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2016 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

7. The Structure of Party Competition and Electoral Choice: Explanations Based on the Electoral Behaviour of Citizens

Author : Jan Rosset

Published in: Economic Inequality and Political Representation in Switzerland

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Voters hold complex policy preferences whose configuration is not necessarily reflected in the party system. As a result, they need to make an electoral choice according to some issues and not others. This multidimensionality of electoral competition can result in a substantial gap between the preferences of voters and those of elected officials. Based on survey data on the positioning of citizens and parties, the analysis shows that a very large proportion of voters hold preferences that are closer to parties from the left on economic issues but are better represented by conservative parties on cultural issues. Furthermore, the analysis shows that in this particular case, the mismatch between the structure of preferences among citizens and the party system, advantages the election of parties that defend economically liberal policies as compared to the share of the population endorsing such policies.

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previous chapter Unequal Representation by Parties: Explanations Based on the Elites’ Side of the Representation Process

next chapter The Moderating Effect of Party Finance Regulations

See Swiss Federal Statistical Office, National Accounts (www.bfs.admin.ch).

Positions were obtained thanks to two questions. First, respondents were asked whether they favour one policy or its opposite. In a second step, respondents were asked whether they were “rather” or “strongly” in favour of that policy. The exact wording of the questions was: “Etes-vous pour une augmentation de la taxation sur les hauts revenus, ou pour une diminution de la taxation sur les hauts revenus ?” and “Etes-vous pour l’adhésion de la Suisse à l’Union Européenne, ou pour la “voie solitaire” de la Suisse?”. In both cases the complementary question was : “Etes-vous plutôt pour ou fortement pour?”. The answers were recoded into a 5-points scale. The same questions were asked regarding the five largest Swiss parties and were recoded identically, so that they can be compared to the preferences of citizens.

There are 26 cantons in Switzerland but in one of them, Nidwalden, the election was tacit: there were as many candidates as seats to be attributed (1 in the National Council and 1 in the Council of States).

The formula used to calculate the interpolated median is the following: M = L + {(50−C)/F}, where M is the measured median position of the National Council; L is the lower bound of the interval containing the median; C is the cumulative frequency of the MPs that position themselves up to L; and F is the frequency of MPs placed in the interval containing the median. See also Chap. 5 for a discussion of this measure. Note that using the median instead of the mean does not affect the results.

Please note, however, that in cantons where not each of the five parties presented candidates in the election, only the parties that ran in the election were taken into account. For instance, the Greens had candidates in only 18 cantons and therefore their positions were matched with those of citizens only in these cantons. Similarly, the other parties did not present candidates in all cantons, especially those where only two members of parliament were elected (1 for the National Council and 1 for the Council of States).

Considering the Christian Democrats as a centrist party as it is sometimes described in the literature and not coding it as a right party does not affect the substance of results presented below.

An alternative to this additive scale would have been to use a factor analysis and take the factorial scores of individuals on the factors identified. I refrain from using this strategy because the structure of policy preferences among citizens and candidates is not identical (see Rosset et al. forthcoming).

Several other operationalisations have been tested, including ones with items referring to homosexual rights or abortion. All the different combinations of items had very low internal consistency scores in the case of citizens, which shows that citizens tend to have preferences on various policies that are independent from one another.

The variable “nweighttot” included in the Selects dataset has been used for the telephone survey (results presented in Table 7.2) and “sweightot” in the case of the second operationalization based only on the sample of citizens who answered the paper questionnaire (the analysis shown in Table 7.3).

For instance, Lipset posits that “The poorer strata everywhere are more liberal or leftist on economic issues; they favour more welfare state measures, higher wages, graduated income taxes, support of trade-unions, and so forth. But when liberalism is defined in noneconomic terms - as support of civil liberties, internationalism, etc. – the correlation is reversed. The more well-to-do are more liberal, the poorer are more intolerant” (cited in Thomassen 2012, p. 15).

During the three last legislatures (1999–2011), 98 direct democratic votes took place in Switzerland. In 19 cases the majority of voters voted differently than the majority of the parliament. Out of these, 13 can be classified as corresponding to the pattern described above: in 6 votes linked to social security, taxation or the liberalization of the economy, a majority of citizens followed the Socialist and Green coalition, while in 7 votes regarding cultural issues (e.g. naturalization laws, religious buildings) or law and order (e.g. sentences for criminals) a majority voted in line with the recommendations of the SVP. The 6 remaining cases were impossible to classify according to this scheme as they concerned relatively technical issues linked to transportation or food products for instance (source: swissvotes.ch).

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Title: The Structure of Party Competition and Electoral Choice: Explanations Based on the Electoral Behaviour of Citizens
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_7