direct decision-making mechanisms may induce more accountable and less inefficient governments.     

城市社区"善治中的政府责任"——基于协商民主理论

协商民主是一种有效的多元利益整合机制和协商对话机制,它为我国城市社区治理提供了一个新的发展空间。在多中心秩序的社区治理中,政府应始终处于权力体系的核心,承担着掌舵的职能,而成为协商民主的条件创造者、民主程序规则的提供者以及协商结果利益实现的保障者,从而实现社区”善治“。     

Employment instability,earnings and market structure

A model of incremental decision-making in local government is presented as an extention of that developed by davis et al. (1996) for US Congressional appropriation. This is then combined with joint supply and demand equation for local taxes and expenditure. An explicit Stone-Geary utility function derived when these fuctions are maximized subject to the supply and demand equations as constraints. Empitical results are then given for local authorities in England and Wales from 1974 to 1960. These results confirm a very important role for the bureauctic component within the overall tax-expenditure model.     

Political preferences and public sector outsourcing

Given the intensive and ideologically charged debate over the use of private contractors for publicly funded services, it is somewhat surprising that many social scientists have preferred to explain government outsourcing by the pursuit of economic efficiency. Starting out from different theories, we investigate political explanations of government outsourcing using a Swedish data set in which outsourcing varies between municipalities and over time, as well as between services. Our identification strategy focuses on two services with similar contracting problems and local market conditions: preschools and primary schools. We study a period in which Swedish municipalities had full discretion in the provision of preschools, while their influence on the private provision of primary education was limited by a national voucher system. The comparison of preschools with primary schools in a difference-in-differences model suggests that the political color of the ruling majority influences outsourcing, which is consistent with the Citizen Candidate model of representative democracy.     

Democratic Choice of an Education System: Implications for Growth and Income Distribution

We use an OLG model to examine democratic choice betweentwo modes of government support for education: subsidies forprivately purchased education and free uniform public provision.We find little conflict between democracy and growth: the samefactors that generate popular support for subsidization overfree uniform provision—large external benefits, a largeexcess burden, and little inequality—also favor its relativegrowth performance. Furthermore, restricting the franchise toan upper-income elite may also reduce growth. Two extensionsexamine the effect of intergenerational mobility and indicatethe theoretical possibility of periodic swings in the balancebetween public and private spending.