Signature collection in direct democracies: lessons from the Swiss
initiative process from 1891 to 2010
Katharina E. Jaronicki∗, Christian Marti†, Monika Bütler
‡
University of St.Gallen
November 21, 2013
Work in progress. Please do not cite without authors’ permission.
Abstract
What factors influence the degree to which a popular initiative has the potential to change
the status quo? We argue that politicians derive information about voter preferences from the
number of signatures an initiative collected when deciding on how to deal with it. We hypothesize that the number of signatures has positive effects on the degree to which the initiative is
successful, but at the price that the political process leading to the outcome takes longer, since
a compromise has to be found. We test our hypotheses based on a unique dataset of all popular
initiatives in Switzerland. Our results suggest that signature collection has a significant effect
on the political success of an initiative. Especially, the effect is stronger for ideologically-framed
topics, or if the initiative was raised by inexperienced and small initiating groups. A possible
interpretation is that in case of resource-intensive or efficient signature collection, the number
of signatures does not provide politicians with valid information about the popularity of an
initiative. Signature collection does not influence the length of the political process.
Keywords: Voting; Direct democracy; Political Process
JEL Classification Numbers: D72, P16
∗
Katharina E. Jaronicki, SEW-HSG University of St.Gallen, Switzerland, email [email protected]
Christian Marti, SEW-HSG University of St.Gallen, Switzerland, [email protected]
‡
Prof. Dr. Monika Bütler, SEW-HSG University of St.Gallen, Switzerland, [email protected] For valuable
comments, we thank participants at the 2013 Meeting of the European Public Choice Society (Zurich).
†
1
Introduction
With the recent financial and state debt crisis in Europe, a heated debate is going on in some
countries about the appropriate institutional setup of democracy. While public policy should ideally
be designed in a way citizens wish it to be, there is the feeling that the ideal does not match reality
in many cases. This leads to a rising interest of both scholars and the public for special institutional
features that might help to get citizens involved more closely in shaping policies, such as direct
democratic participation. Policy consequences of direct democracy have already been the subject of
quite a large literature. For example, direct democracy has been shown to reduce state government
and debt (Matsusaka, 1995; Feld & Kirchgässner, 2001b). While the effects on policy outcomes
have been discussed broadly, the exact transmission mechanism of how institutions translate into
policies in the political process has not been examined in detail in many research setups. We aim
to shed more light on how the political process works that deals with direct democratic movements.
A core part of direct democratic institutions are popular initiatives. We think that the number of
signatures collected by initiative petitioners gather plays an important role in shaping the political
process that deals with the initiative, since the number of signatures reveals (albeit imperfect)
information to politicians and the public about the popularity of the issue raised. We examine two
crucial outcomes of the political process that deals with a popular initiative.
First, we examine whether collecting more signatures than required increases the initiative’s
probability of success. We employ two measure of success: the first one indicates the degree to
which the members of parliament and the government are willing to change the status quo. The
second one measures the initiative’s overall success, including success at popular ballot by the
voters. Second, we investigate whether signature collection and parliamentary support affect the
length of the political process. The time dimension is important both for the initiating group
which likes to see its policy established quickly and for clarity about future policies in general.
The analysis is conducted by exploiting a complete data set of all federal initiatives launched in
Switzerland from the adoption of the popular initiative in 1891 until 2010.
We expect that the probability an initiative has to change the status quo already in the parliamentary process (that is, before being voted upon by the people) depends crucially on the support
the initiative has in the population, as the parliament perceives it to be. Popular support for an
initiative is not straightforward to perceive for parliamentarians and the government. Usually, no
polls are carried out at an early stage, so politicians face uncertainty about popular preferences
1
when deciding about how to deal with an initiative. We argue that in this situation, politicians
take the number of signatures that an initiative has gathered as information about popular support. Initiatives demand the collection of a certain amount of signatures, but usually decidedly
more signatures than required are gathered. The threshold to qualify an initiative for ballot in
Switzerland is 50.000 (until 1978) and has been 100.000 signatures since then. The mean initiative
collected approximately two thirds more signatures than required, and some initiatives even seven
times more signatures than required (cf. figure 1). For example, an initiative which aimed at a
new regulation of freight transport (“Gütertransportordnung”) collected 384.000 signatures when
only 50.000 were needed.
We further expect that the length of the political process until a decision is made depends
crucially on perceived popular support for the initiative and parliamentary support. If a large
share of the parliament, possibly around half of it, is in favor of an initiative, it is more likely
that it is intensively debated, as compared to an initiative that is a minority issue. There will be
more time-consuming discussions about a counter proposal and its exact formulation in the case
of a initiative which is very popular than in the case of an initiative that yields weak popular and
parliamentary support. Even if in the end no counter proposal is established, the process leading to
a decision takes more time. However, it might also be that politicians will feel more under pressure
to decide timely on topic they perceive to be popular among the voters. Therefore, the expectation
regarding the effect of signatures on the length of the process is not clear beforehand.
Our interest in the questions lined out above is driven both by theoretical and empirical concerns. On the one hand, we would like to solve the puzzle why petitioners, when collecting more
signatures than required, undergo costly action with “at first hand sight” no obvious benefit, a
pattern which economic models of behavior cannot easily explain. On the other hand, if intense
collection of signatures reaps some benefits for the initiating group, then one resulting instruction
for initiative petitioners would be to collect as many signatures as possible to maximize the chance
of reaching some form of success, e.g. to have a counterproposal established.
Our results suggest that signature collection does have a significant effect on the political success
of the initiative both in parliament and overall including popular votes. In particular, collecting
more signatures increases success for ideologically framed proposals. Similarly, more signatures are
significantly associated with increased success if the initiative is raised by inexperienced petitioners
and by petitioners which are not backed by powerful interest groups. While signature collection
has no effect on the length of the political process, increased parliamentary support is significantly
2
associated with a longer process. The process takes significantly longer when initiatives are not
backed by powerful interests groups or petitioners are inexperienced. There are no significant
differences in process length across topics.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. We first review relevant literature in section
2 and then give an overview of the Swiss institutional background and about our data sources in
section 3. The empirical strategy is described in section 4. We present the results in section 5 and
conclude in section 6.
2
Related literature
The focus of our paper is on processes relating to institutions of direct democracy. We will briefly
discuss the economic literature relating to our subject. While research has so far been mostly using
cross-section strategies, more recent work aims at exploiting the potential of long-term time-series
strategies to ease causal inference. Examples are the work by Funk and Gathmann (2011). The
broad field of existing work in institutional economics on the effects of direct democracy can be
roughly categorized in two branches which are, however, not sharply separated from each other.
The most dominant branch examines consequences of direct democracy in terms of policies, such
as the size of government (e.g., Matsusaka, 1995; Feld & Kirchgässner, 2001a; Feld & Matsusaka,
2003; Funk & Gathmann, 2011), public debt (Feld & Kirchgässner, 2001b), economic growth (Feld
& Savioz, 1997; Freitag & Vatter, 2000), but also more general consequences of direct democratic
institutions such as tax morale (Torgler, 2005), or life satisfaction (Frey et al., 2001; Dorn et al.,
2007).
The other branch of literature focuses on the implications of direct democracy on the political
process (i.e., politics). This branch deals with the mechanisms that lead to the consequences
which the first branch scrutinizes. Frey (1994) finds that direct democracy is a way to break the
cartel of the politicians which in representative democracies leads to logrolling. In entities with
direct democracy, less logrolling is observed. Benz and Stutzer (2004) find that citizens are better
informed in constitutions where they have more say, i.e., which are more direct democratic. Apart
from the work of economists, there is broad work in political science that focuses on different
forms political processes take in the presence of the voters as a new actor and veto player (Hug &
Tsebelis, 2002; Wagschal, 1997) in direct democratic constitutions. Its findings are generally in line
with those of economists’ studies. Linder (2007) finds that direct democracy enhances government
3
responsiveness and accountability, while it does not generally lead to a violation of minority rights.
Direct democracy influences the strength and organizational forms of parties (Ladner & Brändle,
1999), social and protest movements (Kriesi & Wisler, 1996). Direct democracy has both conceptual
and empirical linkages to the consensual form of political competition in the Swiss direct democratic
constitutions (Vatter, 2000).
Our approach relates to both directions, but with a clear focus on the effects of direct democracy
on the political process. We examine the question whether collecting many signatures for popular
initiatives results in increased power of these initiatives to shape the political process. There is already some literature on how initiatives influence the political process. Several dimensions in which
this influence takes place are identified in the literature: direct influence such as when the initiative
or a counterproposal is adopted, and indirect influence, when politicians are more responsive in
the case of a (credible) threat of an upcoming initiative (Linder, 2007). Fatke and Freitag (2012)
find that popular initiatives serve as a substitutive channel for other forms of political protest,
e.g. participating in demonstrations. Initiatives often bring up issues that have been neglected so
far by the political elite (i.e., the government or the legislative). While it is uncommon for the
government to adopt the initiative altogether, it happens quite frequently that counterproposals
are established as a compromise. Linder (2007) states that there is an increasing tendency to use
popular initiatives as bargaining chips in parliamentary deliberations and then to withdraw them
upon having extracted some concessions, such as a counterproposal. In some cases, the initiating
group’s intention can actually be not to bring the initiative to the ballot right away, e.g. when
initiatives are used as an electoral tactic, particularly by small and single-issue parties (Linder,
2007). We aim to extend the existing body of literature by showing factors that determine the
degree to which initiatives have the power to influence the political process.
This paper is linked to game theoretical literature about voting models under uncertainty. A
branch of this literature studies models in which a first round (e.g., a poll or a ballot) serves as
signal for a second round (e.g., an election). There is room for strategic behavior in the first round
since voters know that they can influence the political representatives or candidates beliefs about
voter preferences. Examples are Piketty (2000), Shotts (2006), and Meirowitz and Shotts (2009).
Most closely to our research, Meirowitz (2005) and Hummel (2011) both employ polls as signals
for an election that follows after the poll. Both find that in equilibrium some poll respondents
do not answer the poll question truthfully to influence the candidates positions in the elections.
Matsusaka (1992) develops a model where politicians take information from polls in a first round
4
and decide on whether to take action or not. If they do not, the issue is voted on by the people in
the second round. The similarity to our approach is that polls reveal some information about the
approval rate of a policy or a party, and that the reliability of the information depends on the topic
of the policy. Similarly, the number of signatures gathered for an initiative gives some intuition
for how strong public support is. However, a signal from signatures is noisier than a signal from
polls because it lacks information about how many respondents declined to sign the initiative even
though they had the chance to.
To qualify an initiative for ballot, it needs to reach a certain legally required threshold of
signatures which might be a percentage of voters voting in the last election for governor like in
California, or a fixed amount of signatures like in Switzerland. However, usually considerably
more signatures are gathered than necessary. For Switzerland we find that “intense collection”
simply defined as signatures collected divided by signatures required is 165% on average. For some
Californian initiatives Boehmke and Alvarez (2004) observe values up to 175%, while in Switzerland
one initiative achieved 684%. There exists a small literature concerning signature gathering for
initiatives. Campaign contact literature has established that campaign activity before ballots or
elections usually increases voter turnout. In this context, Parry et al. (2012) find initiative signing
has a positive effect on turnout because it especially mobilizes irregular voters. Other research shows
that there are significant differences between signers and non-signers (Neiman & Gottdiener, 1982;
Pierce & Lovrich, 1982). Barankay, Sciarini and Trechsel (2003) examine signature requirements
at cantonal level in Switzerland. They find that a higher requirement increases turnout because
it increases awareness of the issue and information available. This body of literature links to our
research agenda. While this literature provides evidence that signing signatures has effects on the
individual behavior, we aim at showing in this paper that the effects of signature collection are also
visible on the aggregate level of policy choice.
3
3.1
Institutional background and Data
Institutional background
The Swiss initiative at federal level was introduced in 1891. It allows an eligible person to propose a
partial change to the constitution if enough signatures are collected and certain legal requirements
5
are met.
In brief, we divide the initiative process into three stages. At collection stage, initiating groups
collect signatures. These petitioners are often backed by established, powerful organizations such
as parties, unions, employers or industry associations, etc. which often already have experience in
raising an initiative. However, there are also initiatives that are raised by small organizations or
even a group of private persons which mostly have no experience in raising an initiative at all. For an
initiative to qualify, it has to gather a minimum threshold number of signatures. As a consequence
of female suffrage introduction in 1971, the signature requirement was doubled in 1978 (Linder,
2007). Collection time was constrained to 18 months also in 1978. The signature requirement is
a constant and not a percentage value of the electorate as e.g. in California. Compared to the
U.S., collection time is rather long. Thereafter at the political stage, the government and the two
chambers of parliament issue a recommendation to the Swiss people whether to accept or to reject
the initiative. At the same time, the parliament can prepare a direct or indirect counterproposal.
A direct counterproposal is on the constitutional level and therefore has to be voted upon by the
people. If there exists a direct counterproposal, it is simultaneously put to the vote. An indirect
counterproposal is a law that does not need ratification from the voters. However, it might be
subject to a popular referendum by opponents of the counter proposal. Initiating groups can
withdraw their initiative. This happens frequently after a counterproposal is issued when some of
their concerns are met.
The Swiss institutional setup is insofar particular that it allow politicians to propose compromise
legislation. Similar provisions can be found e.g. in the XX in California, or state initiatives in the
German state Bavaria.
At ballot stage eligible voters vote yes or no. The initiative comes into force if it is accepted
by the majority, i.e., it receives more than half of the votes. In addition, also a majority of the
Swiss cantons has to be in favor of the initiative. The ballot system is therefore a mixed one: an
initiative must win the majority of the votes and make sure that the yes votes are not concentrated
in a few big cantons. This shows the strong federal element in Swiss law. Since April 1987 it is
possible to vote in favor of both initiative and counterproposal plus a third tie-break question in
which voters have to declare which one they prefer in the event of a tie (before 1987 voters had
to decide in favor of one alternative). The initiative or the counterproposal comes into force when
it receives an absolute majority of all votes. If there is a counterproposal and both the initiative
and the counterproposal receive a majority under the tie-break regime, the tie-break question is
6
decisive for which one gets adopted.
There were three further institutional changes in our observation period. Voting age was reduced
from 20 to 18 in 1991. Postal voting was introduced in cantons between 1978 and 2005, and in
1978 a part of the canton of Berne became the new canton of Jura.
3.2
Data
For our analysis, we have collected a data set comprising all Swiss initiatives at the federal level
that have successfully gathered the legally required number of signatures, i.e. 50.000 or 100.000
signatures (since 1978) respectively. The data set covers the entire time span from the introduction
of the initiative in 1891 to 2010. In total, our data set comprises 252 initiatives at federal level.
We know the number of collected, valid and invalid signatures (e.g., people who signed twice or
foreigners).
Beside the number of signatures gathered, our initiative data set covers a wide range of additional data relating to the initiative. First, we collected procedure-related data of each initiative
- whether it was put to the ballot or withdrawn, whether there was a direct, indirect or no counterproposal at all, and whether the initiative (or a counterproposal) finally came into force after
popular vote. If the initiative or a counterproposal was voted upon, we have collected data on
the outcome of the ballot, e.g. number of yes and no votes, number of people eligible to vote,
and results of tie-break questions between initiative and counterproposal. We recorded all dates
concerning the political process of the initiative, so we are able to trace the time spans an initiative
required to pass through the respective steps in the political process, e.g. how long it took the
petitioners to collect the signatures. The data source for all these variables is the Swiss Federal
Archive (Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv) which collects the federal announcements (Bundesblatt)
issued by the Federal Chancellery (Bundeskanzlei).
We merged our data with the data set available on swissvotes.ch,1 which gives us information
concerning the topics of the initiatives that made it up to the ballot and on the voting recommendations of the parties. The Swissvotes database also served as a validation check of our data
collection. However, the Swissvotes database only comprises information on initiatives that have
been voted upon, and the most recent initiatives are not included. Therefore, we added information
on the topics of the last initiatives and the ones that have not made it to the ballot.
1
A project of the Institute of Political Science at the University of Bern, Switzerland, and the Année Politique
Suisse.
7
4
Empirical strategy
We test what implications signature collection has on the direct democratic process. In more detail,
we differentiate between two questions. First, we examine whether the number of signatures relates
to the degree of the initiative’s success in the political process. Second, we ask whether signatures
influence the length of the political process until a decision is made. In our analysis, we allow for
heterogeneous initiative characteristics like topics and petitioner identity and explore whether this
impacts on the political process.
4.1
Initiative success
The first question of interest is whether signature collection has an impact on an initiative’s probability to change the status quo. Success of the initiative does not only mean that the initiative
is approved at ballot. It is also possible that a counterproposal is issued and leads to a change in
legislation. Furthermore, minor legislative changes can be induced by an initiative. For example, an
initiative that asked for protection of rivers2 was withdrawn by the initiating group and therefore
never voted upon. However, in reaction to the initiative the parliament issued a less radical law that
required hydro-energy producers to take protective measures for rivers. Even though the initiative
did not make it to the ballot, it led to a partial success of the initiative. We look at success in the
political process in two ways: success in the parliamentary process and overall success including
popular votes.
Success in parliament
After initiative qualification, the issue is debated in parliament. Politicians might decide on some
form of compromise. Should the initiating group not withdraw the initiative, the parliament is
legally obliged to release a voting recommendation to the citizens which comes about in a majority
vote in parliament. Our main dependent variable measuring the success of initiatives is a discrete
variable that takes values from 0 to 3, depending on the degree to which the parliament decided
to compromise in the direction of the initiative. The variable takes the value 3 if the parliament
approves the initiative altogether and issues a positive voting recommendation. Value 2 is given
2
Original German title is Eidgenössische Volksinitiative “Lebendiges Wasser (Renaturierungs-Initiative)” of July
24, 2006.
8
when the parliament issues a direct counter proposal at constitutional level, value 1 results when a
law is issued that takes up some goals of the initiative as an indirect counter proposal. The variable
takes the value 0 when the parliament decides to completely reject the initiative and to take no
legislative action. Hence, the higher the value, the more successful is the initiative in parliament.
In table 1 the frequencies and percentages of our dependent variable measuring success in
parliament are summarized. Almost half of the initiatives are rejected without counter proposal
by the parliament and issuing a voting recommendation to reject the initiative (level 0). However,
more than a third of the initiatives yields a success in parliament in the form of a law that takes
up some goals of the initiative and serves as an indirect counter proposal (level 1). For 14% of the
initiatives, the parliament decides to issue a direct counter proposal on the constitutional level as
an alternative to the initiative (level 2). Five initiatives are even approved by the parliament, and
a recommendation to vote yes is issued on behalf of the voters (level 3).
Overall success
Second, we broaden our measure of initiative success to include the initiative’s final fate in the
dependent variable, i.e. whether it was accepted or rejected in the popular vote, or withdrawn by
the initiators. We use a success measure by Rohner (2012), which includes policy changes that
were made at ballot stage. It takes values from 0 to 5 depending on the degree to which the status
quo was altered in the direction of the initiative. E.g., if the initiative was accepted at ballot, the
variable takes the value of 5. If the initiative did not provoke any legal change whatsoever, it takes
the value 0. Table 4 offers a detailed description of the dependent variable by Rohner (2012). In
table 2 the frequencies and percentages of our dependent variable from Rohner (2012) measuring
the initiative’s overall success are summarized. While only 7.14 percent of initiatives reached the
highest success level 5, just 5.95 percent have not induced any change to the status quo (level 0).
We define the number of signatures collected using two specifications: first, we relate signatures
to the population eligible to sign an initiative, i.e., the measure reflects signatures per capita. This
is because the number of eligible people increases over time as the total population increases while
the signature requirement remains fixed. Therefore, it becomes easier to collect signatures over
time. In the second specification, we calculate the number of signatures that were collected above
the requirement, i.e., we look at the absolute number of excess signatures. The two measures
have different implications for the way the political transmission mechanism works. The first
measure implies that politicians and voters discount the importance of the information by the size
9
of the population, while the second measure suggests that the absolute number of signatures is
important to politicians and voters. We believe that the absolute measure might have a stronger
predictive effect since it is the publicly reported number. The measures have a discontinuity in
1971 when female suffrage was introduced, and the signature threshold was increased only seven
years later. So it was extremely easy to collect signatures between 1971 and 1978 because also
women were allowed to sign initiatives, and the signature threshold remained low until 1978. We
report descriptive statistics concerning signatures in table 3.
Our baseline estimation equation is
Pi (success) = α + β signaturesi + γXi + i
(1)
Pi (success) is the probability of initiative’s i success as measured by our two dependent variables, either success in parliament or overall success, including the popular ballot. Signature collection is the main independent variable as described above. Xi denotes a vector of institutional
control variables. During our observation time there are two discontinuities in the size of the voting
population which we control for with dummy variables. First, female suffrage was introduced in
1971 and second, voting age was reduced from 20 to 18 in 1991. Both change the composition
of the electorate with possible effects on the success of the initiatives. We also include a dummy
for the increase in the legal signature minimum from 50.000 to 100.000 in 1978. The requirement
was increased in response to the roughly doubled eligible population. This might as well change
the composition of the initiatives that reach the minimum threshold, which possibly affects the
success of the initiatives. We also include a dummy for the introduction of the tie-break question
in 1988 since the strategic considerations of the initiating group and the politicians debating over
a counterproposal have likely changed then. The initiating group always benefits from a direct
counterproposal after the regime change because with the possibility to vote yes on both proposals,
affirmative votes are not split up anymore. Before 1988 a counterproposal was sometimes used as
a measure for status-quo oriented politicians to split the electorate favoring change. With the new
regulation these politicians only have an incentive to set up a counterproposal if they fear that the
initiative is successful at ballot. Evidence for this mechanism is that direct counterproposals have
been more widely used before the change than thereafter (Rohner, 2012). i is the error term.
We expect popular support for an initiative, as perceived by the politicians, to have a positive
influence on an initiative’s success at parliamentary stage. When facing uncertainty about popular
10
support for the initiative, politicians take the number of signatures as information for the underlying
support of the population towards the initiative.
The number of signatures should also exert an influence on the political process once the parliamentary stage is finished, e.g. when initiative petitioners decide about whether they should
withdraw the initiative. A high number of signatures collected results in enhanced self-esteem
and morale of the initiating group and therefore reduces the probability that the initiative is withdrawn. Politicians decide on how much resources and political weight to invest in ballot campaigns.
Even if no counter proposal was issued at parliamentary stage (i.e., politicians did not give in to a
compromise), office-motivated politicians invest, ceteris paribus, less political resources in fighting
the initiative if they perceive it to be popular among the voters. Finally, voters need to make a
decision. Initiative petitioners which are perceived to represent popular topics enjoy broader media
coverage and therefore can reach more voters. It might also be that voters, when deciding upon
the initiative, take into account how popular they perceive the initiative to be among other voters.
4.2
Length of political process
The second question we examine is whether signature collection has an impact on the length of the
political process until a decision about the initiative is made. We define the length of the political
process as the time span between the submission of an initiative by the initiating group and the end
of the process, which is marked either by a popular ballot or, in some cases, by the withdrawal of
the initiative, mostly after having reached some compromise. The time span is measured in years.
Our main independent variables are the two signature measures described before. In addition,
we control for parliamentary support of the initiative because if an initiative is supported by a
large minority in parliament, there will be more discussions on the procedure how to deal with
the initiative. We develop a measure for parliamentary support based on the parliamentary votes
on the initiative held by the Swiss Parliament.3 When an initiative is discussed in parliament,
a recommendation to vote yes or no is issued on behalf of the electorate. We take the fraction
of members of parliament recommending to accept the initiative as a measure for parliamentary
support. Data was collected from the official parliamentary database. Parliamentary support has
a mean of XX and a standard deviation of XX. We include the same institutional control variables
3
The Nationalrat and the Ständerat are the bicameral legislative of the Swiss parliament. We only look at the
Nationalrat since it is the representation of the people, similarly to the U.S. House of Representatives or the German
Bundestag. The other one is the Ständerat which is the representation of the cantons and thus not suitable as measure
for preferences in the population.
11
as in the first equation, and control for possible time trends with dummies for periods of twenty
years each. The estimation equation is the following:
lengthi = α + β1 signaturesi + β2 parliamentary supporti + γXi + i
(2)
lengthi is the length of the initiative process. As before, signaturesi denotes the measure of
signatures collected. parliamentary supporti is the measure of the parliamentary voting recommendation as described above, and Xi is a vector for characteristics of the process, i.e., whether
there was a counter proposal issued or not. The expectation regarding the effect of signatures on
the length of the process is not clear beforehand. While politicians might debate more intensively
and time consuming about the initiative if they perceive the topic to be popular among voters,
they might also feel more under pressure to decide timely on an important topic.
4.3
Topics and initiative petitioners
Initiatives display heterogeneous features regarding many characteristics. Among others, the most
important ones are the topic of the initiative and the identity of the petitioners. In what follows,
we analyze the impact topics and initiators have on initiative success, and length of the political
process.
We distinguish three categories of topics that initiatives can deal with. First, there are initiatives with a clear link to material interests, which we define as belonging to an economic category
of initiatives. Economically framed initiatives mainly include proposals in the field of economic
and social policy, agricultural policy (mainly dealing with subsidies) and public finance. For example, several initiatives demanded a reduction of the pension age. Another initiative demanded
for protection of railway freight transport from the newly emerging lorry transport firms. These
initiatives are clearly linked to material interests of specific groups. Second, there are initiatives
with a less clear-cut link to material interests and a higher degree of ideology, which we define
as ideological initiatives. Topics of such initiatives mainly include foreign policy, national defense,
environmental protection, education, religion and culture. Typical examples are the initiatives for
or against abortion, or initiatives that demanded a restriction on the share of foreigners allowed to
live in Switzerland. Third, there is a category for topics that are neither clearly economically or
ideologically framed. These topics mainly deal with questions of state order. Prominent examples
12
are the initiatives considering the electoral system to be used.4
The distribution of initiatives among the different topics is as follows. 111 initiatives deal with
economic policy issues which very saliently involve monetary interests. 119 initiatives are framed
ideologically. Finally, 22 initiatives are neither economically nor ideologically framed. They mostly
concern questions of the fundamental organization of the state.
Next, we distinguish between experienced and inexperienced petitioners, as well as between
petitioners backed by powerful interest groups and weak petitioners that lack such support. The
definition of inexperienced petitioners is straightforward: if initiative petitioners raise an initiative
for the first time, they are inexperienced. If they do so for a second time, they are defined as
experienced, and remain so if they raise yet another initiative. E.g., political parties or interest
groups such as environmental organizations often raise several initiatives over time. 119 of the
initiating groups raise an initiative for the first time. This also includes petitioners that raise two
initiatives at one time. 133 petitioners have already raised an initiative before and thus already
have experience with it.
The power of the initiating group is derived from Rohner (2012), who has collected the names
of all initiative petitioners, i.e. parties, associations, and private persons. We define weak parties as
having less than 10% vote shares in the last federal parliamentary election. We coded associations
taking into account the number of members, the resources they are able to spend, regional vs.
federal focus and the media presence they have. We proceeded similarly in assigning initiating
groups of private persons. 161 initiatives were raised by small groups without powerful interests
backing them, whereas 91 initiatives had powerful groups behind them.
We test for both the direct effect of topics, inexperienced petitioners and initiative petitioners
backed by weak interest groups on our dependent variables and for a possible interaction effect with
signature collection. Our estimation equations are
Pi (success) = α + β1 signaturesi + β2 ci + β3 ci ∗ signaturesi
+γ Xi + i
(3)
lengthi = α + β1 signaturesi + β2 ci + β3 ci ∗ signaturesi
+β4 parliamentary supporti + γ Xi + i
4
(4)
Similarly, Matsusaka (1990) distinguishes between redistributive and efficiency-enhancing ballot propositions.
13
ci is one of the characteristics of the initiative (topic economically or ideologically framed,
inexperienced petitioners, weakly backed petitioners), and it is interacted with the measure of
signatures.
5
Results
5.1
Initiative success
Success in parliament
To estimate the effect of signature collection on the probability of an initiative’s success in parliament, we regress our dependent variable on a measure of signature collection, and several institutional controls as described above (cf. equation 1). We use an ordered probit regression for the
estimates which is the appropriate method for our dependent variable. Recall that 0 denotes no
success in parliament, while the value 3 indicates the highest success such that the variable has a
natural ordering. We include robust standard errors in all our regressions.
The estimation results are in table 5. Column (1) uses signatures divided by the eligible population, whereas in column (2) we take the number of signatures net of the legal threshold. In all
estimations we use the valid number of signatures instead of the collected number. Using either
variable does not change the results substantially because the number of invalid signatures is very
small in Switzerland (around 3 percent of collected signatures on average). Both coefficients for signature collection have positive coefficients and are highly significant. As expected, more signatures
collected thus increase the probability of initiative success in parliament.
For an ordered dependent variable it is of interest to calculate marginal effects for each level
of the dependent variable. We present average marginal effects in table 6. All average marginal
effects are highly significant for all levels of the dependent variable. Recall that our first measure of
signatures in column (1) takes the value 0 if no signatures are collected, and 1 if everybody eligible
would sign. The variable thus takes on values between 0 and 1. The average marginal effects
suggest that collecting signatures from an additional 1 percentage point of the eligible population
(e.g., 5 instead of 4 percent) decreases the probability that this initiative will have no success at
all by 2.66 percent. At the same time, it raises the probability of provoking a similar law by 1.03
percent, or a direct counterproposal by 1.3 percent. The probability that the initiative is approved
by the parliament and recommended for acceptance at ballot increases by 0.33 percent.
14
Our second measure of signatures in column (2) takes the value 0 if exactly the required number
of signatures is collected. It increases linearly when more signatures (in thousands) than required
are collected. Thus, our results show that when the signature requirement is 100.000 and an
initiative gathers an additional 10.000 signatures, the probability that this initiative is associated
with no success in parliament (level 0) decreases by 1.8 percent. The proposition of a law becomes
more likely by 0.7 percent, and a direct counterproposal by 0.9 percent. The probability that this
initiative is highly successful in parliament at level 3 increases by 0.2 percent. Collecting more
signatures thus means that members of parliament are more likely to issue a counterproposal or
give a positive voting recommendation when more signatures are collected.
Overall success
Similarly to above, we test whether initiatives which collected a higher number of signatures have
a higher overall success. Our dependent variable from Rohner (2012) takes values between 0 and
5. Higher values suggest a higher level of success. Also here an ordered probit regression is the
adequate estimation strategy. In addition to the concept of parliamentary success, this variable
includes the final fate of the initiative, i.e. whether it has been able to change the status quo or not.
This might either happen due to popular approval of the initiative or a direct counterproposal, or
due to a withdrawn initiative in case of an indirect counterproposal. This variable therefore captures
a broader notion of initiative success because it not only captures the parliament’s reaction but the
de facto impact the initiative had on legislation.
The results are reported in table 7. The coefficients of both signature specifications are positive
and significant though at a lower level in column (1). This indicates a positive relationship between
the number of signatures and overall initiative success, and thus confirms results from parliamentary
success regressions.
The average marginal effects of signature collection are in table 8. For the first measure of
signatures per capita, the average marginal effects is significant at 5 percent for level 1, insignificant
for level 2, and significant at the 10 percent level for the remaining levels. For the second absolute
measure, the average marginal effect is significant at 5 percent for all but levels 0 and 2 which have
10 percent significance.
The average marginal effects indicate that by collecting 1 percentage point more of signatures
from the eligible population, the probability of low initiative success at at level 0 decreases by 0.5
15
percent, and at level 1 by 1.2 percent. The probability of a highly successful initiative which is
accepted by the voters and comes into force increases by 0.6 percent when 1 percentage point more
of the population signs the initiative. Similarly, collecting 10.000 valid signatures more decreases
the probability of an unsuccessful initiative leaving the status quo untouched by 0.4 percent, while
it increases the probability of coming into force by 0.4 percent.
Comparing the results from the regressions for parliamentary success and overall success it
becomes evident that more signatures are associated with higher levels of success, which is in line
with our hypotheses. However, it becomes clear that additional initiative success stemming from a
higher number of signatures is rather small. It takes several 10.000s of signatures to have a sizeable
effect on initiative success.
Robustness
For robustness, we repeat all regressions excluding controls and time effects on at a time, and also
both at the same time. Results do not change qualitatively and coefficients as well as average
marginal effects remain similar.
Furthermore, we conduct robustness tests for the marginal effects of the ordered probit model.
For this, we generate bivariate dependent variables. E.g., success in parliament is measured by
a variable taking discrete values between 0 and 3 in the baseline model. We generate four new
variable, for which the first one is 1 if success in parliament takes the value 3, and 0 else. The
second variable is coded 1 if success in parliament has level 3 or 2, and 0 else, etc. We repeat this
procedure to create 6 dummy variables for the initiative’s overall success. We use probit regressions
and calculate average marginal effects of additional signatures collected to validate the findings from
our analysis above.
Through this additional tests we get a more refined picture of the marginal effects at work.
For parliamentary success, they are significant for for all success level but for the highest level 3.
Collecting more signatures thus significantly increases success on the 0 to 2 scale. This means that it
is more likely to provoke a counter proposal than to receive a positive voting recommendation from
the parliament by collecting more signatures that required. The insignificant marginal effect might
also stem from the fact that over the whole observation period only 5 initiatives were recommended
for acceptance by the parliament.
Marginal effects for overall initiative success reveal a similar pattern: while the average marginal
16
effect for the highest success level 5 is insignificant, effects are similar for lower success values. Recall
that success level 5 means acceptance at popular ballot which occurred only 18 times during the
observation period.
The only difference to results from parliamentary success is an insignificant marginal effect when
the success cutoff lies between the values 1 and 2. A possible explanation is that level 1 encompasses
the largest group of observations which have reaped some success but have only marginally changed
the status quo.
Marginal effects from the probit analysis are reported in tables XX and XX.
5.2
Length of political process
We aim at estimating the effect of the number of signatures collected, which are representing the
intensity of popular preferences for the initiative, and the effect of parliamentary support on the
length of the political process. Our main dependent variable is the length of the political process
measured as time from initiative submission to the end of the process. The end might be a ballot
or the vote in parliament if the initiative is withdrawn thereafter. We control for the existence
of a counter proposal because this might be an important factor for the length of the political
process. We also add time dummies for periods of two decades each to control for time trends. In
the baseline specification, we use least squares regression and include robust standard errors.
The results are in table 9, columns (1) and (2) show the baseline effect. We find no significant effect of signatures on the length of the process. Collecting more signatures and signaling
importance of the initiative does not reap any benefit in terms of political process length.
We receive highly significant and positive coefficients for parliamentary support. The higher the
support, the longer the process. Increasing parliamentary support by 1 percentage point holding
everything else constant, extends the political process by about 6 days. This implies that stronger
parliamentary support makes politicians discuss the policy in more detail and put more effort in e.g.
preparing a good counter proposal. However, having a counter proposal itself is not significant for
the length of the process, presumably because it can also be the case that, after lengthy discussion,
no counter proposal is issued in the end.
17
Robustness
As a first robustness check, similarly to above we exclude the time effects and find that results are
very similar. In a second step, we consider a different estimation method. As explained above,
the initiative process takes about 3.5 years on average. However, we have some outliers in the
data where the process took exceptionally long. Therefore we censor the dependent variable at
seven (columns (3) and (4)), six (columns (5) and (6)) as well as five years (columns (7) and (8))
and conduct a tobit regression to investigate whether outliers drive our results. Censoring does
not change the results at all: signatures have no significant effect on process length. The only
significant and positive variable is preferences in parliament.
5.3
Topics and petitioners
We investigate whether initiative characteristics like the topic or the initiating group are relevant
for the influence of signatures on initiative success and length of the political process. To this
goal, we add a dummy variable taking the value of 1 if the initiative’s topic is economically or
ideologically framed, the initiating group is inexperienced, or backed by a not so powerful interest
group. Further, we add an interaction term between the initiative characteristic and our measure
of signatures. This is our main coefficient of interest since we want to explore whether signature
collection has heterogeneous effects depending on initiative characteristics.
Initiative success
As dependent variables we use both, initiative success in parliament and overall initiative success.
As a first result, we observe positive and significant coefficients for the measure of signatures in all
but three regressions.
In total, we differentiate three topics: economic, ideological and state order topics. We test for
both economic and ideological initiatives such that the comparison groups are always the other two
topic categories. The estimation results for economic topics are in table 10, those for ideological
initiatives in table 11. Columns (1) and (2) are based on parliamentary success, and columns (3)
and (4) on overall success. Comparing economically framed topics against initiatives dealing with
ideological and state order issues, they are less successful the more signatures are collected. In
contrast, when controlling for ideologically framed initiatives, they reach a higher success level the
18
more signatures are collected.
We proceed in exactly the same way to test whether the identity of the initiating group has an
impact on the initiative’s success and the way signatures are perceived by members of parliament
and the public. Therefore, we differentiate between the power of the initiating group and the
experience it has in the initiative process. For inexperienced petitioners we report the results
in table 12, and in table 13 for petitioners not backed by powerful interest groups. Regarding
inexperienced petitioners, we find that in 3 of 4 specifications signatures have an increasingly
positive effect on initiative success for initiatives raised by inexperienced petitioners. Similarly,
initiative petitioners not backed by powerful interest groups are more successful with an increasing
number of signatures.
Collecting more signatures is associated with increasing success if the initiative deals with an
ideologically framed topic or is raised by inexperienced or weak petitioners. A possible explanation
for these heterogeneous interaction effects of signatures might be that the information entailed
with the number of signatures collected by the petitioners is of different nature depending on the
characteristics of the petitioners and of the topic they raise. Signature collection might be a more
reliable information about the popularity of an initiative when the petitioners do not have prior
experience in raising initiative or when they are not backed by powerful interest groups. If either the
petitioners or the interest groups behind the initiative have prior experience in raising initiatives,
they might have gained knowledge on how to collect a great number of signatures efficiently. If
signature collection is efficient, the number of signatures is less closely linked to the support the
initiative enjoys among the population. On the other hand, if signature collection is not done
in a sophisticated way, the number of signatures might depend more closely on how popular the
initiative is. In this case, a great number of signatures might be much more impressive and capable
to influence the political process than in the case where an experienced and well-equipped petitioner
committee manages to collect a great number of signatures for the second or third time. The
heterogeneous effects regarding economically vs. ideologically framed topics might be explained in
a similar way. Initiatives that are centered around economic topics typically involve much material
interests at stake for certain subgroups of the electorate with both the organizational and financial
resources available to collect signatures efficiently, whereas initiatives that cover ideologically framed
topics might have more difficulties in raising funds for efficient signature collection. An initiative
that raised a great number of signatures for an policy proposal that covers an ideological topic
might be more closely linked to relatively intense popular preferences in favor of the initiative and
19
thus be more impressive in the political arena, with more capabilities to make politicians willing
to deviate from the status quo to some extent.
Length of political process
The results regarding the initiative’s topic are in table 14, those controlling for petitioner identity
in table 15. Controlling for economically or ideologically framed initiatives does not change the
baseline results: signature collection has no significant effect on the length of the political process.
However, we find that initiatives that are raised by a weak or inexperienced petitioners take
significantly longer to pass through the political process. A reason for this might be that weak
petitioners lack the connection to parliamentary groups that press for a fast passing through the
initiative process, or they may not have enough resources to finance lobbying activities. Also,
inexperienced petitioners might not only have no experience in the signature collection process but
also in the political process in general.
6
Discussion
In this paper we present evidence on how direct democratic institutions shape the political
process. We hypothesized that the number of signatures serves as information to the parliament
about the popularity of an initiative. We find that collecting more signatures has advantageous
effects for the initiating group in so far that it increases the probability that the initiative will yield
some success. This finding implies that the number of signatures seems to play a role in the way
how the government and parliament treat an initiative proposal. In the absence of information from
polls, the number of signatures might serve as an information tool for politicians on the popularity
of an initiative. If an initiative is able to raise a great number of initiatives, it is likely to also
be more popular on the ballot. Thus, having more signatures collected might help petitioners in
setting up an impressive threat to the politicians in case they are not willing to compromise.
To explore for potential heterogeneous effects depending on the petitioners’ and the initiatives
characteristics, we also tested whether the number of signatures is a significant predictor for initiative success only for a subsample of initiatives, namely, those that deal with ideologically framed
subjects, that are raised by inexperienced petitioners and by petitioners which are not backed by
powerful organized groups. We find that the number of signatures is only associated with increased
20
parliamentary success of an initiative if the initiative deals with an ideologically framed topic, if it
is raised by inexperienced petitioners and if the initiating group is not backed by powerful organizations. A possible explanation for this finding we have in mind is that the number of signatures
serves as a better predictor for popular support to the parliamentarians in the case where the
amount of resources spent does not play a paramount role in the collection of signatures and in
cases where low popularity can not be outset by experience and good organization.
What matters in politics are not only policies but also the time needed to adopt them. It is
quite common for the initiative process to take several years. Possibly signature collection does
not only serve as information for policy preferences of the electorate but also for the urgency of the
desired policy. However, we find no significant effect of the number of signatures on the length of
the initiative process. Parliamentary support, though, indeed has an effect. The larger the coalition
supporting an initiative in parliament, the longer is the political process until a decision is taken.
Our explanation for this finding is that the broader the coalition in favor of an initiative, the more
time-consuming discussions about how to handle the initiative are going on. Establishing a counter
proposal itself does not have a significant effect on the length of the process. In our view, this
illustrates that discussions about issuing a counter proposal can last for a long time even when at
the end no counter proposal is issued. We find that measuring the size of the affirmative coalition
in parliament is a better predictor of the process length than simply looking at whether a counter
proposal was established or not. Finally, we find that initiatives that are raised by petitioners
which are only backed by weak parties or associations take significantly longer to pass through
the political process. This might point to a lower capability of such petitioners to lobby for a fast
treatment of their proposals.
Our aim was to shed light on the political process dealing with popular initiatives. We show that
the number of signatures is associated with increased parliamentary and overall success of popular
initiatives. This is true for initiatives which are raised by inexperienced or weak committees and
which deal with ideologically framed topics. We argue that in such cases, the information about the
popularity of an initiative which the number of signatures conveys to politicians is less confounded
by resource-intensive or efficient signature collection.
21
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24
Tables and figures
2.0e-05
Density
1.0e-05
0
0
1.0e-05
Density
2.0e-05
3.0e-05
Legal requirement 100.000
3.0e-05
Legal requirement 50.000
0
100000
200000
300000
400000
Valid signatures - legal minimum
0
100000
200000
300000
Valid signatures - legal minimum
Figure 1: Histogram of overcollection
1.0e-05
Density
2.0e-05
3.0e-05
4.0e-05
Ideologically framed initiatives
0
0
1.0e-05
Density
2.0e-05
3.0e-05
4.0e-05
Not ideologically framed initiatives
0
100000
200000
300000
400000
Valid signatures - legal minimum
0
50000
100000
150000
Valid signatures - legal minimum
Figure 2: Signature collection for ideologically framed initiatives
25
1.0e-05
Density
2.0e-05
3.0e-05
4.0e-05
Inexperienced committees
0
0
1.0e-05
Density
2.0e-05
3.0e-05
4.0e-05
Experienced committees
0
100000
200000
300000
Valid signatures - legal minimum
0
100000
200000
300000
400000
Valid signatures - legal minimum
Figure 3: Signature collection by inexperienced committees
1.0e-05
Density
2.0e-05
3.0e-05
4.0e-05
Not powerful committees
0
0
1.0e-05
Density
2.0e-05
3.0e-05
4.0e-05
Powerful committees
0
100000
200000
300000
Valid signatures - legal minimum
0
100000
200000
300000
400000
Valid signatures - legal minimum
Figure 4: Signature collection by committees backed by weak interest groups
26
Table 1: Initiative success in parliament
Level
Level
Level
Level
Total
Frequency
Percent
115
96
36
5
252
45.63
38.10
14.29
1.98
100
0 : negative voting recommendation
1: law proposed
2: direct counterproposal
3: positive voting recommendation
Table 2: Overall initiative success, Rohner (2012)
Level
Level
Level
Level
Level
Level
0:
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
Frequency
Percent
15
113
41
49
16
18
5.95
44.84
16.27
19.44
6.35
7.14
252
100
no change (withdrawn)
not accepted
law in force
counterproposal in force (not withdrawn)
counterproposal in force (withdrawn)
accepted
Total:
Table 3: Descriptive statistics of signatures
Signatures
Valid signatures
(Signatures - legal minimum)
(Valid signatures - legal minimum)
(Signatures/eligible population)
(Valid signatures/eligible population
27
Mean
Std. Dev.
Min
Max
117308
114929
40.920
38.54
0.052
0.051
52460
51367
52.03
51.06
0.048
0.047
51488
50945
1.49
0.04
0.015
0.015
407169
390273
341.82
334.76
0.330
0.324
Table 4: Dependent variable by Rohner (2012): success of initiatives
Level
Description
Level 0:
initiatives defined as invalid / withdrawn initiatives without compromise
in terms of a counterproposal / initiatives that were withdrawn in return
for a binding assurance which was not realized
Level 1:
Rejected initiatives without counterproposal, or with simultaneously rejected direct counterproposal/ rejected initiatives with indirect counterproposal which was not realized or rejected at ballot / initiatives
that were withdrawn in favor of a direct counterproposal, or an indirect
counterproposal which failed in referendum / initiatives in the form of a
general proposal that was approved by the parliament, but subsequently
failed as an elaborated draft at the polls
Level 2:
Rejected initiatives with an indirect counterproposal that came into force
Level 3:
Initiatives in the form of an elaborated draft that was withdrawn in favor
of an indirect counterproposal that came into force / Approval of direct
counterproposals that were voted simultaneously with the initiative
Level 4:
Approval of direct counterproposals if the initiative was withdrawn /
initiatives in the form of a general proposal that was withdrawn in favor
of an indirect counterproposal that came into force
Level 5:
Approval of fully drafted initiatives / Approval of general proposals
whose text was formulated by the parliament
28
Table 5: Initiative success in parliament: basic specification
(1)
Valid signatures/eligible
(2)
7.249***
(2.341)
(Valid signatures - legal minimum)/1000
Dummy female suffrage
1.681***
(0.188)
-1.179***
(0.334)
1.144**
(0.454)
1.111*
(0.592)
2.301***
(0.614)
3.452***
(0.657)
yes
0.061
252
Dummy tiebreak question
Dummy voting age 18
Cut1
Cut2
Cut3
Time effects
Adjusted R2
Number of observations
0.005***
(0.001)
1.658***
(0.184)
-1.174***
(0.344)
1.015**
(0.488)
0.430
(0.595)
1.624***
(0.614)
2.766***
(0.662)
yes
0.061
252
Note: *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. Ordered probit regression.
The dependent variable is an ordered variable on a scale from 0 to 3. 0
means no success in the parliament, and 3 the highest success. Robust
standard errors.
29
Table 6: Average marginal effects of signatures on initiative success in
parliament
Level
Level
Level
Level
0:
1:
2:
3:
negative voting recommendation
law proposed
direct counterproposal
positive voting recommendation
(1)
(2)
-2.6550***
1.0291***
1.2998***
0.3260***
-0.0018***
0.0007***
0.0009***
0.0002***
Note: The dependent variable is an ordered variable on a scale from 0 to
3. 0 means no success in the parliament, and 3 the highest success. Average marginal effects in column (1) are for the signature variable defined
as valid signatures/eligible population, i.e. signatures per capita. Average marginal effects in column (2) are based on valid signatures net of the
signature requirement in thousands.
30
Table 7: Overall initiative success: basic specification
(1)
Valid signatures/eligible
(2)
4.450*
(2.314)
(Valid signatures - legal minimum)/1000
Dummy female suffrage
0.718***
(0.148)
-0.551
(0.343)
0.704*
(0.398)
-1.294***
(0.472)
0.361
(0.471)
0.801*
(0.476)
1.483***
(0.487)
1.852***
(0.492)
yes
0.024
252
Dummy tiebreak question
Dummy voting age 18
Cut1
Cut2
Cut3
Cut4
Cut5
Time effects
Adjusted R2
Number of observations
0.003**
(0.001)
0.709***
(0.140)
-0.552
(0.346)
0.628
(0.414)
-1.697***
(0.435)
-0.041
(0.434)
0.398
(0.439)
1.081**
(0.447)
1.450***
(0.450)
yes
0.024
252
Note: *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. The dependent variable is
an ordered variable on a scale from 0 to 5 based on Rohner (2012). 0
means no success, and 5 the highest success. Robust standard errors.
31
Table 8: Average marginal effects of signatures on
overall initiative success
Level
Level
Level
Level
Level
Level
0
1
2
3
4
5
(1)
(2)
-0.5005**
-1.2063***
0.1661
0.6164**
0.3368**
0.5875**
-0.0004**
-0.0009***
0.0001**
0.0004***
0.0002***
0.0004***
Note: The dependent variable is an ordered variable on a scale from 0 to 5 based on Rohner (2012).
0 means no success, and 5 the highest success. Average marginal effects in column (1) are for the signature variable defined as valid signatures/eligible
population, i.e. signatures per capita. Average
marginal effects in column (2) are based on valid
signatures net of the signature requirement in thousands.
32
Table 9: Length of political process
(1)
Valid signatures/eligible
1.308
(6.795)
Valid signatures - legal minimum)/1000
Preferences parliament voting
CP dummy
(2)
(4)
0.839
(6.551)
1.786***
(0.687)
0.079
(0.213)
0.002
(0.004)
1.746***
(0.674)
0.042
(0.219)
0.157
216
yes
0.160
216
yes
Sigma
Adjusted R2
Number of observations
Time effects
(3)
(5)
(6)
0.839
(6.551)
1.763***
(0.675)
0.088
(0.208)
1.309***
(0.077)
0.002
(0.004)
1.714***
(0.661)
0.047
(0.214)
1.306***
(0.076)
0.059
216
yes
0.060
216
yes
(7)
(8)
-1.094
(4.930)
1.763***
(0.675)
0.088
(0.208)
1.309***
(0.077)
0.002
(0.004)
1.714***
(0.661)
0.047
(0.214)
1.306***
(0.076)
1.592***
(0.554)
0.173
(0.207)
1.210***
(0.063)
0.001
(0.003)
1.532***
(0.548)
0.137
(0.212)
1.211***
(0.063)
0.059
216
yes
0.060
216
yes
0.069
216
yes
0.069
216
yes
33
Note: *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. Dependent variable is time in years between initiative submission by committee and popular vote,
or initiative withdrawal. Least squares regression in (1) and (2). Tobit regression in (3)-(8). Censored dependent variable at 7 years in (3)
and (4), at 6 years in (5) and (6), and at 5 years in (7) and (8). Robust standard errors.
Table 10: Initiative success: economic topic
(1)
Valid signatures/eligible
8.816**
(3.971)
(Valid signatures - legal minimum)
/1000
0.337
(0.232)
(Valid signatures/eligible)
* economic topic
-2.864
(3.953)
(Valid signatures-legal minimum)
* economic topic/1000
Dummy tiebreak question
Dummy voting age 18
/cut1
/cut2
/cut3
(4)
7.336**
(2.923)
0.267
(0.191)
0.006**
(0.003)
-0.034
(0.212)
-0.054
(0.174)
-3.088
(3.159)
-0.002
(0.003)
1.574***
(0.188)
-1.176***
(0.327)
1.185***
(0.447)
1.321**
(0.612)
2.518***
(0.634)
3.666***
(0.670)
1.544***
(0.184)
-1.174***
(0.340)
1.076**
(0.477)
0.552
(0.574)
1.752***
(0.594)
2.890***
(0.648)
yes
0.066
252
yes
0.065
252
/cut4
/cut5
Time effects
Adjusted R2
Number of observations
(3)
0.006**
(0.003)
Economic topic
Dummy female suffrage
(2)
-0.004
(0.003)
0.777***
(0.165)
-0.575*
(0.349)
0.703*
(0.402)
-1.086**
(0.457)
0.576
(0.459)
1.014**
(0.462)
1.700***
(0.476)
2.076***
(0.475)
yes
0.027
252
0.733***
(0.159)
-0.582
(0.355)
0.643
(0.414)
-1.637***
(0.433)
0.027
(0.436)
0.466
(0.440)
1.154**
(0.450)
1.533***
(0.451)
yes
0.028
252
Note: *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. Ordered probit regression. The dependent variable in columns (1) and (2) denotes success in parliament on a scale from 0 to 3. In
columns (3) and (4) the dependent variable denotes overall initiative success on a 0 to 5
scale. Robust standard errors. Time effects for 20-year periods.
34
Table 11: Initiative success: ideological topic
(1)
Valid signatures/eligible
5.857***
(2.223)
(Valid signatures - legal minimum)
/1000
-0.693**
(0.277)
(Valid signatures/eligible)
* ideological topic
12.794**
(5.867)
(Valid signatures-legal minimum)
* ideological topic /1000
Dummy tiebreak question
Dummy voting age 18
/cut1
/cut2
/cut3
(4)
3.952*
(2.307)
(0.002)
-0.316
(0.202)
0.002
-0.264
(0.249)
(0.001)
-0.100
(0.187)
9.573*
(5.202)
0.005
(0.005)
1.639***
(0.201)
-1.187***
(0.331)
1.194***
(0.449)
1.349**
(0.663)
2.559***
(0.687)
3.746***
(0.715)
1.559***
(0.192)
-1.178***
(0.351)
1.076**
(0.481)
0.409
(0.571)
1.609***
(0.589)
2.763***
(0.631)
yes
0.077
252
yes
0.066
252
/cut4
/cut5
Time effects
Adjusted R2
Number of observations
(3)
0.004***
Ideological topic
Dummy female suffrage
(2)
0.008*
(0.004)
0.768***
(0.163)
-0.577*
(0.347)
0.708*
(0.398)
-1.098***
(0.419)
0.566
(0.419)
1.009**
(0.423)
1.696***
(0.435)
2.073***
(0.436)
yes
0.030
252
0.688***
(0.156)
-0.586
(0.358)
0.656
(0.414)
-1.649***
(0.406)
0.019
(0.404)
0.460
(0.408)
1.149***
(0.417)
1.529***
(0.417)
yes
0.030
252
Note: *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. Ordered probit regression. The dependent variable
in columns (1) and (2) denotes success in parliament on a scale from 0 to 3. In columns (3)
and (4) the dependent variable denotes overall initiative success on a 0 to 5 scale. Robust
standard errors. Time effects for 20-year periods.
35
Table 12: Initiative success: inexperienced petitioners
(1)
Valid signatures/eligible
4.901*
(2.651)
(Valid signatures - legal minimum)
/1000
-0.232
(0.227)
(Valid signatures/eligible)
* inexperienced petitioners
7.134**
(3.271)
(Valid signatures-legal minimum)
* inexperienced petitioners/1000
Dummy tiebreak question
Dummy voting age 18
/cut1
/cut2
/cut3
(4)
4.298*
(2.382)
0.084
(0.188)
0.003*
(0.002)
0.141
(0.232)
0.231
(0.176)
2.103
(4.017)
0.000
(0.003)
1.730***
(0.206)
-1.194***
(0.338)
1.116**
(0.462)
1.290**
(0.575)
2.494***
(0.591)
3.703***
(0.617)
1.704***
(0.220)
-1.162***
(0.345)
0.997**
(0.503)
0.497
(0.600)
1.692***
(0.616)
2.839***
(0.667)
yes
0.073
252
yes
0.062
252
/cut4
/cut5
Time effects
Adjusted R2
Number of observations
(3)
0.005**
(0.002)
Inexperienced petitioners
Dummy female suffrage
(2)
-0.000
(0.003)
0.841***
(0.171)
-0.523
(0.344)
0.666
(0.419)
-1.059**
(0.488)
0.599
(0.489)
1.042**
(0.495)
1.734***
(0.506)
2.112***
(0.513)
yes
0.029
252
0.830***
(0.164)
-0.518
(0.347)
0.595
(0.439)
-1.541***
(0.432)
0.119
(0.432)
0.561
(0.435)
1.251***
(0.442)
1.626***
(0.445)
yes
0.027
252
Note: *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. Ordered probit regression. The dependent variable in columns (1) and (2) denotes success in parliament on a scale from 0 to 3. In
columns (3) and (4) the dependent variable denotes overall initiative success on a 0 to 5
scale. Robust standard errors. Time effects for 20-year periods.
36
Table 13: Initiative success: weak petitioners
(1)
Valid signatures/eligible
4.392
(2.689)
(Valid signatures - legal minimum)
/1000
-0.374
(0.239)
(Valid signatures/eligible)
* weak petitioners
7.903**
(3.406)
(Valid signatures-legal minimum)
* weak petitioners/1000
Dummy tiebreak question
Dummy voting age 18
/cut1
/cut2
/cut3
(4)
3.982
(2.445)
-0.030
(0.195)
0.003*
(0.002)
-0.006
(0.238)
0.091
(0.183)
2.561
(4.099)
0.002
(0.003)
1.723***
(0.202)
-1.232***
(0.333)
1.184***
(0.443)
1.173**
(0.579)
2.379***
(0.594)
3.582***
(0.608)
1.656***
(0.195)
-1.173***
(0.347)
1.036**
(0.486)
0.439
(0.586)
1.633***
(0.603)
2.781***
(0.640)
yes
0.073
252
yes
0.062
252
/cut4
/cut5
Time effects
Adjusted R2
Number of observations
(3)
0.004**
(0.002)
Weak petitioners
Dummy female suffrage
(2)
0.001
(0.003)
0.690***
(0.158)
-0.541
(0.346)
0.704*
(0.404)
-1.172**
(0.488)
0.481
(0.489)
0.922*
(0.494)
1.608***
(0.506)
1.982***
(0.510)
yes
0.026
252
0.675***
(0.150)
-0.530
(0.349)
0.622
(0.424)
-1.627***
(0.422)
0.029
(0.423)
0.469
(0.426)
1.153***
(0.434)
1.526***
(0.433)
yes
0.025
252
Note: *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. Ordered probit regression. The dependent variable in columns (1) and (2) denotes success in parliament on a scale from 0 to 3. In
columns (3) and (4) the dependent variable denotes overall initiative success on a 0 to 5
scale. Robust standard errors. Time effects for 20-year periods.
37
Table 14: Length of political process: topics
(1)
Valid signatures/eligible
(2)
1.109
(7.345)
(Valid signatures - legal minimum)/1000
(3)
0.207
(7.244)
-0.001
(0.005)
Economic topic
0.015
(0.380)
(Valid signatures/eligible)
* economic topic
0.210
(8.377)
(Valid signatures-legal minimum)
* economic topic
(4)
0.002
(0.005)
-0.164
(0.271)
0.005
(0.007)
Ideological topic
-0.244
(0.359)
(Valid signatures/eligible)
* ideological topic
8.934
(8.743)
(Valid signatures-legal minimum)
* ideological topic
0.084
(0.259)
0.001
(0.007)
Preferences parliament voting
1.799**
(0.703)
0.075
(0.222)
yes
0.149
216
CP dummy
Time effects
Adjusted R2
Number of observations
note: *** p¡0.01, ** p¡0.05, * p¡0.1
1.865***
(0.685)
0.052
(0.220)
yes
0.158
216
1.655**
(0.712)
0.101
(0.216)
yes
0.158
216
1.732**
(0.683)
0.060
(0.223)
yes
0.154
216
Note: *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. Dependent variable is time in years between initiative submission by committee and popular vote, or initiative withdrawal. Least squares
regression. Robust standard errors. Time effects for 20-year periods.
38
Table 15: Length of political process: petitioners
(1)
Valid signatures/eligible
(2)
-2.800
(5.265)
(Valid signatures - legal minimum)/1000
(3)
-3.500
(4.842)
-0.005
(0.004)
Inexperienced petitioners
-0.296
(0.300)
(Valid signatures/eligible)
* inexperienced petitioners
10.750*
(6.370)
(Valid signatures-legal minimum)
* inexperienced petitioners
-0.000
(0.005)
-0.252
(0.226)
0.013**
(0.005)
Weak petitioners
-0.238
(0.311)
(Valid signatures/eligible)
* weak petitioners
CP dummy
Time effects
Adjusted R2
Number of observations
0.174
(0.300)
13.538**
(5.564)
(Valid signatures-legal minimum)
* weak petitioners
Preferences parliament voting
(4)
0.007
(0.007)
1.821***
(0.659)
0.024
(0.207)
yes
0.178
216
2.022***
(0.669)
0.095
(0.208)
yes
0.199
216
1.886***
(0.664)
0.049
(0.207)
yes
0.207
216
1.925***
(0.680)
0.043
(0.220)
yes
0.188
216
Note: *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. Dependent variable is time in years between initiative
submission by committee and popular vote, or initiative withdrawal. Least squares regression.
Robust standard errors. Time effects for 20-year periods.
39