The Impact of Direct Democracy on Society - Universität St.Gallen

– 176 –5.4 Comparison <strong>of</strong> the Results for the Reduced and Structural FormsWhereas the reduced form reveals the combined direct and indirect effect <strong>of</strong> direct democracyon crime (B), the structural form explicitly makes the direct impact observable (A). Acomparison <strong>of</strong> the results for both forms makes it possible to draw conclusions about theunobserved indirect effect (the difference between B and A, B - A) 210 . As shown in section5.2, the effect <strong>of</strong> direct democracy significantly dampens police expenditure and reducespolice force size; therefore, a crime increasing unobserved indirect impact would be expected.On the other hand, gains in executive efficiency 211 in the provision <strong>of</strong> the public good 'publicsafety' are detectable that could (over)compensate for the fewer resources available. Based onthe hypotheses <strong>of</strong> bounded rationality, some debiasing <strong>of</strong> both police administrators andregular policemen can be conjectured that might explain which crimes efficiency gains at thecantonal police level might be observed for and which not. Table 7 briefly summarizes thedifferent influences <strong>of</strong> direct legislation detected for both forms <strong>of</strong> the model:<strong>The</strong> conjectured crime increasing indirect influence <strong>of</strong> direct legislation is stronglycorroborated for robbery, sex crime and weakly corroborated for assault and hate crimes 212 . Inthese cases, fewer available financial means for crime prevention and crime protection do leadto higher crime rates through the subfederal budgetary channel.In the case <strong>of</strong> fraud – and possibly also for burglary and auto theft 213 – the indirect impactthrough the budget even appears crime reducing, a finding that contradicts expectations. Eventhough fewer financial means are made available for police issues at the cantonal andcommunal level, these particular crimes are negatively affected. This is possibly a case <strong>of</strong>executive super-efficiency in which fewer resources are allocated in such a way that thepublic good gains in quality, at least with respect to these crimes. In other words, even though210 This discussion is based on the estimation results <strong>of</strong> the previous regressions in tables 3 to 6, not the oneslisted in the Appendix. <strong>The</strong> conclusions, however, do not change considerably when the regression resultswith outliers excluded are taken into account. Affected is the institutional impact on defalcation and autotheft, which in turn, changes the conclusion on efficiency only in the last case. Furthermore, for any crime thedifferences (B – A) might always be insignificant, which would be interpreted as hinting at efficiency gains.211 Efficiency in the production <strong>of</strong> public safety at the level <strong>of</strong> the police forces, i.e. executive efficiency, shouldnot be confused with the question <strong>of</strong> an efficient allocation <strong>of</strong> goods and resources at the societal level.212 <strong>The</strong> indirect effect might also be insignificant.213 Additionally, in the case <strong>of</strong> an insignificant indirect impact on burglary and auto theft, the result would alsobe interpreted as supporting efficiency gains (see next paragraph).