Institutional Design and the Use of Direct Democracy: Evidence from the German Länder

Abstract

Despite growing interest in direct democratic institutions, the empirical evidence on the relationship between institutional design and the actual use of popular rights remains rather sparse. The authors use a novel data set on institutional openness and test its link to the number of popular initiatives in the German La¨nder for the period of 1997-2005. Their empirical analysis reveals a strong and robust negative effect of higher institutional requirements on the number of popular initiatives in the 16 German La¨nder; whereas other factors appear to be of minor importance. They thus come to the conclusion that the comparatively high institutional hurdles in the La¨nder impose costs of initiation, thereby limiting the number of popular initiatives.

Signature requirements and citizen initiatives: Quasi-experimental evidence from Germany

“…Looking at a cross-section of US states, the authors report that higher signature requirements reduce the number of citizen-proposed initiatives. Similar evidence for the German Länder is provided by Eder et al (2009), while Barankay et al (2003) find no significant relationship between institutional openness and use of initiatives in Swiss cantons. 3 A second strand of literature addresses the policy outcomes of direct democracy.…”

Direct Democracy and Political Trust: Enhancing Trust, Initiating Distrust–or Both?

“…Although neither institutional barriers nor use of direct democratic instruments can be viewed as entirely independent (Eder et al. ), they are not highly correlated with one another in the Swiss case (Barankay et al. ; Stadelmann‐Steffen and Vatter ).…”

The Indirect Effects of Direct Democracy: Local Government Size and Non-Budgetary Voter Initiatives

“…And rightfully so: Although the first German democratic constitution of the Weimar Republic (1918Republic ( -1919 included various elements of direct democracy (Schiller, 2011), the multiple uses of plebiscites in 1934, 1936 and 1938 by the Nazi dictatorship to legitimize their draconian power discredited the concept of direct democracy for the decades to come (Schiller, 2011). As a result the new post-war constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany, the "Grundgesetz", was almost purely representative 6 , and to date there has not been any practice of direct democracy on the national level (Eder et al, 2009). On the sub-national levels, the constitutions in seven states (all Western) allowed for some -although very restrictive -elements of direct democracy (Setala and Schiller, 2012), while at the municipal level laws of state-imposed direct democracy were virtually non-existent.…”