Preferences for direct democracy: intrinsic or instrumental? Evidence from a survey experiment

Philipp Harms () and Claudia Landwehr ()
Additional contact information
Philipp Harms: Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany
Claudia Landwehr: Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany

No 1719, Working Papers from Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Abstract: The call for more direct democracy is often and loudly heard and met with support from large numbers of citizens in many countries. This paper explores the motives for supporting direct democracy, and more specifically, referenda: Do citizens support them for intrinsic reasons, because referenda allow them exercise their democratic rights more directly? Or are preferences for referenda based on the assumption that they are likely to produce desired policy-outcomes, and thus instrumentally motivated? Our survey experiment explores how substantial policy preferences affect the preference for referenda over alternative decisionmaking procedures. Controlling for abstract support for referenda, we can show that congruence between a respondent’s own opinion and the expected majority opinion is associated with support for a referendum on a given matter. Moreover, we find evidence for systematic misperceptions of the majority opinion leading to support for a referendum. We thus arrive at the conclusion that calls for direct democracy should be reassessed in light of instrumental, but misinformed preferences.

Keywords: democratic innovations; process preferences; direct democracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2017-10-27
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://download.uni-mainz.de/RePEc/pdf/Discussion_Paper_1719.pdf First version, 2017 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jgu:wpaper:1719

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Research Unit IPP ().