Institutional rules or political culture? Features explaining parliamentary membership fluctuation in Switzerland

Feh Widmer, Antoinette; Vatter, Adrian (2015). Institutional rules or political culture? Features explaining parliamentary membership fluctuation in Switzerland. Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen, 46(4), pp. 795-809. Nomos

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The question whether it is institutional rules or political-cultural features that explain fluctuations in parliaments is examined for the sub-national level in Switzerland for all 26 cantonal legislatures between 1960 and 2012. The findings clearly show that both institutional frameworks and cultural features play significant roles in explaining the cantonal differences of parliament fluctuation. While measures such as reducing the number of seats in parliament and limiting terms of office have a direct and strong influence on the fluctuation rate, the amount of financial remuneration and institutional regulations to strengthen parliament vis-a-vis the executive have no sustained impact. At the same time, long-term political-cultural features such as belonging to a language area prove at least as important to the central phenomenon as individual institutional arrangements. Finally, socio-economic and demographic factors, with the exception of the degree of urbanisation, prove relatively insignificant in explaining the cantonal differences in the level of parliamentary membership fluctuation.

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