Konkordanz, Divided Government, und die Möglichkeit von Reformen
AbstractIn Switzerland, political concordance or direct popular rights and the resulting consociational democracy are often held responsible for delay or even cancellation of necessary political reforms. Switzerland is, however, not the only country with such a system, and direct democracy is just one out of several mechanisms fostering political concordance. Moreover, as the examples of the United States and Germany show, a concordant political system might show up even if the government does not reflect this. Thus, we first describe different manifestations of political concordance. Then, we ask for institutional preconditions for successful political reforms before the situations in Switzerland and Germany are discussed more detailed. The experience of both countries shows that political concordance is not per se destructive for political reforms, it can even be conductive. This very much depends on the concrete institutional design of political concordance.
Download InfoIf you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Bibliographic InfoPaper provided by University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science in its series Economics Working Paper Series with number 1125.
Length: 23 pages
Date of creation: Jul 2011
Date of revision:
Political Concordance; Consociational Democracy; Divided Government; Economic and Political Reforms; Westminster-System; Germany; Switzerland;
Find related papers by JEL classification:
- H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2011-07-13 (All new papers)
- NEP-CDM-2011-07-13 (Collective Decision-Making)
- NEP-GER-2011-07-13 (German Papers)
- NEP-POL-2011-07-13 (Positive Political Economics)
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Martin Hering, 2008. "Grand Coalitions for Unpopular Reforms: Building a Cross-Party Consensus to Raise the Retirement Age," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 233, McMaster University.
- Lars P. Feld & Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2003.
"Die Rolle des Staates in privaten Governance Strukturen,"
University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2003
2003-11, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen.
- Lars P. Feld & Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2003. "Die Rolle des Staates in privaten Governance Strukturen," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 139(III), pages 253-285, September.
- Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65, pages 135.
- Scherf, Wolfgang, 1998. "Mehr Gerechtigkeit und mehr Beschäftigung durch die Einkommensteuerreform?," Finanzwissenschaftliche Arbeitspapiere 53, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Fachbereich Wirtschaftswissenschaften.
- Layard, R. & Nickell, S., 1989.
"The Thatcher Miracle?,"
343, London School of Economics - Centre for Labour Economics.
- Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2008. "Direct democracy: obstacle to reform?," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 81-93, June.
- Friedrich Schneider & Alexander Wagner, 2000. "Korporatismus im europäischen Vergleich: Förderung makroökonomischer Rahmenbedingungen?," Economics working papers 2000-15, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
- Christoph A. Schaltegger & René L. Frey, 2003. "Finanzausgleich und Föderalismus: Zur Neugestaltung der föderalen Finanzbeziehungen am Beispiel der Schweiz," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 4(2), pages 239-258, 05.
- Feld Lars P. & Baskaran Thushyanthan, 2010. "Federalism, Budget Deficits and Public Debt: On the Reform of Germany's Fiscal Constitution," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 6(3), pages 365-393, December.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Martina Flockerzi).
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.