This introduction to the symposium ‘How do Constitution-Making Processes Fail? The Case of Chile’s Constitutional Convention (2021–22)’ situates the project in the field of constitution-making, ...provides context regarding the Chilean case, summarizes some possible explanations for the failure, and describes how each article contributes to the symposium as a whole.
This article reports on an experiment testing whether additional information influences support for bond referenda. Respondents were randomly assigned to treatment conditions that varied the way the ...potential implications of property tax increases were presented to voters. The results show a persistent negative effect of tax information on the probability of support for school bond referenda across all treatments. Specifically, the results show that the probability of voting yes decreased by 6 to 9 percentage points, depending on the treatment. This result persists across multiple specifications and robustness tests. The effects are consistent across populations, with only those with high levels of education showing no statistically significant effect of the treatment on their support for school referenda.
Evidence for Practice
Some states require bond referenda to include statements that seek to make plain the connection between ballot passage and property taxes, while others do not.
We find a persistent negative effect of property tax information on the probability of support for school bond referenda of 6 to 9 percentage points, depending on the wording.
This line of research has become increasingly important to public policy making given that about half the states, including the largest state, California, have some type of property tax wording requirements for referenda.
We argue that providing wording connecting property taxes to bond referenda passage is consistent with transparency efforts governments have pursued for decades. However, such wording might not improve the accuracy of information for citizens since, ultimately, the ensuing property tax levy depends on myriad factors, only one of which is debt service on bonds.
The article presents an analysis of lay political reasoning on the U.K. EU referendum drawing on data from nine focus groups conducted in England in the few weeks preceding the vote. Participants ...were from across the political spectrum and with varied voting intentions in the upcoming referendum (Remain, Leave, and some undecided). A rhetorical analysis of the data showed that the ideological dilemma of nationalism (between safeguarding national distinctiveness and sovereignty, on the one hand, and valuing international collaboration and exchange, on the other hand) was a key organizing principle in participants 'accounts, as was the distinction between reason and bias. Participants intending to vote Leave as well as Remain engaged with both sides of the nationalism dilemma, seeking to present themselves as both open to cosmopolitan values and as concerned about preserving national sovereignty. Further, the liberal distinction between reason and bias in the data often took the form of a distinction between politics (as biased and corrupt) and the economy (as rational), thus depoliticizing the economy as a neutral and postideological sphere. The implications of these findings for contemporary politics are discussed.
Large amounts of occasional voters participated in the Brexit referendum. Did the increase in turnout affect the referendum outcome? For an answer, we exploit exogenous variation in voting costs, as ...large amounts of rainfall made voting more inconvenient in some areas. With an instrumental variable approach, we show that citizens whose voting benefits just surpassed costs under normal circumstances predominantly supported Leave. Hence, the turnout increase likely led to a larger Leave vote share. Exploring the reason for this with survey data, we show that Leave support was not generally higher in the population of low-propensity voters. Rather, the mobilisation of Leave-leaning, compared to Remain-leaning occasional voters was lopsided: The former were more likely to turn out. Our research highlights that the issue-specific mobilisation of low-propensity voters helps to explain electoral outcomes. This is particularly so in referendums with weak partisan preferences, and where single issues dominate voter decision making.
On October 1st, 2017 the Spanish government deployed the police in Catalonia to prevent people from voting in what the Spanish government considered an "illegal" referendum. The police actions ...resulted in 893 1 reported unarmed citizens injured in an event described by some international media as a case of police brutality. This paper drags from Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) to analyze discourses of normalization embedded in journalist practices in El País, the most widely read paper in the Spanish language 2. These discursive practices channel extreme positions such as beating and dissolving unarmed citizens who aim to express their opinions by voting into an agenda of acceptable socio-political norm; inevitable actions defined as a constitutional and democratic measure. In the months approaching the "referendum", El País constructed a case against Catalonia's independence discursively by (1) legitimizing views, ideologies and positions that consider the Catalan's proposal unacceptable, (2) excluding dialogue and (3) propagating anti-pluralist discourses favoring "us" above "them", which consequently (4) normalized police force as political intervention, justified with the application of the article 155 from the Spanish Constitution. 1 According to the Catalan government and the Catalan Health Department. Retrieve from
https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/10/04/inenglish/1507104937_874487.html
2 Retrieved from
https://www.statista.com/statistics/436643/mostread-newspapers-in-spain/
,
http://www.mondotimes.com/1/world/es/122/3990/9873
and
http://www.prisa.com/en/noticias/noticias-1/elpais-the-worlds-most-widely-read-digital-newspaper-in-spanish-
Why do central states accept holding independence referendums if they could lose a part of their territory during this process? Several variables have been proposed to explain this contradiction, but ...the most robust one has proved to be the competition-proximity model formulated by Qvortrup (2014). This paper challenges this theory by stressing the role of state peripheries. According to our approach, central governments are more likely to risk losing poor and isolated territories if they represent a cost for the host state. Drawing on an updated version of the contested sovereignty data set (1776–2019) by Mendez and Germann (2018), this paper demonstrates statistically that the “peripheriness” variables related to the economy and – especially – location are significant. Consequently, the competition-proximity model remains the best-fitted scheme for explaining central governments’ decision-making, but it can be amended slightly by taking into account the peripheral nature of separatist regions.
We examine the possibility of predicting the 2015 Greek Referendum results by analyzing data from Google Trends on the ‘YES’ and ‘NO’ search terms. Our analysis shows that, despite the voting ...intention polls of the YES and NO votes being marginally one above the other throughout the prevoting period, the NO hits are clearly and every day above the YES ones, with statistically significant evidence. By analyzing data from Google Trends, we calculate a valid approximation of the final result, thus contributing to the discussion of using Google Trends as an elections' results prediction tool in the future.
•We analyze data from Google Trends to predict the 2015 Greek referendum results.•Only options are “YES” and “NO” — no spelling or translation errors.•Google Trends collects data from Google; actual searches.•Our results better approximate the final results than poll agencies.•Google Trends seems to be useful for predicting elections results.
On June 23.sup.rd 2016 the UK voted to leave the European Union. The period leading up to the referendum was characterized by a significant volume of misinformation and disinformation. Existing ...literature has established the importance of cognitive ability in processing and discounting (mis/dis) information in decision making. We use a dataset of couples within households from a nationally representative UK survey to investigate the relationship between cognitive ability and the propensity to vote Leave / Remain in the 2016 UK referendum on European Union membership. We find that a one standard deviation increase in cognitive ability, all else being equal, increases the likelihood of a Remain vote by 9.7%. Similarly, we find that an increase in partner's cognitive ability further increases the respondent's likelihood of a Remain vote (7.6%). In a final test, restricting our analysis to couples who voted in a conflicting manner, we find that having a cognitive ability advantage over one's partner increases the likelihood of voting Remain (10.9%). An important question then becomes how to improve individual and household decision making in the face of increasing amounts of (mis/dis) information.
State and local governments put hundreds of referendums on the ballot each year. Often, they pass but sometimes they fail. What happens after a successful or failed attempt at the ballot box? Do ...advocates go back to voters with another request? And if they do, do they tend to succeed? We employ a regression discontinuity empirical framework to causally estimate referendum dynamics in the arena of land conservation. Our results suggest municipalities where a referendum just barely fails hold about 0.5 more referendums and pass about 0.28 more referendums than municipalities that just barely pass, meaning initial defeat is often reversed. We also investigate whether strategic changes are made in election approaches for those that try again. We find no evidence of systematic patterns in strategic revisions for municipalities that fail their first referendum. However, when revisions are made, our evidence suggests that voters appear to respond positively.
•Higher education is found to be the predominant factor dividing the nation between Remain and Leave.•An increase of about 3% of British adults accessing to higher education in England and Wales ...could have reversed the referendum result.•A decrease of about 7% in turnout in England and Wales could have changed the result of the referendum.•The factor of elderly voters, although having an effect on the outcome, was generally over reported as a dominant factor.•Sex is found to be a statistically significant factor while British-born proportions and local income levels are insignificant factors.
The UK’s EU in/out referendum raised significant debate and speculation of the intention of the electorate and its motivations in voting; much of this debate was informed by simple data analysis examining individual factors, in isolation, and using opinion polling data. This, in the case of the EU referendum where multiple factors influence the decision simultaneously, failed to predict the eventual outcome. On June 23, 2016, Britain’s vote to leave the EU came as a surprise to most observers, with a bigger voter turnout than that of any UK general election in the past decade. In this research, we apply multivariate regression analysis and a Logit Model to real voting data to identify statistically significant factors influencing the EU referendum voting preference simultaneously as well as the odd ratio in favor of Leave. Visualizations of the key findings are also provided with heat maps and graphs.
We find that higher education is the predominant factor dividing the nation, with a marginal effect on the referendum decision being stronger than any other factors particularly in England and Wales, where most Leave voters reside. An increase of about 3% in the proportion of British adults accessing to higher education in England and Wales could have reversed the referendum result in the UK. We also find that areas in England and Wales with a lower unemployment rate tend to have a higher turnout to support Leave while areas in Scotland and Northern Ireland with a higher proportion of university-educated British adults have a higher turnout to support Remain. Further we find that areas with high proportions of British male adults show a higher percentage of Leave votes. A higher proportion of elderly British contributes to a higher percentage of Leave votes, but does not lead to Leave outcomes on their own.
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