SWISSCIT Index on Citizenship Law in Swiss Cantons: Conceptualisation, Measurement, Aggregation

In the Swiss federal context, the acquisition of citizenship through ordinary naturalization, the enjoyment of electoral rights as a foreign resident, and the retention of the franchise as a Swiss citizen abroad is not uniformly defined through a single federal law but co-determined by the cantons. In this explanatory note, we introduce SWISSCIT, a set of indicators measuring how inclusive cantonal citizenship policies are through a systematic comparison of the legislation in force as of 31 December 2017 in the 26 cantons. The dataset comprises three separate aggregated indicators, measuring the legislation on 1) ordinary naturalization of foreign residents; 2) the right to vote and stand as candidate of foreign residents in local and cantonal elections; and 3) the right to vote and stand as candidate of Swiss citizens abroad in their municipality and canton of origin. The note successively discusses issues of conceptualization, measurement and aggregation. By making our methodology fully transparent, we follow what has become common practice in index-building and hope to encourage users to make use of our data in their own research.