Direct democracy, border residence and Euroscepticism: evidence from a proposition to terminate the free movement of persons between Switzerland and the European Union

Author(s) : Laurent Bernhard, Lukas Lauener

Source : https://doi.org/10.4337/9781802208054.00016

Abstract:

Direct-democratic votes on EU-related issues have played an increasingly important role in European democracies over the last decades. This chapter seeks to enrich the state of the art by focusing on the role played by national borders as a key determinant of voting decisions. It focuses on Switzerland by studying the so-called “limitation initiative”, a proposition by the populist radical right that aimed to terminate the agreement related to the free movement of persons with the EU. Using a representative post-vote web survey, we show that border residence increased people’s likelihood of accepting the limitation initiative. This finding contradicts our hypothesis based on previous quantitative empirical research, which suggests a negative relationship between border residence and Euroscepticism. We argue that our result is attributable to the fact that Switzerland is economically much more attractive than its neighbouring EU member states, leading to negative externalities in the Swiss borderlands.

Keywords: Direct democracy; National borders; Euroscepticism; Free movement of persons; Citizen attitudes