Abstract
Does direct democracy lead to increased electoral turnout? Research in the United States has demonstrated this effect and proposed two reasons for it: (1) the process of being involved in direct political participation may educate citizens and lead to their increased long-term political engagement (this explanation draws on the theory of participatory democracy) and/or (2) underlying issues and competitive campaigning draw public interest and cause higher turnout, although this effect is election-specific and short term. Recent empirical findings overwhelmingly favor the latter hypothesis although both mechanisms seem to apply.
However, research on this topic is made difficult by the fact that direct democracy and elections take place simultaneously in the United States, which makes it hard to disentangle the effects of each. We present a study from the Czech Republic where direct democracy is not tied to elections.
We analyze the effects of local/municipality direct democracy and demonstrate that it leads to increased turnout in upcoming local and national elections. We demonstrate a strong effect sparked by competitive direct democracy campaigns as well as a relatively weak long-term institutional effect of direct democracy.