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A Cross-national Comparative Study of the Policy Effects of Referendums
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1
Introduction
Much systematic empirical research attempts to demonstrate the effects insti-tutions allowing for referendums
1
have on policy outcomes. These studies have
almost exclusively focused, however, on the subnational level in countries hav-ing much variation in the institutions allowing citizens to vote directly on policyissues, namely Switzerland and the United States.
2
Comparative work at the
cross-national level has been hampered, so far, by the very few and quite diversecountries having referendum institutions. So it hardly surprises that few if anysystematic comparative studies exist that assess what kind of policy consequencesthe presence of referendum institutions has.
The present paper, taking advantage of the fact that many newly democ-
ratized countries in Central and Eastern Europe introduced provisions for ref-erendums in their constitutions, proposes a comparative empirical study of theeffects of referendums on policy outcomes. The policy areas we consider relatemostly to the regulation of labor, since a comparative dataset created by Botero,Djankov, Porta, Lopez-De-Silanes and Shleifer (2004) provides very detailed in-formation for 85 countries. In our empirical assessment of the policy effects ofreferendums we use as starting point the widely found implication from theoret-ical models on referendums, which suggests that policy outcomes should reflectmore strongly the voters’ preferences if the latter can vote directly on policies.This suggests that empirically testing this implication requires information onthe voters’ preferences, which we obtain from aggregated survey responses.
3
In
addition, and unfortunately often neglected, a test of the theoretically derivedimplication for the effect of referendums can only be carried out in a simple linearregression framework under some very restrictive assumptions. Hence, we relyon an empirical model proposed by Matsusaka (2001) and Hug (2001), which canbe estimated by a switching regression. The results obtained with this estimatorsuggests that for some policy areas having provisions allowing for referendumsbiases policy outcomes toward the voters’ preferences. For some policies this ef-
1
Following Butler and Ranney (1994a, 1) we use the term “referendum” to designate all
decision-making processes which involve citizens voting on actual policies.
2
Some research is also carried out at the subnational level in other countries like Germany
(e.g., Weixner, 2006) or the Soviet and Post-Soviet states (e.g., Walker, 2003).
3
We rely here, as discussed below, on cross-national survey instruments, ensuring that the
same question formulation was used and the samples were drawn in a similar way.
2
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| | Authors: Hug, Simon. and Gilland Lutz, Karin. |
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1
Introduction
Much systematic empirical research attempts to demonstrate the effects insti-
tutions allowing for referendums
1
have on policy outcomes. These studies have
almost exclusively focused, however, on the subnational level in countries hav-
ing much variation in the institutions allowing citizens to vote directly on policy
issues, namely Switzerland and the United States.
2
Comparative work at the
cross-national level has been hampered, so far, by the very few and quite diverse
countries having referendum institutions. So it hardly surprises that few if any
systematic comparative studies exist that assess what kind of policy consequences
the presence of referendum institutions has.
The present paper, taking advantage of the fact that many newly democ-
ratized countries in Central and Eastern Europe introduced provisions for ref-
erendums in their constitutions, proposes a comparative empirical study of the
effects of referendums on policy outcomes. The policy areas we consider relate
mostly to the regulation of labor, since a comparative dataset created by Botero,
Djankov, Porta, Lopez-De-Silanes and Shleifer (2004) provides very detailed in-
formation for 85 countries. In our empirical assessment of the policy effects of
referendums we use as starting point the widely found implication from theoret-
ical models on referendums, which suggests that policy outcomes should reflect
more strongly the voters’ preferences if the latter can vote directly on policies.
This suggests that empirically testing this implication requires information on
the voters’ preferences, which we obtain from aggregated survey responses.
3
In
addition, and unfortunately often neglected, a test of the theoretically derived
implication for the effect of referendums can only be carried out in a simple linear
regression framework under some very restrictive assumptions. Hence, we rely
on an empirical model proposed by Matsusaka (2001) and Hug (2001), which can
be estimated by a switching regression. The results obtained with this estimator
suggests that for some policy areas having provisions allowing for referendums
biases policy outcomes toward the voters’ preferences. For some policies this ef-
1
Following Butler and Ranney (1994a, 1) we use the term “referendum” to designate all
decision-making processes which involve citizens voting on actual policies.
2
Some research is also carried out at the subnational level in other countries like Germany
(e.g., Weixner, 2006) or the Soviet and Post-Soviet states (e.g., Walker, 2003).
3
We rely here, as discussed below, on cross-national survey instruments, ensuring that the
same question formulation was used and the samples were drawn in a similar way.
2
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