Global evidence in local debates: the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in Swiss direct-democratic debates on school policy

This article analyses the use of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and other evidence in educational policy discourse in the context of direct-democratic votes in Switzerland. The results of a quantitative content analysis show that PISA is used by all actors to support a wide range of policy measures and ideological positions. Other evidence, however, is only used to support single specific policy positions. These findings demonstrate the ubiquity of PISA. The article discusses these results in view of the question of whether the incorporation of evidence into policy debates contributes to informed discourse.

The direct-democratic challenge to evidence-based policy making: Questioning the governmental PISA narrative in Swiss school policy

The democratic deficit of evidence-based policymaking and the little attention the approach pays to values and norms have repeatedly been criticized. This article argues that direct-democratic campaigns may provide an arena for citizens and stakeholders to debate the belief systems inherent to evidence. The study is based on a narrative analysis of Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) reports, as well as of newspaper coverage and governmental information referring to PISA in Swiss direct-democratic campaigns on a variety of school policy issues. The findings show that PISA reports are discursive instruments rather than ‘objective evidence’. The reports promote a narrative of economic progress through educational evidence that is adopted without scrutiny by governmental coalitions in direct-democratic campaigns to justify school policy reforms. Yet, the dominant PISA narrative is contested in two counter-narratives, one endorsed by numerous citizens, the other by a group of experts. These counter-narratives question how PISA is used by an ‘expertocracy’ to prescribe reforms, as well as the performance ideology inherent to. Overall, these findings suggest that direct-democratic campaigns may make more transparent how evidence is produced and used according to existing belief systems. Evidence, on the other hand, may be a stimulus for democratic discourse by feeding the debate with potential policy problems and solution. Thus, direct-democratic debates may reconcile normative positions of citizens with the desire to base decisions on empirical evidence.

Does a reference to evaluations contribute to discourse quality? The case of Swiss direct-democratic campaigns on school policy: a conceptual framework

This article examines how references to evaluations in school policy debates contribute to discourse quality. The article consists of two parts: First, it presents a descriptive overview of the references to evidence in direct-democratic campaigns. These results are based on a quantitative content analysis of the newspaper coverage and governmental information documents of 103 direct-democratic Swiss school policy votes. In a second step, it discusses these findings in view of the question of whether the incorporation of evaluation results in policy debates contributes to discourse quality. It presents a conceptual framework, including hypotheses and a research design to answer this question.

A new measure for party coherence: Applying a physics-based concept to the Swiss party system

The paper revives a theoretical definition of party coherence as being composed of two basic elements, cohesion and factionalism, to propose and apply a novel empirical measure based on spin physics. The simultaneous analysis of both components using a single measurement concept is applied to data representing the political beliefs of candidates in the Swiss general elections of 2003 and 2007, proposing a connection between the coherence of the beliefs party members hold and the assessment of parties being at risk of splitting. We also compare our measure with established polarization measures and demonstrate its advantage with respect to multi-dimensional data that lack clear structure. Furthermore, we outline how our analysis supports the distinction between bottom-up and top-down mechanisms of party splitting. In this way, we are able to turn the intuition of coherence into a defined quantitative concept that, additionally, offers a methodological basis for comparative research of party coherence. Our work serves as an example of how a complex systems approach allows to get a new perspective on a long-standing issue in political science.

Pre-Election Positions and Voting Behaviour in Parliament: Consistency among Swiss MPs

This article examines the determinants of positional incongruence between pre-election statements and post-election behaviour in the Swiss parliament between 2003 and 2009. The question is examined at the individual MP level, which is appropriate for dispersion-of-powers systems like Switzerland. While the overall rate of political congruence reaches about 85%, a multilevel logit analysis detects the underlying factors which push or curb a candidate's propensity to change his or her mind once elected. The results show that positional changes are more likely when (1) MPs are freshmen, (2) individual voting behaviour is invisible to the public, (3) the electoral district magnitude is not small, (4) the vote is not about a party's core issue, (5) the MP belongs to a party which is located in the political centre, and (6) if the pre-election statement dissents from the majority position of the legislative party group. Of these factors, the last one is paramount.

Public Governance durch Open Government: Zwei sich ergaenzende Ansaetze fuer die staatliche Aufgabenerfuellung der Zukunft

Waehrend zu Public Governance eine breite wissenschaftliche Debatte existiert und die Analyse staatlicher Aufgabeerfuellung davon profitiert, so steht die praxisnahe Umsetzung weniger im Zentrum der wissenschaftlichen Betrachtungen. Open Government hingegen entwickelt sich als relevante Praktikerbewegung ohne in die wissenschaftliche Diskussion eingeflossen zu sein. Dieser Artikel verbindet die beiden bislang unabhaengig voneinander existierenden Ansaetze und zeigt den Mehrwert von Open Government zur Umsetzung von Public Governance auf.