Direct Democracy and Public Education in Swiss Cantons

Abstract

The unexpectedly mediocre performance of Switzerland in the international PISA study in 2000 has rekindled discussion about improving its educational system. At the same time, cuts in the federal, cantonal, and local budgets have become necessary due to the economic recession, which have also affected the financial means available for public education. The ongoing debates about school reforms are complicated by the fact that the Swiss voter has an important influence on fiscal and budgetary issues through direct legislation. In general, direct legislative institutions restrict the financial means available to the sub-federal government for the provision of schooling (Schaltegger 2001; Fischer 2005b,c). The underlying question is whether people’s control over the school budget necessarily leads to a lower quality of this public good or not. Since Swiss cantons are heterogeneous with respect to the degree of direct democracy, and quite autonomous in their policies on public education, Switzerland appears to be especially suitable for such an analysis. This chapter aims at contributing to these recent discussions in Switzerland by summarizing the most recent findings on the impact of direct democracy on educational spending in general, school budget components in specific and, finally, the quality of public education. The data used in these