Why direct democracy is also a stage for political parties to fight for attention

Popular votes may appear to reflect the pure “will of the people,” but they also function as a stage for political parties, argues Dutch political scientist Toine Paulissen regarding Switzerland, the UK, and beyond.

When people consider direct democracy, they are most likely to do so in terms of a pure and uninterrupted expression of the “will of the people”.

These instruments are considered direct since there are no intermediaries, no middlemen or middlewomen, no political parties who stand between a voter and their policy preference.
However, this ideal doesn’t reflect political reality.

While voters do make a choice in a referendum, parties and politicians are almost always closely involved in the processes leading up to that decision. They often initiate the votes and formulate the question that is being asked, and in some cases they even decide whether to actually follow their outcome.

In my research, I highlight a special but under-explored role that political parties and politicians play in referendum processes, namely as campaigners. As I will show, it might have mainly to do with getting extra attention and publicity – maybe even regardless of whether it could be good or bad.

Parties as referendum campaigners in Switzerland and Europe

A very visible example of the involvement of politicians in referendum campaigns was Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage’s active involvement in the 2016 Brexit campaign, featuring (among others) a bus advertisement with disputed claimsExternal link on the money being sent by the United Kingdom to the European Union. But parties often participate in these campaigns as well, both in Switzerland, where direct democracy plays a key role, and in Europe as a whole.

Let’s examine the data. In a recent publication on Switzerland, I looked at 33 federal referendums and initiatives organised between September 2020 and June 2023. The six biggest parties were studied and considered as active in a referendum campaign if they published advertisements on social media or in newspapers. The results show that the parties themselves participated 89 times out of a possible 198, or just under half of the time. This is not just a Swiss phenomenon either. In over 24 referendums in Denmark, France, Ireland, the Netherland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia and the UK, parties with a representation in parliament chose to participate in 108 of 196 possible occasions.

It is thus clear from the data that in general, parties across Europe invest in referendum campaigns about 50% of the time. But why do they choose to do so?

Parties as referendum instrumentalisers

On the surface, the most likely reason might seem to try and steer voters to the policy decision that these parties prefer. If this is indeed the case, parties are essentially performing a key societal role, that of information providers. After all, in referendums, voters make a yes or no decision on what often is a multifaceted question regarding complex topics. To make an informed choice, people will often turn to the actors they trust and are familiar with to provide them with the information needed.

Yet, it is known from previous research that referendums can be used by political actors for pursuing certain strategic goals beyond the result of the vote. This is known within political science as “referendum instrumentalisation”. The Brexit referendum, for instance, was called by then-prime minister David Cameron of the Conservatives to consolidate support of anti-EU parliamentarians within his own party in order to protect his position. At the same time, he wanted to prevent Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party (UKIP) from siphoning off votes from the Conservatives in the 2015 elections.

Similar aspects have been visible in Swiss politics, where popular initiatives are often initiated by political parties. Examples include the upcoming and recent initiatives on capping the Swiss population at ten million until 2050, launched by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party, and on the climate fund, started by the left-wing Social Democratic Party and the Green Party. Again, policy is not necessarily the only goal here; instead, following existing scientific arguments, the People’s Party, Social Democrats and Greens might also be looking to split the electorate of their competitors along an issue that has wide support among their own supporters. In other words, much like the Brexit referendum, the aim is likely future electoral benefits, rather than just a policy decision.

Is a popular vote always democratic? Take a look at our story about it:

Direct democratic campaigns in Switzerland

So, if we return to the question of why political actors participate in referendum campaigns, we have plenty of reasons to believe that electoral benefits are equally a driving force, not just the policy decision at the end of the road.

One way to test for this would be to look at how party participation relates to the amount of attention a referendum or initiative receives in the public sphere. This is because a high-profile vote brings a lot of extra publicity and attention, and parties can take advantage of this by running a strong campaign in order to put themselves in the spotlight. This could then result in potential electoral benefits down the line.

Let’s first re-examine the data on Switzerland. To get an idea of how much attention a referendum received in the public sphere, I looked at data from the Vote Monitorby the University of Zurich’s Research Centre for the Public Sphere and Society. Here, all the editorial contributions that appeared in 25 national online and print media outlets during the 12 weeks prior to the referendum are added up, forming a good measure of how important the vote was in the public sphere.

The results showed that parties were increasingly likely to participate in a referendum campaign the higher the public attention for that campaign, including when considering other factors like the expected closeness of a vote and the general strength of a party. In eight of the ten referendums with the highest levels of attention, at least half of the studied parties participated, while in five referendums it was four or more, and it was never lower than two. In contrast, six out of the ten referendums with the lowest amounts of attention saw two or fewer parties participate, and it was never higher than three.

Interesting in this regard is that the tone of the editorial contributions examined in the Vote Monitor – whether they perceive the vote they are covering as positive or negative – did not have any effect on party participation whatsoever. This suggests that for Swiss parties, the adage of there being no such thing as bad publicity rings true.

Read also our article about the European Citizens’ Initiative:

Direct democratic campaigns across Europe

So how do these findings relate to parties in the rest of Europe? Here, my research used party spending as an indicator for the intensity of the campaign, and public attention was measured using Google Trends data, which shows how much people were looking up information about the referendum in question.

On average, spending was found to go up considerably the more important a referendum was in the public sphere. The UK illustrates this quite well: the Brexit referendum, which had the highest Google Trends score out of all the referendums, saw all parties spend comparatively high amounts. At the other end of the spectrum, the 2011 vote on changing the electoral system to Alternative Vote barely got any public attention, and none of the parties came close to the amounts spent during the Brexit campaign. The same can be said for Ireland, where spending was by far the highest in the high-profile 2015 Marriage Equality and 2018 Abortion referendums, while other votes did not see expenditure close to those levels.

Referendum campaigns as battlegrounds for attention

These findings are quite revealing: political parties, in Switzerland and beyond, see referendum campaigns as a way to put themselves in the centre of attention. While steering the vote to a preferred policy outcome undoubtedly remains important, direct democratic instruments and their campaigns are mainly that: instruments. Tools to receive extra publicity and visibility, likely with the hope of translating those into stronger electoral performances in the near future.

As such, the results further question the ideal of referendums as the pure expression of the will of the people. Their campaigns are essentially battlegrounds for parties to fight for attention among themselves. This emphasises the need for voters to also perform their own research and think critically when deciding how to vote. Otherwise, they might just risk falling victim to the potential manipulations of parties who are not even interested in the actual outcome of a referendum.

Edited by Benjamin von Wyl/ts

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of Swissinfo.

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