When immigrants in Switzerland apply for citizenship, the decision is made in the municipality where they reside. While in some parts of Switzerland these decisions are made by elected representatives, in other municipalities individual applications have in the past been subject to a public referendum. Dominik Hangartner and Jens Hainmueller assess the impact of direct democracy on citizenship applications, finding that far fewer applications are accepted when a referendum is used. The applicant’s country of origin is the most important factor in determining success, with applicants from Turkey and the former Yugoslavia over ten times more likely to be rejected than those from other countries, such as Italy.
Eligible immigrants that seek Swiss citizenship have to apply at the municipality in which they reside and municipalities use different institutions to decide on the naturalisation applications. Some municipalities have adopted the purest form of direct democracy: citizens vote on each application in a secret ballot referendum. How do immigrants fare when their naturalisations are decided with referendums?
We have collected and analysed data for more than 2,400 applicants that faced popular votes between 1970 and 2003. The results show that success in naturalisation referendums depended strongly on the applicant characteristics. Whereas the applicants’ language skills, economic success, and integration status played almost no role, the applicant’s country of origin was by far the most important driver of naturalisation success. Among otherwise similar applicants, the risk of being rejected by voters was more than ten times higher for immigrants from Turkey and (the former) Yugoslavia compared to immigrants from Italy or Spain. The statistical evidence also showed that this origin-based discrimination was much stronger in more xenophobic municipalities. The results of the study are detailed in the video below, and a more comprehensive review of the findings is available in a recent American Political Science Review paper.
Video: How does direct democracy influence citizenship applications?
But do immigrants fare better if naturalisation requests are decided by elected politicians, instead of voters? We collected data on naturalisation decisions from over 1,400 municipalities for the period between 1991 and 2009. In the early 1990s, over 80 per cent of municipalities used some form of direct democracy. However, in the early 2000s – following a series of landmark rulings by the Swiss Federal Court – about 600 municipalities switched to representative democracy and delegated application decisions to the elected municipality council.
The results show that there was no differential trend in the naturalisation rates during the four years prior to the switch. However, once municipalities switched from direct to representative democracy, naturalisation rates dramatically increased by about 50 per cent in the first year, and by more than 100 per cent in the following years. Overall, the statistical results demonstrate that, on average, immigrants fare much better if their naturalisation requests are decided by elected officials in the municipality council instead of voters in referendums. The data also showed that the effect of switching to representative democracy varied by origin: naturalisation rates increased by only 3 per cent for immigrants from Italy and by only 35 per cent for immigrants from Germany, but by 68 per cent for immigrants from Turkey and by 75 per cent for immigrants from Yugoslavia. Taken together, the findings show that representative democracy led to far fewer rejections for more marginalised origin groups, as detailed in our second paper. The effect of an applicant’s country of origin on the results of citizenship referendums is illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Percentage of Swiss Citizenship Applications Rejected in Municipal Referendums
Overall, many qualified immigrant applicants who were rejected by voters in naturalisation referendums would be Swiss citizens today, if their application had been decided by elected officials in the municipality council. Direct democracy provides a significant barrier for access to citizenship and it has a disproportionately large effect on those immigrant minorities who are the most marginalised in society. The empirical evidence suggests that naturalisation applications should be decided by elected municipal councils in order to minimise the risk of discriminatory rejections.
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Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.
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Dominik Hangartner – LSE, Department of Methodology
Dominik Hangartner is a Lecturer in Quantitative Research Methodology in the Methodology Institute at the London School of Economics. After pre-doctoral fellowships at Harvard University, Washington University in Saint Louis, and the University of California, Berkeley, he received his Ph.D. in Social Science from the University of Bern in 2011.
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Jens Hainmueller – Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jens Hainmueller is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Fellow at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. Before joining MIT, he completed a PhD at Harvard University and also studied at the Harvard Kennedy School, the London School of Economics, Brown University, and the University of Tübingen
Funny – it is your conclusion which is biased – “The empirical evidence suggests that naturalisation applications should be decided by elected municipal councils in order to minimise the risk of discriminatory rejections.” – Switzerland does not need any immigrants to become citizens, I didnt even think it was possible, most remain on Permis B, and why not? but your conclusion is biased towards multi-kulti and against a country keeping its national character – I would say Referenda have served Switzerland well and they should use it in these matters as well.
The current system is a useful non violent way to mantain racial purity. Think of nazism without killing.
racial purity? hardly – you are only showing your bias – brandishing ye old “race card” or worse “the nazi claim” –
citizenship is automatically granted by marriage and/or birth to a Swiss parent – demonstrating that existing law is not racist – spouses/children with other racial or ethnicity backgrounds are ensured all Swiss legal rights by the existing law – not racist, and not anything like what the Nazis did.
Limiting citizenship has more to do with economics than race – the law keeps would be freeloaders and economic migrants out- and it protects the high standards achieved by the wisdom, hard work, sacrifices – and good luck – made by its citizens over the years from being usurped or diluted by external wannabe interlopers. If you just want to live in Switzerland because you like to yodel and make Appenzeller – you can live there forever with a Permis B and have no need of citizenship – Permis B holders are very multi-kulti..
“Limiting citizenship has more to do with economics than race – the law keeps would be freeloaders and economic migrants out”
That would be all well and good if that’s what citizenship referendums did, but this article is proving that the decision fundamentally is not based on economics, but is instead skewed by an applicant’s nationality. When all things are equal – education status, income, etc. – people from Turkey and the Former Yugoslavia still have a disproportionate number of applications rejected.
I don’t think anybody is disputing here that you should manage immigration and citizenship properly, just that using referendums seems to be a fairly poor way to do it if the intention is to base the decision on economics (as you suggest).
I have no problem with their process whatsoever. While I would love to be a citizen of Switzerland more than of any other country on the planet, I would never be able to. And I commend them for protecting their heritage, traditions, and identity. It’s their country and they decide how things go down. Doesn’t get any more democratic than that. What an amazing country.
Seriously, this process is nothing other than veiled racism. So nothing matters, how many years you spent in the contributed, how much you paid in taxes, how law abiding you are. All that matters is that their ‘heritage’ and ‘culture’ (read: whiteness) is protected from you because you are somehow polluting it by just being from certain parts of the world. And they gladly accept the money in their banks and watch companies and chocolate factories from all races, no referendum there! At least call it for what it is, even if you do like the system Stan! But no, you need to prove that its somehow a justified system because how can you feel good about yourself supporting this if its not a just system right?!
looks like this is a discussion of what democracy is – a referendum is probably the purest form of democracy – it is the voice of the demos that does not go through representatives but directly to/from the people themselves – the Swiss use referenda more than any other democracy, e.g. in the US referenda are obstructed by the parties in power because they are a force of democracy that is hard to subvert – if you are unhappy with the results of democracy then perhaps you want a different kind of government – an aristocracy, autocracy or some other idea? But simply, if you do not like the way your future neighbors think and dont agree with their morals, as shown by the referendum – then why would you ever want to become part of their community? Do you just think your morals are so much better that you have a right to change them until they see straight?
Citizenship to a country you are not born to is not a right – it is a privilege and a gift – given by the people of the country you want to join. Lots of tiny dead-end country offer citizenship but few want them. It is sometimes something that you can buy from countries that make a business out of printing passports for large fees – that discrimination factor is simple – money.
I am white and I will never get Swiss citizenship – if you have enough money you can get citizenship in various places, but why does any foreigner -Turk or Yugoslav or American – want to be Swiss? In most cases it is because the economics look better in Swiss than in their home country, not that they are in love with becoming Calvinists, skiers or watchmakers….and if they love Swiss democracy, as Stan and I do, they will approve of the referendum, even if it is at a cost to their own desires.
I would like to hear from the folks who want to leave somewhere to become a citizen of Turkey for example – last I heard you cant, and you cannot even own property in Turkey if you are a foreigner – there is no separation of church and state as we know it in the USA or Switz., so perhaps would be emmigrants should first demand ”normalization” of the countries they are escaping from – perhaps if one is already a citizen of somewhere they want to leave, they should change that country for the better rather than thinking they have some right to become a citizen somewhere else?
The idea that referendums are the purest form of democracy (and by implication any other form of democracy is simply a lesser version) is complete bunkum. It’s perfectly legitimate to advocate representative democracy – even Switzerland places limits on what direct democracy can do. There are practical reasons for that (i.e. it’s impossible to ask everyone their opinion on every law) but there are also normative reasons for it as well (the most famous example being, of course, that referendums can lead to the discrimination of minorities by the majority).
What we have in this article is basically proof that individuals are incapable of forming opinions about citizenship without prejudice entering the equation. Whether Turkish/Former Yugoslavian immigrants are more likely to engage in crime, be poor, or whatever else is one issue, but this study is showing that even when they aren’t more likely to do these things they still have their citizenship rejected. In other words, voters use a flimsy proxy (nationality) when they should be judging cases on their individual merits.
That’s why almost every other developed country in the world makes these decisions using technical criteria, impartial experts, and a proper reasoned assessment of individual cases. It’s a perfect example of where direct democracy has limits – not because people are stupid, or because referendums are problematic in all circumstances, but simply because some decisions are more appropriate for referendums than others.
you say bunkum – that simply demonstrates your bias – or prejudice if you prefer – they are factually pure democracy and it is a pity your bias lets you call a spade a club.
then you say – There are practical reasons for that (i.e. it’s impossible to ask everyone their opinion on every law) but there are also normative reasons for it as well (the most famous example being, of course, that referendums can lead to the discrimination of minorities by the majority).
you also say ”…this article is basically proof that individuals are incapable of forming opinions about citizenship without prejudice entering the equation.” your statement again shows that you have a prejudice about what factors should be allowed for a person to form any judgement about any other person it would be the same to say that the United states is incapable of forming opinions about citizenship without prejudice (that is, that they have never been a felon). just because a person was convicted never means he really was a felon – especially if convicted in a country with corrupt courts – there are always exceptions to every rule but this does not mean rules cannot be chosen – the right to asylum shows a positive bias but it is a bias nonetheless.
it is not impossible to ask everyone and we are not talking about every law in any case. as to the rights of minorities being better protected by technocrats or representatives – you do not offer any proof of this – it is simply a bias, further, not every government or population champions the rights of the minority – it was formerly a hallmark ot the US but it is no longer practiced here either. the rights of minorities are abused in every developed country – but I havent the time or space to demonstrate it – the rights of minorities are more often scotched in non – western countries, such as religious minorities in Turkey..
The impartial experts whom you refer to are rarely impartial and the persons choosing which expert to believe is never impartial – that is why some of our past US presidents had experts who ”refuted global warming” you yourself show a definite bias that experts know better than the common man, and that is against the premise of the US Constitution – so you are clearly an elitist if you are aware or not. It is the nobel prize experts who caused the financial crisis of Long Term Capital Management to cite one famous case – which experts determine who is the expert? it was the experts of German biology who decided phrenology and race determined who was a superior human being – a shameful conclusion that has clouded europe’s self- understanding ever since. so much for experts – we in America are pretty happy we still have juries drawn from the ordinary masses – including some who want creationism taught in school and believe the earth is flat – not perfect, but as Churchill is supposed to have said – democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.well perhaps that will keep put off anyone from immigrating to the USA (ha!)..so, meet you at the debating team – I have no time for this now.
It’s a standard point, at the heart of almost every democracy in the world, that referendums are not applicable for every situation. Yet you tried to justify referendums in this case with an appeal to some higher democratic standard – as if to take the opposite view is to violate democratic principles. To quote your exact post: “a referendum is probably the purest form of democracy… if you are unhappy with the results of democracy then perhaps you want a different kind of government – an aristocracy, autocracy or some other idea?”
So you explicitly attempt to justify it with the completely baseless implication that if anyone disagrees with using referendums for these decisions then you must be an opponent of democracy itself – and thereby advocating “autocracy” or some other system.
For your information, as it really needs to be stated, these referendums were only ever held in a small number of Swiss cantons and they were outlawed by the Swiss courts in 2003 on the basis that they caused discrimination (that’s why the study uses data from pre-2004). There was a referendum held in Switzerland in 2008 on reintroducing them and it failed by a wide margin.
You’re essentially arguing for a method of decision-making that has only ever been used in this way by a small number of cantons in Switzerland, was explicitly banned by the Swiss courts, and failed to gain approval in a referendum of its own in 2008 (so even Swiss people do not want it). If it makes me an elitist to agree with the people of Switzerland, and indeed every other industrialised country in the world, then there must be a lot of elitists out there…
I suppose you would use the original Latin plural ”referenda” if you were a true elitist, eh? it is clear that to litter this list with a debate on this would not be worth it, not only due to the fact that you clearly do not know: your classics, etymology or the US or Swiss systems of governement, but more importantly – you are not aware of your biases, what they are based upon and how equally arbitrary (but politically correct) they are.
BTW – if you look at Switzerland’s violent crime statistics since they took in a lot of asylum seekers from the ex- Yugoslavia, you will see why ordinary people are wary of any more immigrants from the ex-Yugoslavia. A lot of these violent crimes are domestic violence so the stats dont even reflect the full volumes – but every Swiss villager has seen the problem first hand – sure it may not be the victims complete fault, after all, a lot are results of trauma, but it is not something you want happening with your kids as a potential victim too.
@KLH Normally I wouldn’t bother to respond to an argument about spelling, but that’s so hopelessly wrong that someone should really correct you. “Referenda” isn’t the original Latin plural – there was no plural of the word in Latin. The only people who make this argument (and most of them stopped making it about 15-20 years ago) are people who don’t have the faintest understanding of the word’s etymology. That’s why every major news organisation in the country now routinely uses “referendums”. Go look it up, learn something, and maybe you won’t make the same silly mistake next time.
Beyond that I think we’ll take it as given that arguing about spelling (and still getting it wrong) is the end of the line here. When you’re done brushing up on your spelling you could try Federalist No. 10 and some contemporary Swiss history.
Bill – all I can say is that your arrogance is not supported by your misinformed knowledge.
How i wished a referendum was also decided, hundred years ago, to swiss economic migrants who left Switzerland to find work in north America. I guess they must have all naturalized there as they never came back. Life is a cycle, what goes around, comes around!
The statistical numbers proof beyond any reasonable doubt that naturalization is based on the nationality of the person and that is simple and pure racism. It is racism because people are getting rejected for characteristics that are beyond their control including his origin.
that is actually funny – getting rejected because of national origin is racism, when the object was to “change”” nationality – or become part of a nation not of one’s national origin – this logic just isnt – it is opportunistic use of the unproved assumtion that each nationality is equal to any other – which, if it were true – would mean people would stay where thy are citizens and simply practice tourism elsewhere…if one accepts pure economic nomadism then there may be nothing more to nationhood than the economic benefits and geographical nature – but clearly to many there is more to it, and that is really where the dispute lies. Suggesting that there is nothing more to a nation than its economic and geographical assets should be a reason to block anyone who wants to go to a particular nation solely for the economic benefits it offers
I found this to be a very informative video. I acquired Japanese citizenship as a citizen of a North American country. The process took about one year and involved considerable Red tape. The documents compiled ended up being a kind of autobiography but the considerable effort was well worth it. Moreover, a 1-year process from start to finish is exceptionally short.
Social Science Japan Journal, Volume 18, Issue 1, Winter 2015
https://academic.oup.com/ssjj/article/18/1/3/1620596
Abstract
Citizenship eligibility has emerged as a salient issue in Japan as population diversity has increased and the political system has aligned around debates over regional security and tabunka kyōsei (‘multicultural co-existence’). A predominantly Western literature suggests that sentiments toward immigrants are driven by economic self-interest and/or cultural identity. Such approaches, we argue, privilege groups as units of analysis when it is the personal attributes of immigrants that have a bearing on critical outcomes, like naturalization. This is particularly the case in Japan, where officials maintain considerable discretionary powers in assessing the worthiness of candidates for naturalization. Drawing upon a nationally representative sample of Japanese adults, we use an experimental design to assess the average citizen’s willingness to grant citizenship to hypothetical applicants. [ The results indicate that individual applicants are viewed more favorably than their groups or nations of origin, indicating a person-positivity bias.] Korean workers are, ceteris paribus, viewed more favorably than workers from China. We also find that socioeconomic status and willingness to assimilate contribute equally to the decision to award citizenship. Yet as there is general support for high-status applicants, affluent Japanese evaluate lower status applicants more negatively, undermining the expectation of labor market competition.
I particularly agree with the sentence I enclosed in brackets. A very accommodating, respectful relationship with one’s appointed case officer makes all the difference. The surest way to be rejected is to be argumentative.