In this paper, I analyze the voting outcomes of two very similar Swiss referendum ballots concerning the federal … government’s competency to levy income, capital and turnover taxes to find out how the enfranchisement of women influences public … support for government spending. The first ballot took place shortly before the extension of suffrage to women in February …

democracy, representative democracy, where politicians are accountable and independent agencies, where they are not. Low … democracy optimal, while the opposite configuration makes representative democracy optimal. Independent agencies are optimal for …

discipline their representatives through referenda that countered the results of voting by political representatives. …

’s turnout, but has no effect on women. Females, however, vote more for the opponent and less for the incumbent when they are …

general democracy index for 87 countries shows that a higher degree of direct democracy leads to lower budget deficits and …

quality of democracy. However, there is a non-negligible share of democracies that implement a minority-backed amount of …

We explore how the vertical structure of direct democracy in a federal context affects expenditure decisions of sub … of direct democracy. This allows us to take into account vertical differences between institutions, i.e. we can … distinguish the effect of state direct democracy on local expenditures for municipalities with and without own direct democratic …