Research Note Campaigning in a Direct Democracy: Three Case Studies

AbstractThis research note focuses on Switzerland’s relationship with the EU, and the role direct democracy plays in this relationship. Specifically, the research question asked is whether behaviour on the part of the campaigners can be understood through the lens of Riker’s so-called dominance principle: “when one side successfully wins the argument on an issue, the other side ceases to discuss it” (Riker 1993: 81). One corollary of the dominance principle is that there will tend to be a concentration on a smaller and smaller number of arguments over the course of a campaign, because campaigners are induced to focus on a small subset of issues, their “winning issues”. On the basis of a data set consisting of campaign advertisements appearing in Swiss newspapers in the four-week periods before the EU-related 1992, 2000 and 2001 votes, the analysis actually shows little evidence of any concentration of arguments. The research note concludes by considering some implication of this for Swiss direct democracy.Keywords: dominance principle, direct democracy, campaigning, European policy, newspaper advertising, Switzerland