The debate on the tyrannical consequences of direct democratic rule on minority rights is
almost as old as democracy itself. Yet, it has regained considerable vigour in recent years,
as the ‘plebiscitarian turn’ widely observed in Europe and North America has shaken to
the core the very foundations of representative democracy as laid out since 1945. The
article examines the issue in the case of immigrant minorities in Switzerland, that
concentrates about half of referendums worldwide. It proceeds ...
The debate on the tyrannical consequences of direct democratic rule on minority rights is
almost as old as democracy itself. Yet, it has regained considerable vigour in recent years,
as the ‘plebiscitarian turn’ widely observed in Europe and North America has shaken to
the core the very foundations of representative democracy as laid out since 1945. The
article examines the issue in the case of immigrant minorities in Switzerland, that
concentrates about half of referendums worldwide. It proceeds in two steps. First, based
on an original dataset compiling all forty-three referendums and popular initiatives on
migration-related issues held in Switzerland at federal level between 1848 and 2017, it
examines through a rational-choice institutionalist lens whether direct democratic
instruments have contributed to 'expand' or 'restrict' the rights of immigrants. The results
point to a significant ‘tyrannical’ effect of direct democracy, both at the ‘agenda-setting’
and ‘decision-making’ stages. The second section takes a normative turn and critically
discusses the democratic legitimacy of a political franchise that excludes the very
population that is most intimately and immediately coerced by electoral outcomes. It
proposes a ‘realist’ reform of the referendum procedure based on the ‘principle of
empathy’, the aim of which is to complement the norm of national self-determination
underlying the national franchise in Switzerland as well as in most democracies with an
objective examination of and due respect for the ‘rights of others’.
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