IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/flgsxx/v46y2020i3p414-435.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Voting in the rain: the impact of rain on participation in open-air assemblies

Author

Listed:
  • Isabelle Stadelmann-Steffen
  • Marlène Gerber

Abstract

The analysis of how weather conditions influence participation at the ballot and whether bad weather influences ballot decisions has recently gained momentum. This paper analyses the influence of rain on participation in the Landsgemeinde – the main decision-making body of two Swiss cantons, wherein citizens meet on the main square in order to debate and decide bindingly on political matters of all sorts. We rely on a survey with an in-built conjoint experiment that presents citizens with several hypothetical Landsgemeinde situations characterized by randomly varied combinations of weather and other conditions such as outcome favorability, the expected closeness of the vote and the company available during the event. We find that rain not only decreases overall participation but it also lowers participation when votes are expected to be uncontested and for individuals who do not primarily attend the Landsgemeinde for political reasons.

Suggested Citation

  • Isabelle Stadelmann-Steffen & Marlène Gerber, 2020. "Voting in the rain: the impact of rain on participation in open-air assemblies," Local Government Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(3), pages 414-435, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:flgsxx:v:46:y:2020:i:3:p:414-435
    DOI: 10.1080/03003930.2019.1644319
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03003930.2019.1644319
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/03003930.2019.1644319?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:flgsxx:v:46:y:2020:i:3:p:414-435. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/flgs .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.