Werner Hannah
Department of Political Science University of Leuven Belgium.
Eur J Polit Res. 2020 May;59(2):312-330. doi: 10.1111/1475-6765.12358. Epub 2019 Oct 14.
Across established democracies, citizens express high levels of support for decision making via referendums. What drives these preferences remains yet unclear. In this article it is argued that, first, process preferences are less stable than previously assumed but vary substantially across policy proposals. Second, it is suggested that instrumental considerations play an important role in shaping citizens' preferences for referendums. Specifically, citizens who favour the policy proposal or believe that they hold a majority opinion are expected to express more support for the use of referendums. An original survey was designed and conducted in the Netherlands (N = 1,289) that contains both between and within respondent variation across a range of policy proposals. The findings support these arguments: Both the desire for a specific policy change and the perception of being in the majority with one's policy preference relate to support for the use of referendums across policy proposals, levels of governance, and between and within respondents. This study contributes to a better understanding of process preferences by showing that these preferences have a non-stable component and that instrumental considerations play an important role in citizens' support for referendums.
在成熟的民主国家中，公民对通过全民公投进行决策表达了高度支持。然而，驱动这些偏好的因素仍不明确。本文认为，首先，程序偏好并不像之前假设的那样稳定，而是会因政策提案的不同而有很大差异。其次，有观点认为，工具性考量在塑造公民对全民公投的偏好方面发挥着重要作用。具体而言，支持该政策提案或认为自己持多数意见的公民预计会对全民公投的使用表达更多支持。在荷兰开展了一项原创性调查（N = 1289），该调查涵盖了一系列政策提案，既有受访者之间的差异，也有受访者内部的差异。研究结果支持了这些观点：对特定政策变革的渴望以及认为自己的政策偏好处于多数地位的认知，都与在各项政策提案、治理层面以及受访者之间和内部对全民公投使用的支持相关。本研究通过表明这些偏好有一个不稳定的组成部分，以及工具性考量在公民对全民公投的支持中发挥着重要作用，有助于更好地理解程序偏好。
