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2016 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

1. Introduction

Author : Jan Rosset

Published in: Economic Inequality and Political Representation in Switzerland

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

This introduction highlights the relevance of studying economically-rooted inequalities in political representation in Switzerland. It discusses some of the findings of the comparative literature on the topic and summarizes the main contributions of this book, which provides one of the first case studies of representational inequalities in a European country. An overview of the structure of the argument developed in the subsequent chapters is also presented.

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next chapter Electoral Democratic Representation and the Market Economy: Irreconcilable Assumptions, Driving Forces and Outcomes

There is, in particular, a tension between the formal definitions of democracy in the elitist tradition which sees democracy as a set of institutions that simply grant the people the right to choose from time to time their rulers among competing elites (Schumpeter 1943) and definitions that integrate a supplementary normative assumption implying that governments should be aware of their citizens’ will (Dahl 1971) or that citizens should be directly involved in the decision making process (Barber 1984).

There are, of course, different types of government included under the label “democracy.” All these distinctive forms, though, imply a representation process. Even in the particular case of the Swiss semi-direct democracy, representative assemblies play a major role as an overwhelming majority of political decisions are taken directly by the parliament. It has been estimated for instance that only 7 % of the bills passed in the Swiss parliament were challenged in a popular vote, out of which approximately half were still successful in the popular vote (Lutz 2006).

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Title: Introduction
Author: Jan Rosset
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Economic Inequality and Political Representation in Switzerland
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-27115-6

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-27117-0

Copyright Year: 2016
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27117-0_1