The Effect of Direct Democracy on the Social Stratification of Political Participation: Inequality in Democratic Fatigue?

The literature on participatory democracy suggests that citizens’ direct democratic involvement will be associated with higher levels of democratic legitimacy. Simultaneously, however, it has been pointed out that a repeated reliance on direct democracy procedures might lead to democratic fatigue among citizens, and it might even lead to a ‘participation paradox’, as a proliferation of forms of participation in practice leads to more inequality. In this paper, we investigate to what extent direct democracy indeed has an effect on participation levels. Only for voting, we find that direct democracy has a direct dampening effect. Also, for non-institutionalized forms of political participation, we find that citizens with a low socio-economic status are even less likely to participate when they live in a country where direct democratic instruments are extensively available. We close with some observations on what effect direct democracy might have on the overall functioning of representative democracy.

Publication year:2018

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Authors from:Higher Education

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