Cantonal Elections Research Articles

Mobilizing party activism: A field experiment with party members and sympathizers

Electoral mobilization and persuasion are often characterized as two-stage processes, where parties activate their core supporters, who then mobilize and persuade larger shares of the electorate. While there is a lot of research on the second stage of this process, the mobilization and persuasion of the wider electorate by party activists, there is little causally identified evidence on whether party elites can encourage campaign activism among party members and sympathizers. To address this question, we conducted a randomized field experiment in cooperation with the Swiss Social Democratic Party in the context of the 2015 cantonal elections in Ticino. The experiment consisted of the randomized administration of telephone calls to members and strong supporters of the party, while their self-reported campaign activism and attitudes towards the campaign were measured in a two-wave online panel survey. Against expectations, we record null effects on various measures of campaign activism, including on the mobilization of relatives, and friends. The results raise questions about omitted variable bias in observational studies of party activism that consistently report large positive effects of party contact on the campaign activism of members and sympathizers.

Linking active and activist citizens: electoral change and the Bosnian plenums

ABSTRACTThis article will examine whether the demands for social justice during the citizen-led assemblies (“plenums”) in February 2014 in Bosnia–Herzegovina (BiH) triggered electoral change in cantonal elections in the Bosniak–Croat entity (the Federation of BiH, or FBiH). Extant analyses underline the perennial weakness of Bosnian civil society, and the stasis in the ethnified political party system, even in the wake of the protests in 2014. However, these studies only look at the aggregate level and do not differentiate between places where plenums were established and those where they were not. To address this gap, the present article will differentiate, following Engin Isin, between “active citizenship” and “activist citizenship” as the basis for the conceptual framework. A difference-in-differences analysis will be employed using municipal-level FBiH cantonal election results from 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2018. There are two main questions in the study. First, was there a significant electoral change in municipalities with plenums compared with places without a plenum? Relatedly, did the change differ amongst the main parties? The article will thus link active and activist citizenship in the post-conflict and post-socialist setting of BiH.

Switzerland: Political Developments and Data for 2018

In 2018, Switzerland's political life, and especially the public debate, was mainly determined by issues discussed in the context of the 10 national direct‐democratic decisions. Moreover, a year before the next national elections, six cantons held their cantonal elections, which continued a pattern that has been emerging since the last national elections in 2015: whereas the FDP – The Liberals (FDP/PLR), the Social Democratic Party (SPS/PSS) and the Green parties are among the winners of these cantonal elections, the Swiss People's Party (SVP/UDC), the Christian Democrats (CVP/PDC) and the Conservative Democratic Party (BDP/PBD) have lost seats in many cantons. Finally, two resignations from the Federal Council led to a historic election of two women to take the empty seats.

Bottom-up renewal of the Swiss party system

ABSTRACTThe Swiss party system and the institutional rules guiding elections are an anchor of stability in Swiss politics. This article investigates recent change in cantonal elections, and analyses how electoral swings in cantonal elections diffuse to other cantons, and whether they predict future electoral swings in the national electoral arena. Empirically, the article combines a statistical analysis of electoral results from the period 1990–2017 in cantonal and national elections with a qualitative discussion of the period from 2014 to 2017.

Voting under Napoleon. An autopsy of electoral practice during the First Empire, based on a prefectoral enquiry into the cantonal elections held in the summer of 1813

On a bien sur vote sous Napoleon, par un systeme electoral a deux degres, largement emprunte a la Revolution, qui est applique dans les departements reunis a l’Empire, comme dans la France de l’interieur. Un suffrage masculin quasi-universel existe dans les assemblees cantonales, mais son role se limite a la presentation de candidats, le choix final etant decide par le gouvernement. Fustigees comme une farce, ces elections jouent neanmoins un role important dans le fonctionnement politique et social du regime napoleonien, en meme temps qu’elles prolongent l’experience electorale revolutionnaire. Pourtant, leur deroulement reste meconnu et on ignore surtout les attitudes, et des votants et des administrateurs, devant l’invitation aux urnes. Une enquete prefectorale, commandee par le ministre de l’Interieur en 1813, permet un precieux regard sur le comportement electoral et sur la reponse de ceux qui s’en occupent. Cet observatoire unique suggere que les contradictions du systeme condamnent l’experience a l’echec, non sans laisser un heritage dans la pratique du vote et du bonapartisme.

Why is Turnout So Low in Switzerland? Comparing the Attitudes of Swiss and German Citizens Towards Electoral Democracy

Why is Turnout So Low in Switzerland? Comparing the Attitudes of Swiss and German Citizens Towards Electoral Democracy

Switzerland's Green Liberal Party: a new party model for the environment?

Gains in the 2007 Swiss national elections started leading members of the Green Party thinking seriously about securing a seat in the seven-member national government (Federal Council).1 Strong performances in subsequent cantonal elections fostered their aspirations, and after the Fukushima catastrophe in March 2011, most observers were confident that the Green Party would do well in the 2011 national elections and the claim for Green representation in the national government would become irresistible.2 However, in the three cantonal elections following Fukushima, the Green Party scored rather modestly.3 Only in the Ticino (where they gained 3.5%) did the results match their expectations. The modest increases in the other cantons were largely due to the success of Green Liberal Party (GLP), which competed for the first time in Basel-Landschaft and Luzern, achieving 4.5% and 5.9% of the votes respectively. In Zurich, where the GLP had already competed in the 2007 elections, it increased its share by 4.5% to 10.3%, almost matching the Green Party (10.6%). It was therefore no great surprise that the GLP was among the ‘winners’ in the national elections on 23 October 2011, increasing its share of the vote from 1.4% to 5.4%, quite an impressive improvement by Swiss standards. More surprisingly, the Green Party’s vote fell 1.4% to 8.4%, too low to justify a seat in the national government.4 What is the story behind this shift of ecological sympathies to the newly founded GLP? Is it the re-emergence of an old conflict or a promising new development that might benefit the environment? I examine these questions first by briefly reviewing the evolution of the Green Party over the last 30 years before examining the profiles of GLP voters and election candidates to assess what they stand for and what role the GLP might play in the future.

The 2011 French cantonal elections: The last voter sanction before the 2012 presidential poll

This article provides and analyzes original data on the latest and maybe last cantonal elections in France. Despite their local nature, the elections held on 20 and 27 March 2011 were shaped by important national forces. As with the other second-order elections previously held in 2008, 2009 and 2010, the right-wing governmental coalition received a strong message of disapproval that resulted in a large victory for the Left and in the surge of the National Front towards unprecedented heights.

Participation in the 2010 French regional elections: The minor impact of a change in the electoral calendar – A reply to Fauvelle-Aymar

This article is a reply to a recent contribution to this journal arguing that the dramatic decrease in turnout in the first round of the 2010 French regional elections was the consequence of a change in the electoral calendar: unlike the previous regional elections, which were held on the same day as other elections, the regional elections of 2010 took place in isolation. In our opinion, this view is not sustained by the facts. We argue that the impact on turnout of the isolation of the 2010 regional elections was only minor. We suggest alternative hypotheses that might explain the sharp decline in voter turnout that happened in 2010, especially in the light of the results of the 2011 cantonal elections.

Multi-Level Elections in Switzerland

Why do election results at national and regional parliamentary elections in Switzerland differ so widely? And why are these differences more pronounced in some constituencies than in others? This study discusses competing theoretical views of the linkage between elections held at multiple federal levels, and empirically tests their predictions using official election statistics and contextual data from Swiss national and cantonal elections between 1999 and 2003. Despite the spatially and temporally limited scope of this analysis, one conclusion suggests itself: current theories of the linkage suffer from their neglect of features of the electoral systems which may vary between different types of elections. Taking these institutional variations into account, we find a strong systematic relationship between election outcomes at different levels. Moreover, the linkage of election outcomes is, to some extent, contingent upon the degree to which regions are integrated into the national political system: while national trends in party support tend to drive election outcomes in nationally well-integrated cantons, election results ostensibly follow regional electoral developments in more peripheral cantons.

The municipal and cantonal elections in France, 11 and 18 March, 2001

The municipal and cantonal elections in France, 11 and 18 March, 2001

The Société d'Instruction Républicaine and the Propagation of Civic Republicanism in Provincial and Rural France, 1870–1877

A momentous political transition occurred in France between 1869 and 1879. From principal opposition force to the Second Empire, the republicans became the main party of government and the single largest political group in the National Assembly. After a period of instability this transformation was given legal form in the constitutional laws of February 1875, which founded the Third Republic. In electoral terms, the 1870s were also a critical decade, witnessing the extension of the republican political base out of its traditional urban strongholds. In by-elections after 1871, municipal and cantonal elections, and in particular the legislative elections of 1876 and 1877, the republicans established a foothold in provincial and rural France, securing it further in 1879 by winning a decisive majority in the (indirectly elected) Senate. Confirmed and accentuated in the late nineteenth century, this political realignment was achieved in large part through the republicans’ effective appeal to provincial opinion—and especially to the peasantry, who represented the majority of the active population. And unlike earlier republican successes in capturing rural support in the nineteenth century, which were ephemeral, the realignments of the 1870s and 1880s proved irreversible. Indeed, the subsequent stability of the Third Republic—the most durable republican regime in France to date— essentially rested on the rural masses’ abiding loyalty to the political order that emerged after the 1870s. The reasons and underlying character of this republican political success

Is local politics local? French evidence

Abstract. In advanced democracies, are local political decisions determined by local events? Or are they really shaped by national forces? For the United States case, the evidence on this question is mixed. For the French case, the focus here, the evidence is also mixed, but less hard. In fact, for cantonal elections, in many ways archtypical local affairs, relevant systematic findings are virtually absent. We ask whether the cantonal elections of the Fifth Republic can be better understood as national, rather than local, contests. Our analysis leads us to the conclusion that the basic answer is, ‘yes’. There appear several theoretical reasons for this, which we give an account of. Further, we go on to show that cantonal races can actually serve as barometers to forecast upcoming national races.

Un scrutin peut-il en cacher un autre ? Cantonales et régionales de 1998 dans le département du Nord

Can one election hide the other ? The 1998 cantonal and regional elections in [france's] nord department The coupling in 1998 of the regional and cantonal elections makes it possible to look specifi­cally at a recurrent issue in election analysis, that of the links between two simultaneous votes : should these two elections be considered independently or as linked ? The analysis of the Nord department data proves that each of the two elections was autonomous. Their conco­mitant organization did tend to increase turnout in the regional elections and to de-localize the cantonal elections to some extent. No perceptible effect on results is found at either the departemental level or the cantonal level.

French ecologists at the crossroads: The regional and cantonal elections of march 1992 in France

French ecologists at the crossroads: The regional and cantonal elections of march 1992 in France

The 1985 French Cantonal Elections

The 1985 French Cantonal Elections

Reynolds v. Sims Abroad: a Briton Compares Apportionment Criteria

nolds v. Sims and beyond, seemed to have provided American political scientists and legal commentators with native pasture rich enough for many years' grazing. Naturally then, the business they preferred to mind was their own, for there was plenty of it. Now, however, that the American apportionment revolution if such it truly was has passed its flood, perhaps even moved into its conservative phase, a non-American may be allowed to point out, in suitably modest tones, that European legislatures too have their electoral problems, of which apportionment (or at any rate districting) is one; and that these problems, allowing for circumstantial variations, sometimes resemble American problems sufficiently to deserve a little transatlantic comparison. He may even, provided he does not press the similitude too hard or too close, suggest one or two features of European, and particularly British, experience as possibly relevant and fruitful. Take, for instance, the experience of Switzerland. Within forty-eight hours of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Baker, the highest Swiss federal court, the Tribunal Fideral, handed down a judgment whose resemblance to that case was particularly strong. The circumstances were as follows. Article 36 of the Swiss canton of Fribourg's constitution provides simply for proportional representation in electing its parliament, the Grand Conseil. But an electoral law enacted by the latter body in March 1921 required a system of scrutin de liste and declared that any party list which failed to attract at least 15 percent of the valid ballots cast should be eliminated from the subsequent apportioning of parliamentary seats. In the cantonal elections of December 3, 1961, the Workers and Employers party had received 1.2.4 percent of the votes cast in one cantonal district, the Socialist party 6.6 percent of those cast in another. Under the quota requirement each was accordingly denied parliamentary representation, though pure and unqualified proportional allotment would have secured them two and one of those seats respectively allocated in the Grand Conseil to the districts concerned. Discontented citizens alleged that the 1921 electoral law did violence to the principle of Article 36 of Fribourg's constitution, to Article 9 of the same instrument (All citizens are equal before the law), as well as to Article 4 of the Swiss federal constitution (All Swiss are equal before the law). On appeal the Tribunal Fidiral, powerless to nullify the law of 1921, yet opined by 5 to 2 that Article 36, while not inhibiting Fribourg's Grand Conseil from setting a quota, was violated by one so high as 15 percent; and set aside its application to the Workers and Employers party, though not to the Socialist.' The Grand Conseil promptly com-

Baker v. Carr Abroad: The Swiss Federal Tribunal and Cantonal Elections

Baker v. Carr Abroad: The Swiss Federal Tribunal and Cantonal Elections