Journal article

Enfranchising non-citizens: What drives natives’ willingness to share power?

BP2-STS

  • 2021
Published in:
  • Journal of Comparative Economics. - Elsevier BV. - 2021, vol. 49, no. 4, p. 1088-1108
English Universal suffrage is a core element of democracy. However, in many democratic countries, a large part of the inhabitants are foreigners without suffrage. We analyze the conditions under which domestic citizens are willing to extend suffrage to non-citizen residents. This paper explores a new panel dataset (1992–2016) of Swiss referenda on the enfranchisement of noncitizens. We concentrate on the size and composition of the foreign population and the institutional context as determinants of non-citizens’ enfranchisement. Our estimates show that a higher share of foreigners corresponds to a lower willingness of natives to enfranchise non-citizens. This effect seems to be driven by the cost of enfranchising non-citizens, which increases in the cultural distance between the foreign and native population and the strength of direct democracy.
Faculty
Faculté des sciences économiques et sociales et du management
Department
Département d'économie politique
Language
  • English
Classification
Economics
License
CC BY
Open access status
hybrid
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/328589
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