Multilevel strategies of political inclusion: The contestation of voting rights for foreign residents by regional assemblies in Europe

Abstract

Over the last fifty years, eighteen regional assemblies in Europe have debated the extension of voting rights to foreign residents. Yet only Scotland and the Swiss cantons of Neuchâtel and Jura have adopted such legislation. What explains this variation? Through a comparison of debates that have taken place in Italy and Switzerland, I show that multilevel governance expands access to policymaking, but also multiplies veto points in the system. As a result, attempts by regional assemblies to directly give voting rights to foreign residents are generally doomed to fail. At the same time, multilevel governance can be used as a strategy to indirectly shape the political inclusion of different groups. Even if they are unsuccessful in giving the right to vote to foreign residents, these discussions can lead to broader reforms of political rights at the national level.

Enfranchising migrants in Chile: a century of politics, elites, and regime changes

“…States can tweak laws and application, for instance, deciding to enact but not implement migrant voting rights (Palop-García & Pedroza, 2019; Umpierrez de Reguero, this issue), implement but restrict rights (Chang & Pedroza, 2020;Finn & Besserer Rayas, 2022;Hutcheson & Arrighi, 2015;Wellman & Whitaker, 2021), implement rights but then reverse them (Hayduk, 2006;Wellman, 2021), or continue to implement or expand rights, as in Chile (Finn, 2020a). Migrant voting rights greatly vary since countries often restrict rights to select migrant groups or election types, e.g., local, regional, national, or a combination (Arrighi & Lafleur, 2019;Bauböck, 2005;Escobar, 2017;Pedroza, 2019;Piccoli, 2021).…”

Non-citizen voting rights and political participation of citizens: evidence from Switzerland

“…This seems to be entirely plausible, particularly when considering the evidence showing that the citizens have been the most resistant to introducing NCV rights in contexts where the share of such a population has been the greatest (Stutzer and Slotwinski, 2020;Kayran and Erdilmen, 2021). Furthermore, in most Western democracies, introducing NCV constitutes a sizeable increase in electoral supply, making it challenging and a politically risky legislation to pass (Piccoli, 2021).…”

“…Therefore, our research design allows us to isolate the relationship between such policies and turnout among citizensespecially considering that the introductions of these enfranchisement policies are not motivated by boosting citizen turnout in the first place. Research shows that the introduction of NCV rights in the Swiss cantons are historically motivated by a perceived shared cantonal identity of citizen and non-citizen residents, non-citizens' partaking in the functioning of the canton through the payment of taxes, the learning process from other cantons in the practice of non-citizens' political rights, and previous traditions of granting political rights to foreigners such as in the case of Neuchâtel (Piccoli, 2021). Hence, we argue that although the introduction of NCV rights simultaneously occurred with other constitutional changes, these additional constitutional amendments were unlikely to be linked to an increase in turnout; for further details, see pp.…”