Campaigning in a Direct Democracy: Three Case Studies

This research note focuses on Switzerland's relationship with the EU, and the role direct democracy plays in this relationship. Specifically, the research question asked is whether behaviour on the part of the campaigners can be understood through the lens of Riker's so‐called dominance principle: “when one side successfully wins the argument on an issue, the other side ceases to discuss it” (Riker 1993: 81). One corollary of the dominance principle is that there will tend to be a concentration on a smaller and smaller number of arguments over the course of a campaign, because campaigners are induced to focus on a small subset of issues, their “winning issues”. On the basis of a data set consisting of campaign advertisements appearing in Swiss newspapers in the four‐week periods before the EU‐related 1992, 2000 and 2001 votes, the analysis actually shows little evidence of any concentration of arguments. The research note concludes by considering some implication of this for Swiss direct democracy.     

A view from the tower: approaches to urban studies

Reform, Planning, and City Politics: Montreal, Winnipeg, Toronto . By Harold Kaplan . The Urban Kaleidoscope: Canadian Perspectives . By Leslie W. Kennedy . Planning The Urban Region: A Comparative Study of Policies and Organizations . By Peter Self .     

Cooperation and coordination among siblings: Brothers' migration in France, 1870–1940

Recent works emphasize the role of the family in migration decisions. They particularly insist on the specific schedule of mobility that depends not only on an individual life cycle but also on the situation of the whole family at a given time. French military registers provide us with very detailed longitudinal information on migrations, scarcely available in other sources. We consider the smallest family group, male siblings, and focus on their migration behaviours. We start by testing the simplest family indicator, birth rank, and we show that, by itself, it has no effect on migration decisions. We then study whether or not there is competition among siblings and, in particular, if the migration of one of them encourages or prevents mobility of the others. Comparing the chances for an individual to move before and after the migration of his brother, we show that brother mobility did have a positive influence on someone's own mobility. However, we find little evidence of the use of networks when looking at migrants' place of destination. Sons are more prone to move in a given family than in another but they don't go to the same places. Therefore, we argue that mobility appears as a collective decision that depends on family strategies. This approach sheds new light on the migration process while insisting on its family component.