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Despite the growing importance of new technologies, research on individual opinion formation in the digital domain is still in its infancy. This article empirically examines citizens’ use of social media in the context of direct democracy. Based on previous work, we expect men to form their opinions on social media more frequently than women (gender gap hypothesis). In the second step, we focus on the contextual level by examining the role campaigns play in reducing this discrepancy. More specifically, we hypothesize that the presumed gender gap narrows in accordance with the increasing intensity of public debates that precede ballots (interaction hypothesis). The empirical analysis draws on 13 post-ballot surveys held at Switzerland’s federal level from 2016 to 2020 and supports both the gender gap and the interaction hypotheses.

Recent decades have seen a strengthening of local autonomy in many European states. At the same time, local governance capacities were strengthened through intermunicipal structures and territorial consolidation to prepare local authorities for additional tasks. In this paper, we assess what citizens think about strengthening local autonomy and strengthening inter-local cooperation. We argue that citizens’ attitudes towards local autonomy and inter-local cooperation are a function of their behavioural, emotional and ideological connection to the local. Using data from a population-based survey in eight West European metropolitan areas in France, Germany, Switzerland and the UK, we show that local autonomy and inter-local cooperation supporters have divergent ideological positions concerning the allocation of political authority across state scales. Inter-local cooperation is supported by voters of new progressive left parties but opposed by right-wing nationalist partisans—who in contrast favour local autonomy. This suggests that the demarcation–integration divide which structures citizens’ attitudes towards international integration also matters for subnational and local governance reforms.

Supplemental Material for Strengthen governability rather than deepen democracy: why local governments introduce participatory governance by Daniel Kübler, Philippe E. Rochat, Su Yun Woo and Nico van der Heiden in International Review of Administrative Sciences

Supplemental material, KblerRochat_UAR_online-supplement-layouted for Fragmented Governance and Spatial Equity in Metropolitan Areas: The Role of Intergovernmental Cooperation and Revenue-Sharing by Daniel Kübler and Philippe E. Rochat in Urban Affairs Review

Si les etudes sur les innovations en matiere de gouvernance participative sont nombreuses, plus rares sont celles qui s’interessent a leur introduction proprement dite. Dans le present article, nous essayons de comprendre pourquoi, dans un contexte de democratie etablie, les autorites locales s’engagent dans la gouvernance participative. C’est en nous appuyant sur un ensemble de donnees sur la mise en place de mini-publics dans 1505 communes suisses entre 2000 et 2012 que nous testons cinq hypotheses a propos de l’introduction de la gouvernance participative. Nous constatons que les mini-publics dans les communes suisses sont des procedures axees sur les politiques qui ne font intervenir qu’une petite partie des citoyens. Les communes qui mettent en place ces mini-publics sont celles qui n’ont pas de tradition d’assemblee des citoyens, dont les services publics sont soumis a une pression de croissance, qui presentent de nombreux groupes politiques differents ainsi que des liens solides avec les partis et les communautes, et qui ont une administration publique fortement professionnalisee. Nous concluons que l’expansion de la gouvernance participative est motivee par un programme visant a accroitre la gouvernabilite dans un contexte conflictuel, marque par des interets de groupe forts et fragmentes.Remarques a l’intention des praticiensLa presente etude porte sur l’introduction de mini-publics dans les communes suisses. Les mini-publics sont des modeles participatifs dans lesquels de petits groupes de citoyens deliberent sur un sujet en lien avec les politiques municipales. La plupart des exemples de mini-publics identifies dans la presente etude etaient lies a l’amenagement du territoire, mais la durabilite et la jeunesse faisaient aussi partie des themes recurrents. Les mini-publics font desormais partie integrante de la pratique de l’administration publique locale et sont mis en place dans l’espoir qu’ils aideront a trouver des solutions aux conflits et favoriseront l’acceptation des decisions politiques.

Innovations in participatory governance have been widely discussed but their introduction as such is rarely examined. This article seeks to understand why, in a context of established democracy, local authorities engage in participatory governance. Using a data set on the implementation of mini-publics in 1505 Swiss municipalities in the period 2000 to 2012, we test five hypotheses about the introduction of participatory governance. We find that mini-publics in Swiss municipalities are policy-oriented procedures that involve only a small proportion of the citizenry. Municipalities who implement mini-publics are those that do not have a municipal assembly tradition, whose public services are under growth pressure, who feature many different political groups as well as strong party and community ties, and who have a strongly professionalized public administration. We conclude that the expansion of participatory governance is driven by an agenda to increase governability in an adversarial context with strong and fragmented group interests. Points for practitioners This study explores the introduction of mini-publics in Swiss municipalities. Mini-publics are participatory designs in which small groups of citizens deliberate on a topic related to municipal policymaking. Most mini-public exercises found in this study were related to spatial planning, but sustainability and youth were recurrent fields as well. Mini-publics have become part of public administration practice and are set up in the hope that they will help find solutions to conflicts and foster the acceptance of policy decisions.

This paper explores the emerging governance patterns in Chinese metropolitan regions (城市群 chengshiqun). In the scholarly debate on city-regional governance in the West, a prominent position holds that governing large urban regions entails a rescaling of state territories. In China, the central government plays a prominent role in the scale-building of China’s metropolitan regions. This is not only evident in the first stage of the post-reform policies, involving major reforms of state scales for the purpose of economic and urban development. Drawing on three case studies (the Yangtze River Delta, Guanzhong–Tianshui and Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei metropolitan regions), it is shown that the Chinese central government also plays a strong role in the current stage of metropolitan regional development. It is argued that the trajectory of metropolitan scale-building in China is a result of the hierarchical administrative system impeding horizontal cooperation between subnational entities of the party-state.

This article focuses on policies seeking to address social inequalities in metropolitan areas, where the allocation of resources to places with needs often clashes with the politics of redistribution in fragmented local government systems. Scholarship on metropolitan governance has yet to overcome the opposition between proponents of consolidation and defenders of polycentrism. The crucial open question is whether and how intergovernmental cooperation and revenue-sharing can redress spatial equity in institutionally fragmented metropolitan areas. This article addresses this question by exploring the determinants of social expenditures in the 630 municipalities of seven major metropolitan areas in Switzerland, where revenue-sharing systems are common. The analysis shows that intergovernmental grants make a significant but limited contribution to reducing the mismatch between needs and resources in fragmented and decentralized metropolitan areas, depending on the redistributive efforts made by higher state levels.

In the debate on governance in city regions, the role of the state is currently an open question. Drawing on our own and secondary research on governance of large city regions across the world, we argue that nation-states (in unitary systems) and federate states (in federalist systems) are crucial protagonists of governance in megacities – defined as city regions of 10 million or more. Megacity governance thus provides a stark contrast to the prominent narrative of a retreating state conveyed in some of the new regionalist literature. It is concluded that megacities are a category of urban settlements in which the state is not withering away but continues to play a leading role in addressing urban policy problems.

This chapter explores place equality regimes in the major Swiss metropolitan areas. Switzerland is an affluent and decentralized federation with a conservative welfare state. The response to territorial inequalities has consisted mainly in setting up comprehensive mechanisms of subnational fiscal equalization. Overall, the prevailing regime of place equality can be characterized as ‘tamed Tieboutianism’, in which fiscal imbalance is counteracted by horizontal fiscal equalization and policy coordination. The chapter shows that place equality regimes in Swiss metropolitan areas do have an equalizing effect across municipalities, but that substantial territorial disparities in municipal fiscal resources remain. Inequality patterns in resident wealth correlate strongly with inequality patterns in municipal revenues and expenditures. Fiscal and social policies within Swiss metropolitan areas therefore appear as strongly conditioned by spatial inequalities.

In this report we take stock of the EU's most recent democratic innovation, the European Citizens Initiative(ECI). In doing so we adopt a threefold strategy. First, we unpack the institutional features of the ECI to situateit within a broader universe of relatively well understood mechanisms of direct democracy. Second, on thebasis of an inventory of all ECI initiatives to date, we present some general trends regarding its use andfunctioning. The third, more speculative, analysis looks at possible institutional trajectories for the ECI based onour largely comparative analysis. Our findings suggest that the ECI is far from being unique and that some ofthe problems that surround its functioning are common to other systems. In addition, despite its novelty, wecan already detect some general patterns as well as indirect effects on member states. Whether the instrumentcould ever fulfill its democratic potential remains very much an open question however. The evidence thus farpresents a mixed picture.

Résumé.Sous l'angle du concept de bureaucratie représentative, le présent article compare la gestion des enjeux liés à la participation des différentes communautés linguistiques dans l'administration publique de deux États multilingues : le Canada et la Suisse. À la suite de la mobilisation politique autour du clivage linguistique, des stratégies de promotion du plurilinguisme ont été adoptées dans les deux pays. La stratégie canadienne mise surl'égalité de traitementdes fonctionnaires anglophones et francophones. La Suisse poursuit quant à elle l'objectif de lareprésentationdes différentes communautés linguistiques dans la fonction publique. Ces différences de fond s'expliquent, entre autres, par la nature du régime linguistique en place et par le contexte de démocratie consociationnelle en Suisse. La participation proportionnelle des communautés linguistiques au sein de l'administration fédérale est globalement atteinte dans les deux pays. Cependant, au niveau du fonctionnement interne, une logique de rationalité linguistique exerce une pression sur les groupes minoritaires pour qu'ils adoptent la langue majoritaire.Abstract.Drawing on the concept of representative bureaucracy, this article examines how two multi-lingual states—Canada and Switzerland—deal with issues related to the participation of different linguistic communities in the federal public service. Following a political mobilisation of the linguistic cleavage, strategies to promote multilingualism in the public service have been adopted in both countries. The Canadian strategy focuses onequal treatmentof Anglophones and Francophones in the public service. In Switzerland,adequate representationof the linguistic communities is the primary goal. These differences are explained by the characteristics of the linguistic regimes in each of the two countries, as well as by the peculiarities of consociational democracy in Switzerland. In both countries, the linguistic origins of public administration staff, overall, mirrors the proportions of the linguistic communities in the wider society. Within administrative units, however, linguistic diversity is hampered by the logics of language rationality, where minorities are under pressure to communicate in the language of the majority.

Seit jeher stehen Stadte im Zentrum des kulturellen, technologischen und politischen Fortschritts. Stadte spielten eine wichtige Rolle bei der Entwicklung von Demokratie als politischer Herrschaftsform. Die politische Organisation der polis im antiken Athen wird gemeinhin als eine der ersten Manifestationen des direktdemokratischen Modells betrachtet (Held 2006).