7 Congruence of citizens and government
referendum, Centre for Research on Direct Democracy (C2D), direct democracy, report, worldwide
7.1 Success of Federal Council
Figure 7.1 shows the congruence of the Federal Council’s recommendation and the actual referendum in national votes per legislature period. If the public “follows” the Federal Council’s recommendation, it is considered a win, if the the public opposes the recommendation, the government loses the referendum. Since 1979 it has only been in three instances where the share of wins for the Federal Council does not exceed 75 % of all referendums. Whilst the public and the government have agreed on the vast majority of votes from 1999 to 2003, the congruence dropped drastically in the following legislative period. This could be due to the shift in the balance of power in the Federal Council with the new, second seat for the Swiss People’s Party (SVP/UDC). In the current legislative period, the share of wins for the Federal Council is currently comparatively low. This might be subject to change however, as there are three more years to go in this period.
Noteworthy is the large share of referendums where the Federal Council has not given an official recommendation in the first two legislature periods. This could be explained by the fact that the voting booklet was only introduced in 1977. Since then, the voting booklet contains key information on the referendums at hand as well as the official recommendations of both the Federal Council and Parliament.
Taking a look at the share of referendums won by the Federal Council by type, we see clear differences (Figure 7.2). These can be explained by the differing operating logic. When a referendum is mandatory, both the Federal Council and Parliament try to minimise the potential of rejection by the citizens, as the process is very time- and resource-intensive. If a change in a law does not require a mandatory referendum, the government and law-makers might take less balanced decisions. This is reflected in the higher share of lost optional referendums. However, the government is most succesful when it comes to citizen’s initiatives. Often stemming from a specific part of the political spectrum, initiatives can considered to be “outsiders”, even when initiated by political parties or associations. These factors make it easier for the Federal Council to gauge an initiative’s potential of approval. When it comes to counter-proposals however, citizens seem to follow the government’s recommendation far less frequently.
7.2 Success of National Council
The same pattern described above can be observed in Figure 7.3.1 In this case, we consider the result to be congruent if the final vote in the National Council matches the decision of the popular vote. Accordingly, the result is incongruent if the public accepts a proposal that the National Council has recected beforhand, and vice versa.
Analysing the results of the final vote on the issue at hand in the National Council, we see that the congruence differs again across the different types. However the pattern of the share of referendums the National Council has won/lost is very similar to the Federal Council’s. Both optional referendums and counter-proposals are more frequently incongruent, meaning that the public deviates from the National Council’s recommendation. Furthermore, we rarely see “perfect” congruence, indicated by the black diagonal in all four plots. Additionally, the National Council seems to be more opinionated in general, tending towards a clearer rejection or approval than the citizens Parliament represents.
Some mandatory referendums and citizen’s initiatives are depicted as rejected and therefore congruent/incongruent with the National Council’s decision, even though a majority of citizens have accepted them. This is because they did not fulfill the “Ständemehr” double majority rule, i.e. the majority of cantons approving in addition to the majority of the population approving.↩︎