Participatory processes and their outcomes: comparing assembly and popular vote decisions
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Participatory processes and their outcomes : comparing assembly and popular vote decisions. / el-Wakil, Alice; Strebel, Michael A.
In: European Political Science Review, Vol. 14, No. 3, 2022, p. 441–458.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Participatory processes and their outcomes
T2 - comparing assembly and popular vote decisions
AU - el-Wakil, Alice
AU - Strebel, Michael A.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - How do face-to-face, assembly processes, and non-face-to-face, popular vote processes impact the decisions made by citizens? Normative discussions of the comparative merits of these two broad types of participatory decision-making processes partly rely on empirical assumptions concerning this question. In this paper, we test the central assumption that assemblies lead to decisions that are more widely supported by participants than popular votes. We do so by analyzing 1,400 decisions made through these processes on the highly salient issue of municipal mergers in Swiss municipalities since 1999. We find that assembly decisions are consistently made by larger majorities than popular vote decisions and that this relationship is significantly mediated by turnout. This suggests that higher levels of agreement in assemblies mainly result from selection biases – with fewer dissenting citizens participating in assemblies than in popular votes – rather than from internal dynamics in assemblies.
AB - How do face-to-face, assembly processes, and non-face-to-face, popular vote processes impact the decisions made by citizens? Normative discussions of the comparative merits of these two broad types of participatory decision-making processes partly rely on empirical assumptions concerning this question. In this paper, we test the central assumption that assemblies lead to decisions that are more widely supported by participants than popular votes. We do so by analyzing 1,400 decisions made through these processes on the highly salient issue of municipal mergers in Swiss municipalities since 1999. We find that assembly decisions are consistently made by larger majorities than popular vote decisions and that this relationship is significantly mediated by turnout. This suggests that higher levels of agreement in assemblies mainly result from selection biases – with fewer dissenting citizens participating in assemblies than in popular votes – rather than from internal dynamics in assemblies.
KW - Faculty of Social Sciences
KW - democratic innovation
KW - consensus
KW - territorial reform
KW - institutional design
KW - direct democracy
U2 - 10.1017/S1755773922000157
DO - 10.1017/S1755773922000157
M3 - Journal article
VL - 14
SP - 441
EP - 458
JO - European Political Science Review
JF - European Political Science Review
SN - 1755-7739
IS - 3
ER -
ID: 320496640