 Enfranchising non-citizens: What drives natives’ willingness to share power?Anna Maria Koukal, Patricia Schafer and Reiner Eichenberger Journal of Comparative Economics, 2021, vol. 49, issue 4, 1088-1108 Abstract: Universal suffrage is a core element of democracy. However, in many democratic countries, a large part of the inhabitants are foreigners without suffrage. We analyze the conditions under which domestic citizens are willing to extend suffrage to non-citizen residents. This paper explores a new panel dataset (1992–2016) of Swiss referenda on the enfranchisement of non-citizens. We concentrate on the size and composition of the foreign population and the institutional context as determinants of non-citizens’ enfranchisement. Our estimates show that a higher share of foreigners corresponds to a lower willingness of natives to enfranchise non-citizens. This effect seems to be driven by the cost of enfranchising non-citizens, which increases in the cultural distance between the foreign and native population and the strength of direct democracy. Keywords: Non-citizens’ voting rights; Cultural distance; Direct democracy; Power sharing (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:49:y:2021:i:4:p:1088-1108 DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2021.03.001 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Comparative Economics is currently edited by D. Berkowitz and G. Roland More articles in Journal of Comparative Economics from Elsevier |
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