2016/04/01 by Emanuel V. Towfigh, Sebastian J. Goerg, Andreas Glöckner +4 · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Business, Management and Accounting · #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Judicial and Constitutional Studies #Political Influence and Corporate Strategies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/s11127-016-0330-y
openalex publication_date 2016/04/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Are direct-democratic decisions more acceptable to voters than decisions arrived at through representative procedures? We conduct an experimental online vignette study with a German sample to investigate how voters’ acceptance of a political decision depends on the process through which it is reached. For a set of different issues, we investigate how acceptance varies depending on whether the decision is the result of a direct-democratic institution, a party in a representative democracy, or an expert committee. Our results show that for important issues, direct democracy generates greater acceptance; this finding holds particularly for those voters who do not agree with a collectively chosen outcome. However, if the topic is of limited importance to the voters, acceptance does not differ between the mechanisms. Our results imply that a combination of representative democracy and direct democracy, conditional on the distribution of issue importance among the electorate, may be optimal with regard to acceptance of political decisions.