From e-voting to smart-voting : e-Tools in and for elections and direct democracy in Switzerland

To what extent do and could e-tools contribute to a democracy like Switzerland? This paper puts forward experiences and visions concerning the application of e-tools for the most traditional democratic processes- elections and, of special importance in Switzerland, direct-democratic votes.Having the particular voting behaviour of the Swiss electorate in mind (low voter turnout - especially among the youngest age group, low political knowledge, etc.) we believe that e-tools which provide information in the forefront of elections or direct-democratic votes offer an enormous service to the voter. As soon as e-voting will be possible in Switzerland (as planned by the government), those e-tools for gathering information online will become indispensable and will gain power enormously. Therefore political scientists should not only focus on potential effects of e-voting itself but rather on the combination of (connected)e-tools of the pre-voting and the voting sphere. In the case of Switzerland, we argue in this paper, the offer of VAAs such as smartvote for elections and direct-democratic votes can provide the voter with more balanced and qualitatively higher information and thereby make a valuable contribution to the Swiss democracy.

Corporate political activity and firm outcomes: A meta-analysis

Using meta-analytic methods on a sample of 74 studies, we explore the links between CPA and public policy outcomes, and between CPA and firm outcomes. We find that CPA has at best a weak effect and that it appears to be better at maintaining public policy than changing them.

The political economy of international regulatory convergence in public utilities

To what extent should public utilities regulation be expected to converge across countries? When it occurs, will it generate good outcomes? Building on the core proposition of the New Institutional Economics that similar regulations generate different outcomes depending on their fit with the underlying domestic institutions, we develop a simple model and explore its implications by examining the diffusion of local loop unbundling (LLU) regulations. We argue that: one should expect some convergence in public utility regulation but with still a significant degree of local experimentation; this process will have very different impacts of regulation.