TY - JOUR

T1 - Participatory processes and their outcomes

T2 - comparing assembly and popular vote decisions

AU - el-Wakil, Alice

AU - Strebel, Michael A.

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - How do face-to-face, assembly processes, and non-face-to-face, popular vote processes impact the decisions made by citizens? Normative discussions of the comparative merits of these two broad types of participatory decision-making processes partly rely on empirical assumptions concerning this question. In this paper, we test the central assumption that assemblies lead to decisions that are more widely supported by participants than popular votes. We do so by analyzing 1,400 decisions made through these processes on the highly salient issue of municipal mergers in Swiss municipalities since 1999. We find that assembly decisions are consistently made by larger majorities than popular vote decisions and that this relationship is significantly mediated by turnout. This suggests that higher levels of agreement in assemblies mainly result from selection biases – with fewer dissenting citizens participating in assemblies than in popular votes – rather than from internal dynamics in assemblies.

AB - How do face-to-face, assembly processes, and non-face-to-face, popular vote processes impact the decisions made by citizens? Normative discussions of the comparative merits of these two broad types of participatory decision-making processes partly rely on empirical assumptions concerning this question. In this paper, we test the central assumption that assemblies lead to decisions that are more widely supported by participants than popular votes. We do so by analyzing 1,400 decisions made through these processes on the highly salient issue of municipal mergers in Swiss municipalities since 1999. We find that assembly decisions are consistently made by larger majorities than popular vote decisions and that this relationship is significantly mediated by turnout. This suggests that higher levels of agreement in assemblies mainly result from selection biases – with fewer dissenting citizens participating in assemblies than in popular votes – rather than from internal dynamics in assemblies.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - democratic innovation

KW - consensus

KW - territorial reform

KW - institutional design

KW - direct democracy

U2 - 10.1017/S1755773922000157

DO - 10.1017/S1755773922000157

M3 - Journal article

VL - 14

SP - 441

EP - 458

JO - European Political Science Review

JF - European Political Science Review

SN - 1755-7739

IS - 3

ER -