IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/usg/dp2009/2009-27.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Direkte Demokratie und Menschenrechte

Author

Listed:
  • Gebhard Kirchgässner

Abstract

There is a basic tension between the principle of democracy and the rule of law. This becomes obvious whenever the Swiss citizens accept an initiative that is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. First, we discuss the traditions behind these two principles before we survey the empirical papers about the relation between direct democracy and minority rights in the US as well as in Switzerland. Then we discuss the literature on the relation between direct democracy and death penalty. There, the conflict becomes rather obvious. Solutions, which will always involve compromises between these two principles, necessitate some role of the Supreme Court, at the cost of some, but only minor limitations of direct popular rights.

Suggested Citation

  • Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2009. "Direkte Demokratie und Menschenrechte," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2009 2009-27, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen.
    • Handle: RePEc:usg:dp2009:2009-27
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ux-tauri.unisg.ch/RePEc/usg/dp2009/DP-0927-Ki.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mueller,Dennis C. (ed.), 1997. "Perspectives on Public Choice," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521553773, January.
    2. Pommerehne, Werner W., 1978. "Institutional approaches to public expenditure : Empirical evidence from Swiss municipalities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 255-280, April.
    3. Lupia, Arthur & Krupnikov, Yanna & Levine, Adam Seth & Piston, Spencer & Hagen-Jamae, Alexander von, 2009. "Why State Constitutions Differ in their Treatment of Same-Sex Marriage," MPRA Paper 15096, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Paul Brace & Brent D. Boyea, 2008. "State Public Opinion, the Death Penalty, and the Practice of Electing Judges," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(2), pages 360-372, April.
    5. Kubik, Jeffrey D & Moran, John R, 2003. "Lethal Elections: Gubernatorial Politics and the Timing of Executions," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 46(1), pages 1-25, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2010. "Direkte Demokratie," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2010 2010-26, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bruno S. Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2002. "What Can Economists Learn from Happiness Research?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 40(2), pages 402-435, June.
    2. Benoît Le Maux, 2009. "Governmental behavior in representative democracy: a synthesis of the theoretical literature," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 141(3), pages 447-465, December.
    3. Schaltegger, Christoph A & Kuttel, Dominique, 2002. "Exit, Voice, and Mimicking Behavior: Evidence from Swiss Cantons," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 113(1-2), pages 1-23, October.
    4. Lars Feld, 2005. "The European constitution project from the perspective of constitutional political economy," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 122(3), pages 417-448, March.
    5. Marc Baudry & Matthieu Leprince & Cyriaque Moreau, 2002. "Préférences révélées, bien public local et électeur médian : tests sur données françaises," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 156(5), pages 125-146.
    6. Gebhard Kirchgassner, 2002. "The effects of fiscal institutions on public finance: a survey of the empirical evidence," Chapters, in: Stanley L. Winer & Hirofumi Shibata (ed.), Political Economy and Public Finance, chapter 9, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Silika Prohl & Friedrich Schneider, 2009. "Does Decentralization Reduce Government Size? A Quantitative Study of the Decentralization Hypothesis," Public Finance Review, , vol. 37(6), pages 639-664, November.
    8. Slemrod, Joel & Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 2001. "Integrating Expenditure and Tax Decisions: The Marginal Cost of Funds and the Marginal Benefit of Projects," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 54(2), pages 189-202, June.
    9. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    10. Thomas A. Garrett & Russell S. Sobel, 2004. "State Lottery Revenue: The Importance of Game Characteristics," Public Finance Review, , vol. 32(3), pages 313-330, May.
    11. Weck-Hannemann, Hannelore, 1989. "Protectionism in direct democracy," Discussion Papers, Series II 79, University of Konstanz, Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 178 "Internationalization of the Economy".
    12. Michaelowa, Katharina & Borrmann, Axel, 2004. "What Determines Evaluation Outcomes? Evidence from Bi- and Multilateral Development Cooperation," HWWA Discussion Papers 310, Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWA).
    13. Stephen Coate, 2004. "Political Competition with Campaign Contributions and Informative Advertising," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(5), pages 772-804, September.
    14. Giovanni Trovato & Marco Alfó, 2006. "Credit rationing and the financial structure of Italian small and medium enterprises," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 9, pages 167-184, May.
    15. Gabriella Montinola & Ramon Moreno, 2001. "The political economy of foreign bank entry and its impact: theory and a case study," Pacific Basin Working Paper Series 2001-11, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    16. Zafirovski, Milan, 1999. "A socio-economic approach to market transactions," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 309-334.
    17. M. Fratianni & J. Pattison, 2005. "Who is Running the IMF: Crtical Shareholders or the Staff?," Springer Books, in: Peter Gijsel & Hans Schenk (ed.), Multidisciplinary Economics, pages 279-292, Springer.
    18. Matthias Dahm & Nicolás Porteiro, 2008. "Informational lobbying under the shadow of political pressure," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 30(4), pages 531-559, May.
    19. Aleksandras KRYLOVAS & Natalja KOSAREVA & Edmundas Kazimieras ZAVADSKAS, 2016. "Statistical Analysis of KEMIRA Type Weights Balancing Methods," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(3), pages 19-39, September.
    20. Lars P. Feld & Bruno S. Frey, 2004. "Illegal, Immoral, Fattening or What?: How Deterrence and Responsive Regulation Shape Tax Morale," Marburg Working Papers on Economics 200426, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • H72 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Budget and Expenditures
    • H74 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Borrowing

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:usg:dp2009:2009-27. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Martina Flockerzi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vwasgch.html .

    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.