Foreigners, Citizens and the Tyrannical Edges of the ‘Vox Populi’: Empirical and Normative Evidence from Switzerland
| Résumé |
The debate on the tyrannical consequences of direct democratic rule
on minority rights is almost as old as democracy itself. Yet, it
has regained considerable vigour in recent years, as the
‘plebiscitarian turn’ widely observed in Europe and North America
has shaken to the core the very foundations of representative
democracy as laid out since 1945. The article examines the issue in
the case of immigrant minorities in Switzerland, that concentrates
about half of referendums worldwide. It proceeds in two steps.
First, based on an original dataset compiling all forty-three
referendums and popular initiatives on migration-related issues
held in Switzerland at federal level between 1848 and 2017, it
examines through a rational-choice institutionalist lens whether
direct democratic instruments have contributed to 'expand' or
'restrict' the rights of immigrants. The results point to a
significant ‘tyrannical’ effect of direct democracy, both at the
‘agenda-setting’ and ‘decision-making’ stages. The second section
takes a normative turn and critically discusses the democratic
legitimacy of a political franchise that excludes the very
population that is most intimately and immediately coerced by
electoral outcomes. It proposes a ‘realist’ reform of the
referendum procedure based on the ‘principle of empathy’, the aim
of which is to complement the norm of national self-determination
underlying the national franchise in Switzerland as well as in most
democracies with an objective examination of and due respect for the
‘rights of others’. |
| Mots-clés |
Referendum, Switzerland, immigration, political science |
| Citation | Arrighi de Casanova, J. T. (2017). Foreigners, Citizens and the Tyrannical Edges of the ‘Vox Populi’: Empirical and Normative Evidence from Switzerland. Unpublished Working Paper. Université Pompeu Fabra. |
| Type | Working paper (Anglais) |
| Année | 2017 |
| Type de travail | Working Paper |
| Département | GRITIM |
| Institution | Université Pompeu Fabra (Barcelone) |
| URL | https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/61824 |