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

– 22 –As regards the institutions <strong>of</strong> direct democracy to be analyzed in this chapter, they arerestricted mainly to those that serve as a basis for constructing the so-called index <strong>of</strong> directdemocracy as developed by STUTZER (1999). This index is an unweighted average <strong>of</strong> foursubindices that measure the strength <strong>of</strong> four specific institutions <strong>of</strong> direct legislation; inparticular, the initiatives for constitutional and statutory changes, the fiscal referendum(ordinary optional and mandatory) on expenditure projects, and the referendum for laws (anddecrees) 39 . To follow this chapter’s development more easily, the reader should recall thatthese subindices are based on an evaluation <strong>of</strong> the requirements for each institution, on theone hand, the signature requirements necessary for optional referenda and initiatives, and onthe other, the financial threshold for the (optional and mandatory) fiscal referenda. In order toprovide as complete a picture <strong>of</strong> constitutional changes in institutions <strong>of</strong> direct democracy ascomplete, however, the discussion also lists most <strong>of</strong> the changes in administrative referendaand any extraordinary statutory referenda. <strong>The</strong> administrative referenda are listed in thesection on statutory referenda, because with respect to their political intention, they areclosely related to the statutory referendum.<strong>The</strong> original values <strong>of</strong> the index <strong>of</strong> direct democracy were presented by STUTZER (1999) andSTUTZER and FREY (2000) for the years 1970, 1992, and 1996 and were then updated for themissing years between 1980 and 1998 by FELD and SCHALTEGGER (see their various articlesin the list <strong>of</strong> references). <strong>The</strong> data used for constructing this index up until 1996 can be foundin TRECHSEL and SERDÜLT (1999) 40 (hereafter cited as T/S in this chapter), in which theauthors analyze the institutions <strong>of</strong> direct democracy and describe the changes from 1970onwards (T/S 1999, p. 8). <strong>The</strong> index <strong>of</strong> direct democracy has since been employed in varioustime-series cross-sectional analyses <strong>of</strong> the impact <strong>of</strong> direct democracy and is thus essential 41 .For the purposes <strong>of</strong> this dissertation an update for the years 1997 – 2003 became necessarybecause the data used to investigate the effect on education, crime, and subjective happinessencompass only these more recent years 42 . It should also be noted that neither TRECHSEL andSERDÜLT (1999) nor STUTZER (1999) analyze the cantonal institutions <strong>of</strong> the so-called39 In many cantons, the requirements for the statutory and administrative referendum are identical. However, insome cantons they differ, and STUTZER (1999) used either their average or either one <strong>of</strong> them to construct thesubindex <strong>of</strong> the statutory referendum.40 Sporadically, the description <strong>of</strong> the changes reaches 1998, particularly in the second part in TRECHSEL andSERDÜLT (1999) in which each single cantonal constitution is analyzed.41 E.g., see the literature cited in KIRCHGÄSSNER (2002, 2001, 2000).42 Differences between the values constructed by FELD and SCHALTEGGER (for 1997 and 1998) and my own aremainly due to the extrapolation <strong>of</strong> old values without taking into account changes in the underlying cantonalpopulation. See also section 7 in this chapter.