Are citizens in consensus democracies with developed direct democratic institutions more satisfied with their political system than those in majoritarian democracies? In this article, individual‐level data from the second wave of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and an updated version of Lijphart's multivariate measure of consensus and majoritarian democracy covering 24 countries are used to investigate this question. The findings from logistic multilevel models indicate that consensual cabinet types and direct democratic institutions are associated with higher levels of citizens' satisfaction with democracy. Furthermore, consensus democracy in these institutions closes the gap in satisfaction with democracy between losers and winners of elections by both comforting losers and reducing the satisfaction of winners. Simultaneously, consensus democracy in terms of electoral rules, the executive–legislative power balance, interest groups and the party system reduces the satisfaction of election winners, but does not enhance that of losers.

The first part of this paper draws a number of theoretical connections between various forms of direct democracy and the two types of democracy outlined by Lijphart. Plebiscites and mandatory referendums without quorums of consent are shown to correspond to majoritarian forms of democracy, whilst optional referendums and initiatives with quorums of consent are shown to share similarities with power-sharing forms. The second part of the paper offers an empirical analysis of the different use of citizen-initiated referendums (optional referendums and initiatives) in Switzerland's consensual systems (i.e., cantons) by examining to what extent the various elements of power-sharing are developed. It is argued that referendums and initiatives are used less frequently when government coalitions have greater strength and local autonomy is more developed.

Can Switzerland still be seen as an extreme case of federal consensus democracy, as illustrated by Arend Lijphart (1999)? A reanalysis of Lijphart's study of the Swiss political system from 1997 to 2007 clearly demonstrates that a consensus democracy has emerged that bears strong tendencies toward adjustment and normalization of the original exceptional Swiss case to the rest of the continental European consensus democracies. Switzerland can be considered a typical, rather than extreme, case of consensus democracy.

This study presents an empirical investigation of differences in health care expenditure between the 26 federal entities of Switzerland in the 1990s. So far, demand and supply-related factors have dominated the debate, while political determinants have largely been neglected. Here, they will be assessed together with the usual indicators on the basis of a cross-sectional analysis of both public and private health care spending. It will be shown that no approach represents the whole truth, but each one a grain of it. Demand for health care is clearly a function of socio-economic factors. On the supply side, it is mainly the number of practitioners and the overall level of provision that drive costs. Finally, from the political factors, general state interventionism is decisive – though only so far as public spending is concerned.

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 26 Swiss cantons we show that the theoretical assumption on which the happiness hypothesis is based has to be questioned, as there is very little evidence for a robust relationship between satisfaction with democracy and life satisfaction. Furthermore, we do not find a substantive positive effect of direct democracy on happiness. However, with respect to satisfaction with democracy, our analysis shows some evidence for a procedural effect of direct democracy, i.e. positive effects related to using direct democratic rights, rather than these rights per se.