The Swiss Upper House: ‘Chambre de Réflexion’ or Conservative Renegades?

Bütikofer, Sarah; Hug, Simon

doi:10.1080/13572331003740099

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Hence, the Ständerat did not promote a rationalization of the policy process (Neidhart, ). On the basis of MP surveys and roll call votes, Bütikofer and Hug () demonstrate empirically that the federal and the state council hardly differ in their ideological positioning. Although they evince that the upper house is “more centrist on average than their colleagues from the lower house” (Bütikofer & Hug, , p. 188), the effect dissipates on a left‐right policy spectrum of political ideology.…”

Section: The Changing Nature Of Swiss Consensus Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Decline in the Quality of Debate? The Evolution of Cognitive Complexity in Swiss Parliamentary Debates on Immigration (1968–2014)

Wyss

Beste

Bächtiger

2015

Swiss Political Sci Review

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This article explores the evolution of debate quality in the Swiss parliament. Focusing on immigration debates, we employ a psychological construct—cognitive complexity (CC)—which captures both epistemic and accommodative dimensions of political argumentation. We find a decrease in CC in parliamentary immigration debates over time, but this decrease was driven by the rise of the SVP (Swiss People's Party). However, there was almost no “spillover” of this new communication style to other parties. Moreover, we also find a constant difference between the Ständerat and the Nationalrat, with the former scoring higher on CC and thus asserting its role as a “chambre de réflexion” in immigration debates. Our diachronic focus on the quality of political debate takes a novel perspective on the dynamics of consensus democracy as well as on elite political culture. While our results indicate that the rise of the SVP has transformed the traditional consensual and deliberative pattern of Swiss policy‐making style into one which is geared towards less accommodation and a higher simplicity of political talk, there is still remarkable resilience against this new style of political interaction.

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Section: The Changing Nature Of Swiss Consensus Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Decline in the Quality of Debate? The Evolution of Cognitive Complexity in Swiss Parliamentary Debates on Immigration (1968–2014)

Wyss

Beste

Bächtiger

2015

Swiss Political Sci Review

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“…Until recently, the measurement of debate quality was mainly conducted either through approaches relying on rollcall data (Bütikofer and Hug, 2010) or through the manual coding of textual documents (e.g. Suiter and Reidy, 2020).…”

Section: Existing Measures Of Debate Qualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing and mapping difference indices of debate quality on Twitter

Reveilhac¹

2023

Methodological Innovations

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Albeit the measurement of debate quality is not a new endeavour, this paper raises two research questions for which we still have limited knowledge: What are important and reliable indicators of debate quality on social media? How does debate quality relate to individual factors on social media? First, we empirically analysed how two well-established discourse’ quality indices (the DQI and CC index) correlate to each other using a random sample of 1000 tweets selected from the full history of tweets written by Swiss elected politicians between 2011 and 2021. While the sample was automatically coded for CC using LIWC, we manually annotated the tweets according to an adapted version of the DQI for social media texts. Second, we conducted a correspondence analysis to investigate the relations between these dimensions, additional debate quality features, as well as individual political factors. Results show a good correlation between both indices ( r up to 0.46), while also highlighting their respective weaknesses. Furthermore, the results highlight the necessity to include alternative dimensions of debate quality (such as emotion and inclusive or exclusive views) to enhance future measurements of debate quality in the realm of social media.

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“…We use the data depicted in Figure 1 in a more systematic analysis below but will first discuss our other measures for shirking behavior based on voting behavior. While, as we noted above, roll‐call votes have been rare in the Swiss upper house for much of the period we study (see Benesch, Bütler, and Hofer 2018; Bütikofer 2014; Bütikofer and Hug 2010), we can draw on data collected in the upper house based on video recordings for a subset of votes (see Bütikofer 2014; Martin and Hug 2020). We use all final passage votes for the 47th (2003–2007) and the 48th (2007–11) legislative periods gleaned from these video recordings for the upper house.…”

Section: Empirical Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Shirking and Slacking in Parliament

Frech

Goet

Hug

2020

Legislative Studies Qtrly

Self Cite

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How and why do the activities of members of parliament (MPs) change in response to electoral constraints? In this article, we draw on unique and newly collected data from the Swiss federal chambers and two cantonal parliaments (Basel‐Stadt and Basel‐Land) to explore the effects of electoral constraints. Leveraging variation in mandatory term limits, we study the extent to which term‐limited MPs engage in shirking—that is, move away from their principal, whether it be the party and/or voters—and slacking—that is, reduce their parliamentary activities. Our analysis, which draws on a combination of novel roll‐call votes and speech data, yields mixed results: while there is no evidence of shirking by term‐limited MPs in the cantonal parliaments, we find some indications of such behavior among term‐limited legislators in the federal chambers. These latter legislators also engage in some limited slacking, which is not observable in the cantonal parliaments. Our findings shed light on the (political) implications of term limits and the effect of electoral constraints on legislator behavior.

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The Swiss Upper House: ‘Chambre de Réflexion’ or Conservative Renegades?

Cited by 12 publications

References 23 publications

A Decline in the Quality of Debate? The Evolution of Cognitive Complexity in Swiss Parliamentary Debates on Immigration (1968–2014)

A Decline in the Quality of Debate? The Evolution of Cognitive Complexity in Swiss Parliamentary Debates on Immigration (1968–2014)

Comparing and mapping difference indices of debate quality on Twitter

Shirking and Slacking in Parliament

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