André Walter
Title
Dr.
Last Name
Walter
First name
André
Email
andre.walter@unisg.ch
ORCID
Phone
+41 71 224 2122
44 results
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Item type:Publication, Who Counts? Non-Citizen Residents, Spatial Sorting, and Malapportionment(2025-04); Existing research argues that malapportionment primarily favours rural areas, resulting in conservative biases of electoral systems. In this paper, we provide a new perspective on the study of apportionment processes by identifying the institutional design under which malapportionment may favour other regions. Because of the geographical sorting of non-citizen residents, we argue that regions with high shares of non-citizen residents benefit from population-based apportionment, whereas the spatial sorting of non-citizens does not affect malapportionment in the case of citizen-based apportionment. Empirically, we use sub-national data from ten advanced democracies to forward evidence that differences in apportionment mechanisms and district-level shares of non-citizen residents systematically influence malapportionment. Our findings suggest that the impact of malapportionment on political representation and public policies may be more heterogeneous than previously thought.Type:journal articleJournal:British Journal of Political ScienceVolume:55Scopus© Citations 1 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Vox Populi: Popular Support for the Popular Initiative(2025-02-03); Direct democratic institutions are often introduced by popular vote, but there is little research on what motivates voters to support these new instruments. Using a unique dataset on the ideological positions of voters and members of parliament, this article examines support for the introduction of the initiative right in a popular vote. We find that voters support the initiative right when they are inadequately represented in parliament. Moreover, the analysis shows that the voting behavior is consistent with voters understanding the strategic implications of adopting the popular initiative. We demonstrate that voters support its adoption if they are ideologically more proximate to the median voter than they are to the median legislator. Finally, the article shows that ideological distance matters for voters of the ruling party as well, which helps explain why a majority of voters support a political institution that limits the ruling party’s room for maneuver.Type:journal articleJournal:American Political Science ReviewVolume:119Issue:4Scopus© Citations 5 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Municipality-Level Outcomes of Direct-Democratic Votes in Switzerland, 1866-2023.(John Wiley & Sons (United Kingdom), 2025-03); ; Switzerland relies heavily on direct-democratic institutions to decide on a wide range of political issues. Since 1848, more than 600 direct-democratic votes have taken place at the national level. However, the lack of comprehensive data has limited the systematic use of these votes for research. This paper introduces a new dataset containing municipality-level outcomes for all direct-democratic votes from 1866 to 1944, and supplements post-1945 data to fill gaps in previous collections. Spanning over 150 years, the new dataset contains more than 1.3 million observations. Several empirical illustrations demonstrate the dataset's potential for research.Type:journal articleJournal:Swiss Political Science ReviewVolume:31Issue:1Scopus© Citations 1 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Partisan districting and the adoption of proportional representation: gerrymandering and its discontents(2024-05); Electoral engineering strategies in majoritarian electoral systems, in particular the possibility to contain insurgent parties by manipulating electoral districts for partisan gain, are key determinants of parties’ positions on the adoption of proportional representation (PR). Providing both qualitative and quantitative evidence, this paper demonstrates that partisan districting can be an effective strategy to protect incumbent parties’ dominant political positions. In addition, it shows how insurgent parties push for the adoption of PR to end the practice of partisan districting. Finally, it demonstrates that incumbents – in the face of increasing electoral threats – cling to the existing majoritarian system if partisan districting allows them to influence vote-seat distortions in their favor. Together, these findings suggest that the possibility to contain insurgent parties by means of partisan districting is an important but overlooked alternative to the adoption of PR. Moreover, by demonstrating that vote-seat distortions moderate the relationship between district-level electoral threats and legislators’ support for PR adoption, this paper offers an important corrective to Stein Rokkan’s influential electoral threat thesis.Type:journal articleJournal:European Political Science ReviewVolume:16Issue:2Scopus© Citations 2 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Landholding Inequality, Social Control, and Mass Opposition to Suffrage Extension(2024-04); ; Does landholding inequality undermine democratization? Recent contributions have challenged the argument that landholding elites oppose suffrage extension if geographically fixed assets are unequally distributed. We advance research on this long-standing question by exploiting exogenous variance to reinvestigate the relationship. Using multiple instruments, we find that landholding inequality decreases support for suffrage extension. By focusing on traditional patterns of social control, we explore an empirically neglected mechanism linking landholding inequality and democratization. Taking advantage of four direct democratic votes between 1866 and 1877 in Switzerland, we demonstrate that landholding inequality also influences the political preferences of ordinary citizens who do not control these resources. This paper shows that high levels of landholding inequality provide local elites with the incentive and the means to align the local population's voting behaviour with their political goals. Supplementary analyses using qualitative and quantitative data further substantiate this social control mechanism.Type:journal articleJournal:British Journal of Political ScienceVolume:54Issue:2Scopus© Citations 5 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Designing Electoral Districts for Proportional Representation Systems: How Electoral Geography and Partisan Politics Constrain Proportionality and Create Bias(2023-07-01); Type:journal articleJournal:The Journal of PoliticsDOI:10.1086/723975Scopus© Citations 6 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Ethnic Minorities, Interstate War, and Popular Support for Fiscal Capacity Development(2023-08); Type:journal articleJournal:Comparative Political StudiesScopus© Citations 4 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Ethnic Minorities, Interstate War, and Fiscal Capacity Development.Do ethnic majorities and minorities have diverging preferences for fiscal capacity? Do these preferences converge during national emergencies such as interstate war? In this paper, we provide evidence from a natural experiment to demonstrate that politically salient minority-majority divisions undermine the development of fiscal capacity. In addition, we show that the pressure of interstate war is insufficient to supersede differences in support for the expansion of state’s capacity for taxation between majority and minority groups. More specifically, we employ a regression discontinuity design using a natural border that separates linguistic groups and municipality outcomes of a popular vote on the introduction of direct taxation at federal level in Switzerland during the First World War. The findings suggest that salient minority-majority divisions have a negative effect on the expansion of states’ capacity for taxation even during periods of interstate war.Type:journal articleJournal:Comparative Political StudiesVolume:56Issue:9Scopus© Citations 4 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Designing Electoral Districts for New Proportional Representation Systems: How Electoral Geography and Partisan Politics Constrain Proportionality and Create Bias.Proportional representation (PR) electoral systems have become widespread because they are expected to ensure the representation of interests with small or geographically inefficiently distributed voter bases. Yet in reality, most PR systems consist of a large number of districts that vary substantially in size, and some have surprisingly low magnitude. Existing research shows that such differences matter greatly for political outcomes but offers no explanation for their origins. We argue that the design of electoral districts in newly adopted PR systems is systematically linked to electoral geography and partisan politics. If parties with concentrated voter bases can influence the design of the new electoral system, they will create a significant number of low-magnitude districts. In general, parties involved in designing districts benefit from electoral disproportionalities under the new PR rules. Empirically, we use newly collected district-level data for several Western European countries in the early twentieth century.Type:journal articleJournal:Journal of PoliticsVolume:85Issue:3DOI:10.1086/723975Scopus© Citations 3 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Does war exposure increase support for state penetration? Evidence from a natural experiment(2022-05-04); Type:journal articleJournal:Journal of European Public PolicyScopus© Citations 12