"Pendular Voting" presents a novel two-stage voting procedure: A randomly chosen citizen group votes on a proposal replacing the status quo. Depending on the outcome, a "counterproposal" ensues, that is closer to/further away from the status quo than the original proposal. All citizens vote...

We study how citizens' right to directly decide on policies through popular initiatives affects the attractiveness of extreme candidates in representative elections. In our theoretical framework, single prominent policy issues on which individual voters hold extreme views get a large weight in...

The UK's decision to leave the EU continues to have major economic, political and social implications. It is therefore unsurprising that the reasons behind Brexit have been widely discussed. However, whilst existing empirical evidence has tended to focus on specific factors, we undertake a...