This paper focuses on the policy strategies adopted by social democratic parties and their impact on the class basis of their support. It is argued that political appeals matter for explaining the development of class voting. This argument is tested through a comparison of the policy strategies of social democratic parties in Austria and Switzerland and the evolving patterns of class voting in the two countries. Using election surveys and data on the policy positions and media representation of the political parties from the 1970s to the 2000s, the article finds that the Social Democratic Party in Austria maintained a strong working class base. In contrast, the Social Democratic Party in Switzerland facilitated a major transformation of the class basis of its support by emphasising new cultural issues. It became the party of the ‘new middle classes', leaving the working class to realign in support of the Swiss People's Party.
This article analyzes the role of the press in direct democratic campaigns. The paper argues the press has a dual role: On news pages, newspapers ought to inform citizens about the issue positions and frames of the pro and con camps in a balanced way. In editorials, newspapers act as political advocates that promote their own issue frames and try to shape public opinion through voting recommendations. Comparing the issue positions and frames in editorials and news reports in the run-up to the vote on the popular initiative ‘‘Yes to Europe'' in Switzerland, this article shows that newspapers give similar visibility to the pro and con camps regardless of the papers' own editorial position. However, some newspapers favor issue frames that are in line with their editorial perspectives. In conclusion, newspapers are more similar in news report content than in editorial views.
This article enquires into the causes of union growth and decline by analysing flows in and out of membership at the level of 70 Swiss union locals over 2006–2008. Gross flows in union membership are much larger than the resulting net changes: annual membership turnover of 10 per cent is a surprisingly constant feature across unions. Net changes in membership are primarily determined by inflows: successful and languishing union locals differ in their entry rates, whereas exit rates are similar. Variance in union locals' entry rates is not usefully explained by the labour market context, but by differences in union strategy.
Issue ownership is commonly conceptualized as multidimensional, consisting of a “competence” dimension and an “associative” dimension. Because existing operationalizations of issue ownership tap only the former dimension, we focus on associative issue ownership: the spontaneous identification between specific issues and specific parties in the minds of voters. Survey evidence from Belgium shows that the associative dimension of issue ownership can be measured, that it differs from competence issue ownership, and that it is an independent determinant of voting behavior.
The purpose of this article is to analyse the conditions under which referendum campaigns have an impact on voting choices. Based on a model of opinion formation that integrates both campaign effects and partisan effects, we argue that campaign effects vary according to the context of the popular vote (size and type of conflict among the party elite and intensity and direction of the referendum campaign). We test our hypotheses with two-step estimations for hierarchical models on data covering 25 popular votes on foreign, European and immigration policy in Switzerland. Our results show strong campaign effects and they suggest that their strength and nature are indeed highly conditional on the context of the vote: the type of party coalition pre-structures the patterns of individual voting choices, campaign effects are higher when the campaign is highly intense and they are more symmetric when it is balanced.
Cet article analyse l'issue des 71'849 affaires liquidées par le Tribunal fédéral, de 1990 à 2008, en matière administrative. Les résultats empiriques montrent que le taux de succès des recours s'élève à 23% et s'avère remarquablement stable. Il diverge toutefois selon les domaines de politiques publiques et la provenance cantonale des recours. Il est notamment plus élevé quand le recours concerne les assurances sociales (30%), quand l'autorité précédente, dont la décision est contestée devant le Tribunal fédéral, est une autorité judiciaire cantonale (25%), et quand la voie de droit activée est un recours de droit administratif ou un recours en matière de droit public (28%). En matière d'assurances sociales plus particulièrement, le taux de succès est plus élevé lorsque les assureurs recourent (63%) ou lorsque les assurés qui recourent sont assistés par un avocat (29%).
If empirical evidences show that environmental security is on the United Nations agenda, very few studies try to understand the agenda-setting process of this issue. My thesis research intends to fill this gap by analyzing the process of environmental securitization within the organization. Securitization theories and critical security studies propose a first useful set of theoretical tools. Nonetheless, this communication argues that they are not the only ones, and that Political Ecology could bring an interesting different perspective and encourage an interdisciplinary dialogue. By promoting transdisciplinarity, highlighting social and economical dimensions of environmental conflicts and calling attention to the power and knowledge structures beneath the securitization process, Political Ecology proposes highly relevant additions to the study of environmental securitization within the United Nations. This paper argues that this particular example shows the benefits of collaborations between political ecologists and securitization theorists – and, more generally speaking, International Relations scholars – and therefore advocates for more mutual and constructive dialogue among those different schools of thought.
