Après Nous le Déluge? Direct Democracy and Intergenerational Conflicts in Ageing Societies

Gabriel Ahlfeldt, Wolfgang Maennig and Malte Steenbeck

No 5779, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: To assess the likely effects of population ageing on the outcomes of direct democracy, we analyze the effect of age on voting decisions in public referenda. To this end, we provide the first quantitative review of the literature and a case study of the Stuttgart 21 referendum on one of the largest infrastructure projects in Germany. The evi-dence suggests that intergenerational conflicts arising from population ageing will likely be limited to areas in which the net present value differs particularly strongly across generations, such as education and health spending, green energy, and major transport projects. In such instances, however, the effect can be quantitatively relevant, raising the question of whether, as population ageing progresses, decisions should be based on social cost-benefit analyses, instead of referenda.

Keywords: ageing; direct democracy; intergenerational conflict; NIMBY; referendum; Stuttgart 21; transport; voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D61 D62 H41 H71 I18 L83 R41 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp5779.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Après nous le déluge? Direct democracy and intergenerational conflicts in aging societies (2016)
Working Paper: Après nous le déluge? Direct democracy and intergenerational conflicts in aging societies (2016)
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:ces:ceswps:_5779

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().