The Swiss initiative “Yes to veiling ban”: dividing the left and uniting the right?

Eugster, Beatrice (3 February 2020). The Swiss initiative “Yes to veiling ban”: dividing the left and uniting the right? (Unpublished). In: SVPW Jahreskongress/Annual Meeting of the Swiss Political Science Association 2020. Luzern. 03.02.-04.02.2020.

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This paper focuses on different argumentations in public opinion on the Swiss initiative “Ja zum Verhüllungsverbot” and asks, whether, if at all, patters supporting different constellations of arguments can be observed and how they can best be explained. Drawing on previous research which shows that support of (rather than opposition to) the ban cut across ideological camps for different reasons (here argumentations), this paper focuses on attitudes related to tolerance towards foreigners and gender equality beside socio-demographic characteristics. The empirical analysis relies on a survey in Switzerland conducted in spring 2019. Based on the latent class (regression) analysis four groups can be distinguished; a “hard pro-burqa ban”, a “cultural pro-burqa ban” (mainly due to cultural incompatibility), a “principled pro-burqa ban” (due to gender equality) and a “principled anti-burqa ban” (due to liberal principles such as freedom of religion and autonomy besides non-existent security threat). The results show that attitudes towards gender equality and foreigners, Muslims as well as Islam together with socio-demographic characteristics can only partly explain why some individuals have a higher probability to belong to a certain group. The paper concludes by discussing to which extent the mediated political debate (and its main argument) in the run-up to the “Burqa” initiative expected in 2021 might be related to public opinion and vote tendencies.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Division/Institute:	03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Institute of Communication and Media Studies (ICMB)
UniBE Contributor:	Eugster, Beatrice
Subjects:	300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology
Language:	English
Submitter:	Beatrice Eugster
Date Deposited:	12 May 2020 12:03
Last Modified:	05 Dec 2022 15:37
Related URLs:	Publication
Additional Information:	Titel im Programm: “Yes to the veiling ban” – who supports the Swiss initiative for which reasons? NOTE: a revised version of this manuscript published in the SPSR (see DOI link above).
URI:	https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/142047