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Are decisions by political parties more or less accepted than direct-democratic decisions? The literature on parties as brand names or labels suggests that the existence of political parties lowers information and transaction costs of voters by providing ideological packages. Building on this important argument, we posit that this informational rationale for parties is not universally applicable and is contingent on the context of the decision that is made. Intermediary political decision-making institutions may impose additional costs on voters in situations where the decision is perceived to be personally important to the individual voter. We conduct an experimental online vignette study to substantiate these claims. The results imply that a combination of representative democracy and direct democracy, conditional on the distribution of issue importance among the electorate, is optimal with regard to acceptance of a decision.Are decisions by political parties more or less accepted than direct-democratic decisions? We conduct an experimental online survey to disentangle voters' procedural acceptance of both decision-making mechanisms and finally compare it to the acceptance of expert committees as a third mode of political decision-making. With our results, we seek to qualify the literature on parties as brand names or labels (e.g., More specifically, we argue that the acceptance of decisions does not vary per se and irrespectively of context between different modes of decision-making. Instead, it is is contingent on the subjective importance that a voter attributes to the issue under consideration, controlling for personal agreement with the outcome of the decision that is made. Previous research indicates that personally important issues increase people's motivation to systematically process arguments. In contrast if they consider an issue of little importance, they tend to rely on partisan cues (Petty and Cacioppo 1986). We argue that if voters' core interests are at stake, they prefer more individual, immediate control over important decisions instead of a decoupling of decisions from the electorate through intermediary decision-makers. Political decisions on topics in which voters are slightly less interested, however, are equally well accepted no matter how the decision comes about, and unimportant political decisions may be best delegated to representatives. We argue that political parties rightly assume their role of lowering transaction costs of voters for everyday decisionmaking, but they do less well in terms of acceptance for important political decisions.Our argument is structured in the following way. The first section compares theoretical arguments in favor of and against the acceptance of decision-making by political parties and direct democracy, respectively. We set out four hypotheses regarding the procedural acceptance of the different decision-making modes. This is followed by a description of the methodology of survey experiments, the setup of our study, the data collection, and our...
Are decisions by political parties more or less accepted than direct-democratic decisions? The literature on parties as brand names or labels suggests that the existence of political parties lowers information and transaction costs of voters by providing ideological packages. Building on this important argument, we posit that this informational rationale for parties is not universally applicable and is contingent on the context of the decision that is made. Intermediary political decision-making institutions may impose additional costs on voters in situations where the decision is perceived to be personally important to the individual voter. We conduct an experimental online vignette study to substantiate these claims. The results imply that a combination of representative democracy and direct democracy, conditional on the distribution of issue importance among the electorate, is optimal with regard to acceptance of a decision.Are decisions by political parties more or less accepted than direct-democratic decisions? We conduct an experimental online survey to disentangle voters' procedural acceptance of both decision-making mechanisms and finally compare it to the acceptance of expert committees as a third mode of political decision-making. With our results, we seek to qualify the literature on parties as brand names or labels (e.g., More specifically, we argue that the acceptance of decisions does not vary per se and irrespectively of context between different modes of decision-making. Instead, it is is contingent on the subjective importance that a voter attributes to the issue under consideration, controlling for personal agreement with the outcome of the decision that is made. Previous research indicates that personally important issues increase people's motivation to systematically process arguments. In contrast if they consider an issue of little importance, they tend to rely on partisan cues (Petty and Cacioppo 1986). We argue that if voters' core interests are at stake, they prefer more individual, immediate control over important decisions instead of a decoupling of decisions from the electorate through intermediary decision-makers. Political decisions on topics in which voters are slightly less interested, however, are equally well accepted no matter how the decision comes about, and unimportant political decisions may be best delegated to representatives. We argue that political parties rightly assume their role of lowering transaction costs of voters for everyday decisionmaking, but they do less well in terms of acceptance for important political decisions.Our argument is structured in the following way. The first section compares theoretical arguments in favor of and against the acceptance of decision-making by political parties and direct democracy, respectively. We set out four hypotheses regarding the procedural acceptance of the different decision-making modes. This is followed by a description of the methodology of survey experiments, the setup of our study, the data collection, and our...
Die Beteiligung an einer Wahl ist -auf den ersten Blick betrachtet -ein individueller, ja geradezu intimer Akt. Sie muss es sogar sein, denn aus dem Wahlrechtsgrundsatz der geheimen Wahl lässt sich unmittelbar ableiten, dass die Stimmabgabe "im Geheimen", üblicherweise in einer (alleine zu betretenden) Wahlkabine vollzogen wird.Gegen eine solche Perspektive lässt sich einwenden, dass sich die so gesicherte Geheimhaltung nur auf die Art und Weise bezieht, wie die Stimme abgegeben wird -gültig oder ungültig, für Partei A oder Partei B? Ob die Stimme überhaupt abgegeben wird, ist alleine schon durch den Besuch des Wahllokals grundsätzlich bekannt. Und natürlich muss es auch so sein, dass jederzeit nachvollziehbar ist, wer seine Stimme bereits abgegeben hat und wer nicht, um im Sinne des Wahlrechtsgrundsatzes der gleichen Wahl doppelte Stimmabgaben auszuschließen. Dass dies aktenmäßig festgehalten wird, bedeutet aber keineswegs, dass dieses Wissen auch gemeinsames Wissen ist. Gerade in Zeiten rückläufiger Wahlbeteiligung auf allen Ebenen des politischen Systems, aber auch in Zeiten steigender Briefwahlbeteiligung ist öffentlich immer weniger nachvollziehbar, wer von seinem Wahlrecht Gebrauch macht und wer nicht. So verstanden ist auch die Frage der Wahlbeteiligung eine individuelle, private Entscheidung. Erst recht gilt dies, wenn man vom Phänomen der Beteiligung auf die Ebene der Motive, die zur (Nicht-)Wahl führen, wechselt. Der Wahlrechtsgrundsatz der Freiheit der Wahl schließt die Freiheit zur Nichtwahl ein, schließt aber zugleich jegliche Form der Rechenschaftspflicht für die eigene Wahlentscheidung gegenüber Dritten aus.Vor diesem Hintergrund könnte man geneigt sein anzunehmen, dass ein rein individualistisches Modell, das an den individuellen Motivlagen der Bürger ansetzt, die Wahlbeteiligung durchaus gut erklären kann. Zu den prominentesten Verfechtern solcher Erklärungsmodelle gehört Anthony Downs (1957; siehe auch Riker u. Ordeshook 1968), der in seiner ökonomischen Theorie der Demokratie versucht hat, die Entscheidung über die Beteiligung an einer Wahl als einen Akt individueller Nutzenmaximierung zu konzeptualisieren: Ein Bürger wird demnach nur dann an einer Wahl teilnehmen und eine bestimmte Partei wählen, wenn der erwartete Nutzen dieser Wahl die mit dem Wahlakt verbundenen Kosten übersteigt. Formal ausgedrückt (siehe auch Riker u. Ordeshook 1968) lautet die ultimative Bedingung der Wahlteilnahme folglich: U = p*B -C > 0 Der Nutzen U aus der Wahl einer Partei ergibt sich aus dem Parteiendifferential B, abzüglich der mit dem Wählen verbundenen Kosten C. Allerdings ist dieses Parteien-
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