Direct democracy , spatial spillovers , policy diffusion, citizen preferences
Abstract:
A sizeable literature studies whether governments strategically interact with each other
through policy-diffusion, learning, fiscal and yardstick competition. This paper asks
whether, in the presence of direct democratic institutions, spatial interactions additionally
result from voters’ direct actions. The proposed mechanism is that the voters’
actions in vetoing a decision or inaugurating a preferred policy by a binding initiative
in their jurisdiction can potentially have spillover effects on the actions of voters and
special interest groups of neighboring jurisdictions. Utilizing data on around 1,800
voter-petitions across over 12,000 German municipalities in 2002-09, we find that a
jurisdiction’s probability of hosting a petition is positively driven by the neighbors’ direct
democratic activity. These effects are persistent, and are stronger for more visible
instruments of direct democracy. The interactions are also mostly driven by petitions
in same or similiar policy areas, and are stronger in towns with relatively more per
capita newspapers.
Das Dokument wird vom Publikationsserver der Universitätsbibliothek Mannheim bereitgestellt.
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