How Direct Democracy A ects Local Naturalization Rates ...wise/Undergrad Thesis/Tess Wise...How...

How Direct Democracy Affects

Local Naturalization Rates:

Evidence from Switzerland

Tess Wise

Department of Political Science

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

A thesis submitted for the degree of

Bachelor of Science (BS)

2011 May

mailto:[email protected]

http://polisci.mit.edu

http://mit.edu

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the help and guidance of my thesis advisor,

Jens Hainmueller, who not only helped with this thesis, but has allowed

me to work with him on the Swiss Naturalizations Project for the past two

years and has generally been a source of inspiration and guidance during

my time at MIT. Dominik Hangartner at Berkeley has also been invovled

in this project and I own a great debt to the previous work done by these

two men.

Additionally, this project would not have been possible without the data

made available by the Swiss Government, specifically the Swiss Federal Of-

fice of Statistics. Funding for the Swiss Naturalizations Project research was

generously provided by Swiss National Science grant no. 100017-132004.

I would also like to acknowledge the helpful comments made by my second

reader, Bruno Perreau, as well feedback from Roger Petersen, who helped

guide the development of this thesis during the thesis preparation class

[17.THT].

Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to the thousands of unnamed

individuals who have coded for the LaTeX project for free. It is due to their

efforts that we can now generate professionally typeset PDFs.

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 The Swiss Case 5

2.1 Swiss nationality: a historical perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2.2 Right-wing opposition: the rise of the SVP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2.2.1 Brief overview of the Swiss political system . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2.2.2 The emergence of the SVP as a major party . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2.2.3 SVP ideology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

3 Literature Review 15

3.1 Review of Helbling (2008) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

3.2 Review of Helbling (2010) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

3.2.1 Discussion of Helbling’s dependent variable . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

3.2.1.1 Validity issues regarding Helbling’s dependent variable 17

3.2.2 Discussion of Helbling’s independent variable . . . . . . . . . . . 18

3.2.2.1 Validity issues regarding Helbling’s independent variable 19

3.2.3 Discussion of Helbling’s confounding variables . . . . . . . . . . . 20

3.2.4 Discussion of Helbling’s results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

4 Hypotheses 23

5 Methodology 25

5.1 Why I have selected a fixed effects estimator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

5.2 The Mechanics of a fixed effects estimator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

5.3 My fixed effects model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

5.4 Discussion and operationalization of variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

iii

CONTENTS

5.4.1 Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

5.4.2 Indepdent Variable: Municipal Institution . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

5.4.3 Selection Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

5.4.4 Dependent Variable: Municipal Naturalization Rate . . . . . . . 31

5.4.4.1 Trends in naturalizations: 1990 – 2009 . . . . . . . . . . 31

6 Data Analysis 35

6.1 Model 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

6.2 Model 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

6.3 Model 1: Subgroup Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

6.3.1 Differences by language-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

6.3.2 Municipality Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

6.4 Model 3: Interaction Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

6.4.1 Influx of immigrants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

6.4.2 Level of SVP support in 2003 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

6.5 Unions of Subgroups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

7 Discussion 69

7.1 H1: Removing directly democratic institutions leads to increased natu-

ralization rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

7.2 H2: The effect does not depend on initial conditions such as size of

municipality or increases in the foreign population . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

7.3 H3: A high level of SVP support suppresses naturalization rates . . . . 71

7.4 Trends recovered from finer-grained analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

8 Conclusion 75

References 77

iv

1

Introduction

Immigration is one of the biggest challenges facing the modern states. As increasing

numbers of immigrants arrive at their gates, states must decide which newcomers will

be extended the possibility of citizenship. In the modern Western European state,

citizenship implie not only the extension of legal rights, but often redistributive benefits.

As such, deciding which immigrants can become citizens is a critical decision. For

centuries many European states have relied on the principle of jus sanguinis (citizenship

by blood) as the mechanism through which citizenship was acquired. Like culture

and language, citizenship was passed down through generations from parent to child

through kinship. Foreigners who arrived in these countries were assimilated, or in the

post-war boom of the 1950s and 60s, were labeled as “guest workers” implying a level

of transience which kept them separate from the national identity. Now, instead of just

work, immigrants to Western Europe are looking for new homes for themselves and

their families. They are looking to become citizens.

Currently some of the immigrants to Western European nations look different than

past waves of immigrants. Instead of being from Portugal or Poland they are often

from the Balkans or North Africa, bringing different ethnic and religious traditions to

their new homes. Naturalizing these foreigners has raised questions of national identity

throughout Europe and rejecting their claims to citizenship, or even residence, has

become a rallying cry for right-wing anti-immigrant parties. This thesis explores only

a small part of these larger issues by studying the influence of the institutions which

govern naturalization. These institutions are not neutral actors and, as we will see, the

use of certain institutions may have a profound effect on the naturalization process.

1

1. INTRODUCTION

In Switzerland the process of naturalization in encased in a peculiar institutional

set-up. In order to become a citizen a foreign resident must have lived in Switzerland for

twelve or more years 1 and must be integrated into the Swiss way of life, familiar with

Swiss customs and traditions, comply with the Swiss rule of law, and cannot endanger

Switzerland’s internal or external security ([admin.ch, 2010]). The subjective parts of

the application are assessed “based on cantonal and communal 2 reports” ([admin.ch,

2010]). Therefore, before applying for federal citizenship, a foreigner must first gain

both municipal and cantonal citizenship. In general, aside from posing certain residency

requirements, the canton defers to the municipality. In sum, Swiss citizens are first and

foremost a citizen of their local municipality and those who wish to apply for citizenship

must do so at municipal level.

Swiss municipalities have a variety institutions which govern the naturalization pro-

cess ranging from executive committees, in which a group of either elected or appointed

officials make rulings on citizenship applications, to the use of popular referenda (direct

democracy), in which the citizens of the municipality vote yes or no on the application

of a local foreigner. The use of popular referenda in Switzerland is not unique to citi-

zenship, but is used throughout the political system on a wide variety of topics at the

municipal, cantonal and national levels.3

In 2001 the Swiss municipality of Emmen generated controversy when its use of

popular referenda to confer citizenship was said to enable racism in the naturalization

process. Emmen is a city of about 30,000 of which 30% of the population are foreign

nationals, the majority of which are from the former Yugoslavia. Using popular refer-

enda, Emmen rejected 19 out of the 23 citizenship applications in 2001 (Gross [2006],

37). Notably, all of the rejected came from ex-Yugoslavia. Some of the applicants had

been living in Switzerland for more than 20 years (Gross [2006], 37).

In the wake of this controversy and others, the Swiss Federal Court ruled in 2003

that negative citizenship decisions had to be substantiated. Using popular referenda

or other directly democratic institutions to confer citizenship did not allow the appli-

cant to learn why he or she was denied citizenship and thus these institutions became

1There are some cases in which this is relaxed (facilitated naturalizations). Additionally, yearsspent living in Switzerland between the ages of 10 and 20 count as double ([admin.ch, 2010]).

2Municipalities (also called communes) are the smallest governmental division in Switzerland. Theyrange in size from small towns to large cities and currently number around 2,500 (Feb, 2010).

3Citizens are also asked to vote on many referenda every year. For example, in Zrich, citizens couldvote on an average of 60 referenda per year between 1936 and 1995 ([Ladner, 2002], 817)

2

unconstitutional. Many municipalities were forced to change the institution they used

to confer citizenship.

This change generates variation in municipal institutions over time and because

this variation is due to a somewhat exogenous force (change in the law), it creates

a quasi-natural experiment. Using a fixed effects transformation, I can remove time-

constant confounding variables then apply a fixed effects estimator to estimate the

average treatment effect of removing direct democracy on naturalization rates. Using

these tools, I find that moving away from direct democracy to another institution, such

as an executive committee, increases naturalization rates by 0.7 percentage points.

Once I have established this trend, I will explore different subgroups within my sample

to explore the effect of removing directly democratic institutions in different types of

municipalities.

Better understanding the effect of direct democracy will make a contribution to

the scholarship in this area. If directly democratic institutions suppress naturalization

rates, it may be due to the fact that they enable a certain form of discrimination on the

part of voters. Many scholars (Gamble [1997], Frey and Goette [1998]) have theorized

that direct democracy enables discrimination against minorities, but because institu-

tions rarely change in an exogenous fashion, cross-sectional studies struggle to isolate

the institutional effect. Understanding the effect of directly democratic institutions will

help policy makers decide if they want to use them. Additionally, as we will see in this

thesis, exploring this effect will allow me to test a variety of theories presented in the

related political science literature.

3

1. INTRODUCTION

4

2

The Swiss Case

Currently one in five Swiss inhabitants is not a citizen. The number of foreign nationals

as a percent of the overall population has risen steadily over the past 40 years, going

from 16.2% in 1970 to 22.0% in 2009. Compared to other European nations, the

percentage of foreign nationals in Switzerland is very large. While the magnitude of

this number is partially due to significant immigrant inflows, a secondary reason for

the high percentage of foreigners in Switzerland is the exclusionist nature of Swiss

citizenship.

Over the past two decades, the politics of citizenship have become an increasingly

contentious political topic in Switzerland. National referenda regarding the natural-

ization process were voted on in 1983, 1994, 2004 and 2008. During this period, the

Swiss People’s Party (SVP) has come to represent the anti-immigrant position in Swiss

politics. Compared to other right-wing anti-immigrant parties in Europe, such as the

Front National in France, or the Austrian Freedom Party, the SVP enjoys widespread

popularity, and in a short period of time has emerged as the most widely supported

party in Switzerland. The uniqueness of the Swiss case in terms of both the construc-

tion of Swiss nationality and the particularly strong support for anti-immigrant parties

such as the SVP makes it a fascinating choice for the study of citizenship politics.

2.1 Swiss nationality: a historical perspective

Switzerland is an interesting case in which to consider citizenship politics due to the par-

ticular construction of the Swiss national identity. As a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual

5

2. THE SWISS CASE

country, drawing a distinction between foreigners and natives has allowed Switzerland

to reinforce a unified national identity which is “negatively constructed” (Riano and

Wastl-Walter [2006], p.1694). Where linguistic and cultural unity are not possible axes

upon which to build national solidarity, definition by opposition to “foreigners” has

sufficed.

In Riano and Wastl-Walter [2006], the authors identify four periods in Swiss his-

tory which help describe the development of an exclusionist citizenship regime. First,

after Switzerland began to industrialize in the 1850s, the Swiss government brought in

foreign labor from France, Germany, and a few other European countries. For these im-

migrants, citizenship was offered after two years of residence (Riano and Wastl-Walter

[2006], p.1696), however, by the early 1900s, a “negative reaction” to these foreigners

had developed amongst the Swiss elite (Riano and Wastl-Walter [2006], p.1697).

Second, during the inter-war period, right-wing Swiss politicians popularized the

term “uberfremdung,” referring to a foreign threat to Swiss identity, even though during

this time there were relatively few foreigners in the country(Riano and Wastl-Walter

[2006], p.1698). In 1932 the Federal Law on Settlement and Residence of Foreigners

was passed. This law meant that foreigners were no longer entitled to permanent

residence and officials granting work permits were required to consider the “intellectual

and economic interests of the country as well as the degree of uberfremdung” (quoted

in Riano and Wastl-Walter [2006], p.1698). This ideology was cemented during the

Second World War when threat from the neighboring regimes of Germany and Italy

was combatted by proclaiming support for “traditional Swiss values” leading to an

attitude known in Switzerland as the “hedgehog mentality” (Riano and Wastl-Walter

[2006], p.1698).

Third, in the post-war period, foreigners were brought to Switzerland as “guest

workers,” a policy which emphasized their transience on the national landscape and

kept them safely away from the national identity (Riano and Wastl-Walter [2006],

p.1699). Despite this, the feeling of uberfremdung was still widespread, and in 1952

the minimum residency required to apply for citizenship was elevated to twelve years

(Riano and Wastl-Walter [2006], 1699). To this day, Switzerland still requires twelve

years of residence before foreigners can apply for citizenship. The economic downturn in

the 1970s meant that Switzerland was no longer a “guest worker” destination. Despite

the decrease in foreign nationals, 85% of Swiss voters rejected an initiative proposing

6

2.2 Right-wing opposition: the rise of the SVP

solidarity with foreigners by granting automatic family reunions and the abolition of

seasonal-worker status (Riano and Wastl-Walter [2006] p.1701).

Fourth, in the post 1990s asylum seekers from ex-Yugoslavia began arriving in

Switzerland reigniting feelings of uberfremdung. In tension with this sentiment, Switzer-

land officials felt that the country needed to develop closer relationship with the Euro-

pean Union in order to “ensure its economic future” (Riano and Wastl-Walter [2006],

p. 1702). In response to these dual pressures, the Swiss government created a commis-

sion to answer the question of how it could develop an immigration policy which would

simultaneously move the country closer to the EU without increasing uberfremdung

(Riano and Wastl-Walter [2006], p.1702). The commission suggested that Switzer-

land consider immigrants as being either “culturally close” or “culturally distant” from

native Swiss citizens as determined by the immigrant’s country of origin (Riano and

Wastl-Walter [2006], p.1703). To this day, the Swiss government still categorizes non-

European non-North American foreigners as “third nation foreigners” on its statistical

documents (see, for example, PETRA [2009]).

In sum, it is interesting to note that hostility towards immigrants is not a new

development in Switzerland and that the construction of foreigners as a “outgroup”

allows a Swiss “ingroup” to form by opposition where common language and culture do

not necessarily bind the Swiss together. Despite the constancy posed by uberfremdung,

it is important to note that the interaction between feelings of threat and the Swiss

citizenship regime has evolved in an exclusionist direction and may well continue in

this manner.


2.2.1 Brief overview of the Swiss political system

To understand the rise of the Swiss People’s Party it is important to give a brief

overview of the Swiss political system. Switzerland is a federal republic which has a

bicameral parliament and seven-member executive. The parliament consists of a 200-

seat lower house called the National Council which represents the population as a whole

and a 46-seat upper house called the Council of States which represents the cantons

(of which there are 20 “full cantons” with two seats each and six “half cantons” which

have one seat each). Switzerland uses a PR (proportional representation) system with

7

2. THE SWISS CASE

an open list to elect the representatives to the National Council (the lower house). The

representatives in the Council of States (upper house) are elected in their individual

cantons and nearly all the cantons use a two-round majoritarian system (Dardanelli

[2008]). The parliamentary elections occur once every four years.

The seven-member executive, called the Federal Council, is elected two months after

the parliamentary elections by both chambers sitting together as the “United Federal

Assembly.” Once elected, representatives serve for a four-year term and members of

the Federal Council cannot be impeached or voted out by the parliament (Dardanelli

[2008]). Unlike unitary heads of state, the Federal Council is a non-hierarchical body in

which each of the seven members has an equal footing (Church [2004], p.117). Between

1959 and 2003 the seats in the Federal Council were distributed according to a “magic

formula” in which the Christian Democrats (CVP), the Social Democrats (SPS) and

the Free Democrats (FDP) each had two seats and the Swiss People’s Party (SVP)

had one. A fifth, party, the Green Party, often gained significant representation, but

never gained a seat. In 2003 the “magic formula” was broken with the election of

Christoph Blocher and the new repartition of the seats became 2-SVP, 2-SPS, 2-FDP

and 1-CVP. In 2007, the SVP gained an even larger percentage of the popular vote

than in pervious elections (28.9%), but due to inter-party politics one of the SVP

representatives, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, broke with the SVP to start her own party,

the Conservative Democratic Party of Switzerland (BDP), so the repartition of seats

became 1-SVP, 1-BDP, 2-FDP, 2-SPS, 1-CVP.

2.2.2 The emergence of the SVP as a major party

The SVP grew out of the Party of Farmers, Traders and Independents (BGB) which

changed its name to the Swiss People’s Party when it merged with the Democratic Party

in 1971. In the 1970s and 1980s the support for the SVP was around 11% (Skenderovic

[2009], p.128). The emergence of the SVP as a more powerful party is linked to the work

of Christoph Blocher who, as the president of the Zurich branch of the SVP, proposed an

increasingly radical right-wing agenda (Skenderovic [2009], p.130-131). By the 1990s

the populist and right-wing Zurich branch of the SVP emerged in conflict with the

more traditional Bern branch. During this time the SVP also doubled its number of

cantonal branches until it was represented in all cantons (Skenderovic [2009], p.133).

Radiating out from Zurich, the party steadily gained vote share during the 1990s and in

8


the 1999 federal election the party became the strongest in Switzerland, gaining 22.5%

of the popular vote (Skenderovic [2009], p.133). The difference between SVP support

in 1995 and 1999 was 12.5 percentage points which was the biggest increase in votes

every seen by a party in the history of Swiss politics (Skenderovic [2009], p.150). It is

interesting to note that this huge increase was seen when the cantonal branches aligned

with the agenda of radical Zurich branch of the party lead by Blocher (Skenderovic

[2009], p.151). Figure 2.1 below shows the evolution of the SVPs vote share from 1971

to 2007.

Figure 2.1

10

10

1015

15

1520

20

2025

25

2530

30

30Percent of popular vote

Perc

ent

of p

opul

ar v

ote

Percent of popular vote1970

1970

19701980

1980

19801990

1990

19902000

2000

20002010

2010

2010year

year

yearEvolution of SVP vote share 1971 - 2007

Evolution of SVP vote share 1971 - 2007

Evolution of SVP vote share 1971 - 2007

2.2.3 SVP ideology

The SVP is described by scholars as a “far-right anti-immigrant party” (FRAIP) or

simply an “anti-immigrant party” (AIP) (see Cochrane and Nevitte [2007], Dancygier

[2010]). In terms of ideology, the SVP is extreme within the Swiss political system.

Figure 2.2 below shows the relative position of the SVP compared to the four other

largest parties in the 2007 elections (CVP, FDP, SPS (shown here as simply SP) and

the Greens). Two main takeaways emerge from this graphic. First, it is clear that

SVP elites are more conservative than the rank and file SVP voters. Second, it is also

clear that the SVP is much more extreme than other three governing parties (FDP,

CVP and SPS) which are all closer to center. Another way of understanding SVP

9

2. THE SWISS CASE

Figure 2.2

ideology relating to immigrants and naturalizations is to consider the anti-immigrant

or anti-naturalization policies proposed or supported by the SVP during the 1990 –

2009 period. While immigration was not “high on the SVP’s list of priorities” in the

1980s, during the 1990s (in part due to the influence of Blocher) the party became

“increasingly preoccupied” with immigration issues (Skenderovic [2009], p.163). In

1987 the party platform completely ignored immigrant issues except to state that the

SVP would like to see the percentage of foreigners reduced (Skenderovic [2009], p.163).

In the 1991, the party platform still supported “facilitated naturalization” for second

and third generation immigrants 1 (Skenderovic [2009], p.164).

As the years progressed, the party became more exclusionist. Damir Skenderovic

cites this as one part of a three-part “winning formula” of neoliberalism, exclusionism

and nationalism which lead to the dramatic gains made by the SVP between 1999 and

2003 (Skenderovic [2009], p.170). In particular, in order to promote an exclusionist

policy, the SVP promoted the municipal right to confer citizenship through direct

1recall that Switzerland espouses jus sanguinis so second and third generation immigrants may notbe Swiss citizens even if they are born and live all their life in Switzerland

10


democracy even asfter this practice was declared unconstitutional by the Swiss Federal

Tribunal in July 2003 (Skenderovic [2009], p.166, also see Gross [2006]). Beginning

in the early 2000s, the party began to declare that immigrants were a threat to the

national identity and emphasized the existence of a common Swiss mentality which was

diluted by the presence of immigrants (Skenderovic [2009], p.168).

In 2004 the SVP campaigned against a referendum calling for facilitated natural-

ization for Swiss-born foreign nationals which would have also granted automatic Swiss

citizenship to persons born in Switzerland with one parent also born in Switzerland

(third generation foreign nationals). As part of this campaign, the SVP used a par-

ticularly provocative poster (Figure 2.3) which shows multi-colored hands reaching for

a pile of Swiss passports. In 2007 the party launched a campaign to amend the pe-

Figure 2.3

Poster reads ”Stop the mass naturalizations” (http: // worldradio. ch )

nal code to allow judges to directly deport foreigners who commit serious crimes and

potentially deport the entire family of the criminal if they are less than 18 years old.

Again, a series of provocative posters lead to international attention. This time, the

11

http://worldradio.ch

2. THE SWISS CASE

poster (shown in Figure 2.4) showed a white sheep kicking a black sheep out of Switzer-

land with the tag-line “For more security.” Apparently, this poster was mailed to every

home in Switzerland (dailymail.co.uk [2007]) and while the initiative was not successful

in 2007, it eventually passed in November 2010. The poster of the white sheep kicking

the black sheep provoked outrage within and outside of Switzerland. Bruno Walliser, a

Zurich chimney sweep who ran for Parliament on the party ticket, responded by saying:

“Our political enemies think the poster is racist, but it just gives a sim-

ple message...The black sheep is not any black sheep that doesn’t fit into

the family. It’s the foreign criminal who doesnt belong here, the one that

doesn’t obey Swiss law. We dont want him” (Sciolino [2007] - http:

//www.nytimes.com).

Figure 2.4

Poster reads ”For more security” (http: // www. dailymail. co. uk )

Finally, in 2009 an initiative proposed by the SVP to ban the building of future

minarets on Swiss mosques gained 57.5% of the votes and was passed. This initiative

was seen as using directly democratic institutions to target a particular minority group,

12

http://www.nytimes.com


http://www.dailymail.co.uk


namely Muslim immigrants from Turkey and Kosovo. The ban, which is now in force,

seems to project an ideological rather than material victory as of the 150 mosques of

prayer rooms in Switzerland only four had minarets when the initiative was proposed

(Erlanger and Cumming-Bruce [2009] - http://www.nytimes.com). The poster used

by the SVP in support of this initiative (see Figure 2.5) portrays a woman in a full

Islamic veil (which are almost never seen in Switzerland) standing in front of the Swiss

flag which is seemingly pierced by imposing black minarets.

Figure 2.5

http: // purpler. files. wordpress. com/ 2010

In summary, the particular construction of the Swiss nationality and the presence of

a widely supported anti-immigrant political party, the SVP, make studying the politics

of naturalizations particularly interesting in the Swiss case. Now, I will discuss how

my work responds directly to previous scholarship on the interaction between direct

democracy and naturalizations in Switzerland.

13


http://purpler.files.wordpress.com/2010

2. THE SWISS CASE

14

3

Literature Review

Marc Helbling is the major author contributing to the recent literature on naturalization

politics in Switzerland. In this section, I will analyze his book published in 2008 and

an article published in 2010. These works pose a series of questions which will form my

hypotheses listed in the next section.

3.1 Review of Helbling (2008)

In Practising citizenship and heterogenous nationhood: naturalizations in Swiss mu-

nicipalities (2008) Helbling attempts to answer the question of whether closed ballot

decisions on naturalization are more discriminatory to applicants of Muslim origin.

Helbling makes the argument that municipalities which use closed ballot decisions (di-

rect democracy) had higher rejection rates of Muslim immigrants than other groups

(Helbling [2008], 88). He does not, however, determine conclusively if there is a causal

mechanism at work. Such a causal mechanism would link one factor, such as insti-

tutional arrangements, to naturalization outcomes. Instead Helbling shows that these

two factors both appear in some cases where there are a host of other uncontrolled

variables at play. This study, while qualitatively interesting, has a very limited sample

of only 14 municipalities (out of a total of around 2500), uses average Muslim rejection

rates (averaged over twelve years) as its dependent variable, and, does not show any

causal mechanism because its data all fall on one side of the institutional reform of

2003 so we cannot know how these municipalities would have acted in the absence of

direct democracy. I now turn to Helbling’s 2010 work, which is a large-N analysis that

more closely mirrors my own.

15

3. LITERATURE REVIEW


In “Naturalization politics in Switzerland: Explaining rejection rates at local levels,”

(2010) Helbling uses large-N analysis to analyze the connection between “local citi-

zenship politics” and the “average municipal rejection rate” using data which ranges

from 1990 to 2002. I will discuss Helbling’s choice and operationalization of both the

dependent, independent and confounding variables and his results.

3.2.1 Discussion of Helbling’s dependent variable

Helbling uses the “average municipal rejection rate” as his dependent variable. This is

given as the ratio between the number of rejected applications and the total number

of applications averaged over the 12 year period of observation (1990-2002) for each

of 106 municipalities. In collecting the average municipal rejection rate, Helbling on

self-reported data about the average municipal rejection rate from 1990-2002. Hel-

bling started by contacting 207 municipalities and requesting that their administrators

complete a questionnaire. To select this initial group of 207, Helbling first limited his

sample to the municipalities documented by Ladner and his colleagues in their Swiss

municipality surveys (because these were the only ones for which he had socio-economic

and political information). These surveys apparently covered 80% of all Swiss munici-

palities (Helbling [2010], 39). From this group, Helbling first selected all municipalities

with a population over over 10,000 (N=107). Then he supplemented this group by

randomly selecting 100 municipalities from the rest of the Ladner data (population

less than 10,000). This gave him the initial group of 207 which were contacted in the

summer of 2003.

Out of this initial group which was contacted, 74% (N=154) gave Helbling their

average municipal rejection rates for 1990-2002. Among these municipalities, Helbling

found that 48 of the 154 municipalities in his sample had seen less then ten applications

total between 1990 and 2002. These also “correspond roughly to the group of munic-

ipalities with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants” (Helbling [2010], 40). Helbling removes

these from the analysis to get a final group of 106 cases. With respect to the smaller

municipalities, Helbling then notes that he is not sure how this initial condition actu-

ally effect the results because he has only a small sample, but he poses an interesting

hypothesis that small municipalities may pursue a more generous citizenship policy:

“Surprisingly, I found that in almost all municipalities where only up to

ten applications were submitted between 1990 and 2002, none of them was

rejected (Helbling and Kriesi 2004: 46-48; see also Piguet and Wanner 2000:

16


56-58). Does this mean that small communities pursue a more generous

citizenship policy? Given the very small number of candidates, it is hard

to tell, since the acceptation rate depends on very few individual cases”

(Helbling [2010], 40).

Helbling accepts that this might not actually be the case and proposes some other

mechanism which could explain his observation. First, he proposes that perhaps in

smaller municipalities foreigners are “better integrated” due to increased contact with

the local population and therefore “meet with less resistance of the local population

when they seek to become a full member of their municipality “(Helbling [2010], 40).

Second, Helbling considers the opposing argument that small municipalities are less

generous with their citizenship policy and “considering the small size of these commu-

nities, negative decisions are anticipated more easily and potential candidates deterred

from submitting their dossiers” (Helbling [2010], 40). This dependent variable presents

certain validity issues.

3.2.1.1 Validity issues regarding Helbling’s dependent variable

First, the initial selection of municipalities is far from random and also includes selection

on the dependent variable. The first 107 municipalities are selected entirely based upon

size and out of the 100 small municipalities which were randomly selected, it seems that

only a handful made it into the final data set (N=106). Additionally, Helbling provides

no summary statistics so we do not know how the group of municipalities selected

by Helbling compare to the average Swiss municipality. Helbling concedes that given

his final sample, he cannot draw inferences about citizenship politics in very small

municipalities (Helbling [2010], 41), but it is not even clear the extent to which he can

draw inferences about Swiss municipalities more generally.

Second, as Helbling notes, the dependent variable does not account for the fact that

some candidates may be suggested to withdraw their application (this is sometimes rec-

ommended if they do not have sufficient command of a local language). Through inter-

views with local officials, Helbling was told that most applications which are originally

withdrawn are resubmitted.

Third, Helbling raises the issue that in conservative municipalities some immigrants

may not even apply (even though they would like to) because they do not expect to be

successful. Helbling notes that current ethnographic literature on Switzerland indicates

that the decision to naturalize is “not always consciously taken and cannot be explained

by clearly distinguishable factors” (Helbling [2010], 38). This may or may not mitigate

the validity issue. Helbling concludes that “one can assume that some people are

17


deterred from submitting an application in municipalities with a restrictive citizenship

policy” and that if anything, this probably makes the naturalization rejection ratio

artificially lower in more conservative municipalities because “more candidates would

be rejected in municipalities with a restrictive understanding of citizenship” (Helbling

[2010], 39).

In this case, the choice of rejection rates as the dependent variable confounds these

problems. By considering only those immigrants which apply, it leaves the researcher

with a lack of information about whether the institution in question acts as a deterrent

to naturalizations relative to the immigrant population of the municipiality. If Helbling

were to use the naturalization rate (calculated as the number of naturalizations divided

by the total foreign population of the municipality in the pervious year) this information

would be present.

Finally, using self-reported information from a limited number of municipalities

raises many additional validity questions. Should we assume that municipal clerks are

always honest or carefully report these statistics to researchers? In the data used in this

thesis we asked for self-reported information from municipalities and then contrasted

it with the official data received from the Swiss Federal Office of Statistics. More

general work using this data has shown there to be significant differences between the

self-reported data and the official values.

3.2.2 Discussion of Helbling’s independent variable

The independent variable used by Helbling in 2010 is “local citizenship politics.” Hel-

bling proposes “a continuous scale,” which differentiates how restrictive the understand-

ing of citizenship is for a given municipality. At one end of the scale are municipalities

with a very liberal understanding of citizenship. At the other end (though allowing for

several options between the extremes), are municipalities with very “hostile attitudes

towards immigrants” (Helbling [2010], 44).

To create this variable, Helbling uses three indicators. The first is the municipal

understanding of citizenship. This indicator is operationalized as the percentage of

yes votes on certain municipal referenda concerning immigration and naturalization.

Helbling justifies this indicator, saying that if “in a municipality laws on facilitated

naturalization are rejected and laws limiting immigration are approved, this indicates

that the majority of Swiss citizens have a restrictive understanding of citizenship”

(Helbling [2010], 44). To create this variable, Helbling carried out factor analysis with

the percentage of yes votes and used the second resulting factor because it “matched

fairly well” with his conceptualization of municipal understanding of citizenship (Hel-

18


bling [2010], 44). I am not entirely sure how this was eventually operationalized, but

it appears that a dummy-variable was assigned to some municipalities which had a

restrictive understanding of citizenship.

A second indicator is municipal ideology. Helbling uses data collected by Ladner

during three surveys in 1988, 1994 and 1998 (see citation for Ladner [1991]) which has an

indicator for “the perception of the strength of the respective parties. The municipal

secretaries were asked to indicate how important each political party is” (Helbling

[2010], 45). For the regression analysis, the party variables have been operationalized

as binary: ’important’/’unimportant’. Helbling claims that “Such an operationalisation

is better than accounting for the seats of the different parties in the local parliament or

the executive body insofar as the number of received votes does not necessarily reflect

the power of these parties. Particularly in small towns and villages, the position of

individual actors is often more important than the size of the party” (Helbling [2010]).

The final indicator is the formal institutional structure. It is important to note that

the particular types of direct democracy are coded differently and enter the analysis as

a series of dummy variables. As Helbling explains:

“In the analysis, I will make a distinction between municipalities in which

the entire population decides at closed ballot and those in which decisions

are taken during municipal assemblies. While both systems constitute di-

rect democratic institutions, let us see whether it makes a difference when

decisions are taken in complete anonymity at closed ballot or when people

have to show their hands during municipal assemblies” (Helbling [2010]).

These three indicators together comprise “local citizenship politics” which is Helbling’s

independent variable.

3.2.2.1 Validity issues regarding Helbling’s independent variable

This three-part independent variable presents a variety of validity issues. First, the

indicator for “municipal understanding of citizenship” is not clearly explained and may

simply be another form of ideology. Including both could lead to a sort of double

measuring of this aspect of local citizenship politics.

Second, the indicator for municipal ideology relies on data from Ladner’s review

of Swiss municipalities which covers the years 1988, 1994 and 1998. Given that the

SVP gained significant support in the 1990s, these may not reflect the actual political

situation in a given municipality in 2003.

19


Third, the indicator for decision-making structure also relies on the data collected

by Ladner and thus may be out of date. This is probably less problematic than the

ideology indicator as these institutions were (as we will see) more or less constant in

the pre-2003 period (especially before 2000).

Fourth, considering these factors as constant across time is problematic. While

certain aspects may not change, it would not be surprising if a municipality varied

ideologically or politically during 1990 – 2002. The assumption of a static set up means

that if this analysis is thought of in experimental form, the treatment and control units

are completely different municipalities. Helbling does not provide a balance table or

summary statistics, so it is not clear whether these two groups are comparable.

3.2.3 Discussion of Helbling’s confounding variables

Along with the dependent and independent variable, Helbling also includes a variety of

confounding variables in his analysis. Arguing that the “feeling of threat” (and therefore

conservativeness of a municipality) is influenced by unemployment and the number

of Muslim immigrants, Helbling proposes two indicators to capture this confounding

variable he feels might account for bias in his results. First, unemployment ratios among

foreigners in each municipality and second, the proportion of Muslim applicants. A

second control variable is the location of the municipality.

Unemployment rate of foreigners is operationalized by using data from Ladner

(1991) in which the secretaries of the local administrations were asked “to what extent

their municipalities have been affected by increasing unemployment” the options were

’very much’, ’partly’, or ’not at all’ . For regression analysis this variable was made into

a binary: ’not affected/partly or very much affected’. To get the “unemployment rate

for foreigners” Helbling simply multiplies this indicator by the proportion of foreigners

in a municipality. This does not seem particularly accurate to me, but it may be better

than not including a control for unemployment in his model.

Number of Muslim immigrants is operationalized by creating a ratio between ap-

plications from immigrants from the former Yugoslavia and Turkey and all submitted

applications. Anticipating that this is a somewhat controversial approach, Helbling

mentions in an endnote that he is “aware of the fact that not all candidates who emi-

grated from the countries of the former Yugoslavia are Muslims, nor can it be certain

whether all Muslim applicants are religious” (Helbling [2010], 53). He justifies his

approach by saying that “unfortunately, there is no data at our disposal providing in-

formation about the religious affiliation of the individual candidates. However, it is a

fact that Muslims from Kosovo constitute by far the largest immigrant group from the

20


former Yugoslavia” (Helbling [2010]).

Location of the municipality is included to investigate the potential impact of re-

gional differences in Switzerland. These are expected to be somewhat significant. Hel-

bling notes that “it is often put forward that the population of the French-speaking part

of Switzerland has a different relationship with its nation and with its foreigners than

the population of the German-speaking part” (Helbling [2010]). He does not actually

indicate exactly how this variable is operationalized for regression, but I would guess

it is simply a dummy variable for language-region.

These control variables are somewhat problematic because some of them are likely

correlated to the independent variables. For example, the location of a municipality

may be related to ideology or SVP support. Including unemployment statistics may

in fact simply be a proxy for the wealth of a municipality and as such may influence

political leanings.

3.2.4 Discussion of Helbling’s results

Helbling’s results are interesting. Table 1.1 which summarizes from his paper is included

below in Figure 3.1.

Figure 3.1: Helbling’s Table 1.1 -

We can see that some of the data was lost as the final N is only 95 which is reduced

to 75 in models 2 and 3 (because Helbling only had information on SVP strength for

21


this subset). As for the other 11 municipalities, they were apparently lost because

they were missing data on one or several independent variables. Since we have no

idea what the final group of 95 municipalities look like, it is hard to say anything

conclusive. It does appear, however, that direct democracy through popular referenda

at the ballot is related to higher rejection rates along with the municipal “understanding

of citizenship.” This model would argue that popular votes at the ballot increase

rejection rates by around 25%, though this seems to be a tenuous conclusion for the

reasons discussed above and additionally as we do not even know how many of the

95 municipalities actually used this method. Helbling argues that the confounding

variables (foreign residents, unemployment, number of Muslim candidates, language-

region etc...) do not influence rejection rates. However, when we consider that there

were almost no French-speaking municipalities which used popular votes at the ballot

as their mechanism, this conclusion seems dubious.

Helbling then considers a modified dependent variable: the rejection rates of can-

didates from Muslim countries and finds the same pattern, but with higher values the

coefficient on “Popular votes at ballot” (44.2, 52.0 and 54.5 for each model respec-

tively). In this analysis, other factors lose significance and it seems that institution

is the main predictor of rejection rates for candidates from Muslim countries (former

Yugoslavia and Turkey).

In these results, it is particularly curious that popular votes at the ballot had a

huge and highly significant coefficient, while “Municipal assembly” (the institution in

which referenda are voted on by raise of hand at the municipal assembly instead of

the ballot box) is not large or significant. Given this, it is hard to attribute the large

coefficient to “direct democracy” since that is occurring in both cases. Perhaps there

are few municipalities which use popular votes at the ballot and these happen to be

more extreme and thus drive the result. In any case, it is far from clear that direct

democracy is actually to blame.

While Helbling does a commendable job with the data he has, he cannot attribute

causality to the effect of directly democratic institutions because he does not have a

“before” and “after” model as his data only runs through 2002. Second, his variables

exhibit many validity concerns and the final sample is very small. In sum, Helbling’s

analysis is interesting but incomplete and raises several testable hypotheses which I

will pursue in my thesis.

22

4

Hypotheses

From Helbling’s work, several hypotheses emerge which are testable using my data.

Instead of rejection rates I use municipal naturalization rate as my dependent variable

(this choice will be discussed in the methodology section) so my hypotheses will be

stated using this as the dependent variable.

H1 Removing directly democratic institutions leads to increased naturalization rates.

H2 Language region, foreign population and size of municipality have little or no

effect on naturalization rates.

H3 The influence of the SVP has a moderate, yet significant effect which reduces

naturalization rates

23

4. HYPOTHESES

24

5

Methodology

My thesis uses a fixed effects estimator to link municipal institutions with municipal

naturalization rates. In this section I will first explain why I have selected a fixed effects

estimator and the mechanics of its operation. Second, I will explain my methodological

set-up and discuss each of my variables.

5.1 Why I have selected a fixed effects estimator

A fixed effects (FE) estimator uses a within transformation to remove the unobserved

unit-specific effects, along with any other time-constant explanatory variables before

estimation (Wooldridge [2009], 365). When selecting a FE estimator one must justify

its selection over other similar estimators such as first-differencing (FD) or random

effects (RE). I will address each of these estimators in turn.

A FE estimator allows arbitrary correlations between the unit-specific effects and

the independent variable which a RE estimator does not (Wooldridge [2009], 375).

In my case, it is clear that municipal-specific effects may be related to the choice of

institution, so the RE estimator is probably not a good choice.

The question of whether to use FE or FD is more complicated. While the FE

and FD estimators are identical for longitudinal (panel) data which only includes two

time periods, they are different for longitudinal data which covers three or more time

periods (as my data covers 20 periods, we are clearly in the second case). In Economet-

rics(Wooldridge [2009]) it is shown that both FE and FD are unbiased and consistent

under the traditional set of panel assumptions 1. This eliminates two of the traditional

1Random sample of the cross section, each explanatory variable changes over time, no perfectlinear relationships among explanatory variables, for each time-period the expected value of the time-variant-unit-specific (idiosyncratic) error given the explanatory variables in all time periods and the

25

5. METHODOLOGY

criteria which allow us to select an estimator. The main difference between these two

estimators is in their relative efficiency which depends on whether the time-variant-

unit-specific errors (idiosyncratic errors) are serially correlated, that is to say, whether

there are confounding time-variant forces which effect the outcome and are related to

each other from one period to the next.

Clustering the standard errors by municipality is used in order to break serial cor-

relation of the errors within municipalities, but the model still assumes that the errors

from different municipalities are independent. This is certainly more reasonable to

assume than a lack of serial correlation between the errors within a municipality over

time, but we can imagine situations in which this assumption might be violated. For

example, municipalities may receive canton-level information which results in similar

policies. Or, a contagion effect may occur in which municipal policies are noticed by

neighboring municipalities and spread.

If we feel comfortable assuming that the idiosyncratic errors are serially uncorre-

lated then, according to wooldridge, the FE estimator is more efficient than the FD

estimator (Wooldridge [2009], 370). Another factor which distinguishes FE and FD

models is sensitivity to violations of the strict exogeneity assumption (for each time-

period the expected value of the time-variant-unit-specific (idiosyncratic) error given

the explanatory variables in all time periods and the unit-specific effect is zero). This

assumption can be violated by feedback between the idiosyncratic errors and future

outcomes of explanatory variable or if a lagged dependent variable is included among

the regressors (Wooldridge [2009], 370).

5.2 The Mechanics of a fixed effects estimator

In this model the standard regression equation is expressed as follows (Eqn1):

yit = β1xit + ai + uit

In this notation t denotes the year (1, 2,...,T) and i denotes the specific unit (in our case,

this would be the municipality). Additionally, yit indicates the outcome in a specific

municipality during a specific time year, β1 indicates the effect of a one-unit change in

the independent variable (in a specific municipality at a specific times, as denoted by

xit). Finally, ai indicates the fixed effects which do not change over time (but might

change over location), and uit indicates the time variant effects. In my model I have

unit-specific effect is zero (Wooldridge [2009], 379)

26

5.3 My fixed effects model

twenty periods (T=20), and I use a differencing to cancel out the unit-specific “fixed

effects” (ai) because they are time invariant. The differencing involves subtracting the

average unit-specific outcome, yi, from Eqn.1, where yi is given by the formula: (Eqn2)

yi = β1xi + ai + ui

In this formula, yi = 1T

∑TT=1 yit and xi and ui are calculated in the same manner. If

we subtract Eqn.2 from Eqn.1 we get (Eqn.3)

yit = β1xit + uit

In Eqn. 3, yit = yit− y = yit− 1T

∑TT=1 yit and xit and uit are calculated accordingly. A

key assumption of this is that the idiosyncratic time-demeaned errors (uit) are uncor-

related with the independent variable (xit). This means that the independent variables

are strictly exogenous. While we might believe this to be true due to the somewhat

exogenous nature of the institutional change 2003, there are many possible stories one

could tell which could violate this assumption. For example, municipalities may de-

cide to change their institution for reasons other than the 2003 court decision. As we

will see when we look at the distribution of institutions over time, it seems as though

many municipalities preempt the court’s decisions while others lag behind. These dif-

ferences are probably not randomly distributed – one can imagine that more liberal

municipalities might change their institution endogenously in order to be more kind to

immigrants whereas more conservative municipalities might resist the change and even

defy the ruling. As it stands, however, due to the at least somewhat exogenous nature

of the change in institutions, this assumption has a much higher chance of being true

than in cross-sectional analyses.

5.3 My fixed effects model

The general FE model for my thesis is :

yit = β1xit + uit

In this model yit indicates the demeaned municipal naturalization rate (relative to the

average of that municipality over 20 years between 1990 and 2009) of a particular mu-

nicipality, i, at a particular year, t, and xit indicates the demeaned “institution score”

(relative to the average of that municipality over 20 years) of a particular municipal-

27

5. METHODOLOGY

ity, i, at a particular year, t. Therefore, indicates the effect of a one-unit change in

the institution (which represents, for example, going from “ direct democracy” to “not

direct democracy”). Finally, uit indicates the time-demeaned time-varying errors for a

particular municipality, i, in a particular year, t. An example of one such error might

be the concentration of immigrants (as this may change over time). Additionally, as

stated in above, there may be endogenous reasons why municipalities choose to change

their institution away from direct democracy. Given this set up, I will now discuss the

measurement and operationalization of each of my variables.

5.4 Discussion and operationalization of variables

5.4.1 Data

The data used in this project comes from a larger projected headed by Jens Hainmueller

at MIT and Dominik Hangartner at Berkeley which I have had the privilege to work

on. Funding for the overall project was provided by Swiss National Science grant no.

100017–132004. The independent variable, the municipal institution, was collected

using an online survey tool during the summer of 2010. The dependent variable, the

municipal naturalization rates, comes from the Swiss Federal Office of Statistics.

5.4.2 Indepdent Variable: Municipal Institution

The independent variable in my thesis is the institution governing naturalization at

the municipal level. Henceforth this will be referred to as simply “institution.” This

variable was collected through work done with Jens Hainmueller at MIT. We created

a survey which was sent to each municipality and asked the municipal clerk to classify

their municipality’s institution from 1990 to 2009 into one of ten official categories.

These are as follows:

1. The “citizen’s community”1 votes in a closed ballot

2. The “citizen’s community” votes at a municipal assembly

3. The “citizen’s counsel”

4. Swiss citizens vote in closed ballot popular vote

5. Swiss citizens vote at a municipal assembly

1The “citizen’s community” is a group of established citizens who have lived in the municipalityfor generations

28


6. The municipal parliament (legislative)

7. The municipal counsel (executive)

8. The naturalization commission

9. The decision is made at the cantonal level (i.e. there are no requirements ofmunicipal citizenship beyond what is required at the canton level)

10. Other

While this coding captures the full universe of cases, it may be useful to code the

variable in a narrower way so that we can capture change over time. In my thesis, I

will use two alternative codings of institution which are called institution binary and

institution linear respectively. I will address each of these separately. First, consider

a two-level institution variable, institution binary, which is 0 for directly democratic

cases and 1 for not directly democratic cases (executive, legislative or canton-level

governance). This binary indicator provides the simple case in which a 1-unit change is

equivalent to moving from a directly democratic institution to a not directly democratic

institution. This option is coded as follows with respect to the original 9 categories:

institution binary :

0 = Direct democracy

Option 1) The “citizen’s community” votes in a closed ballot

Option 2) The “citizen’s community” votes at a municipal assembly

Option 4) Swiss citizens vote in closed ballot popular vote

Option 5) Swiss citizens vote at a municipal assembly

1 = Executive, Legislative or made at the cantonal level

Option 3) The “citizen’s counsel”

Option 6) The municipal parliament (legislative)

Option 7) The municipal counsel (executive)

Option 8) The naturalization commission

Option 9) The decision is made at the cantonal level (i.e. there are norequirements of municipal citizenship beyond what is required at the cantonlevel)

29

5. METHODOLOGY

Second, consider a three-level institution variable, institution linear, which breaks

the overall effect into different levels of direct democracy and non-directly democratic

institutions. In his analysis, Helbling noted that there was a large difference between

municipalities which exercised direct democracy at the ballot box (Option 4) and those

which held votes in municipal assemblies (Option 5).

institution linear :

0 = Direct democracy closed ballot

Option 4) Swiss citizens vote in closed ballot popular vote

Option 1) The “citizen’s community” votes in a closed ballot

1 = Modified direct democracy vote at municipal assembly

Option 5) Swiss citizens vote at a municipal assembly

Option 2) The “citizen’s community” votes at a municipal assembly

2 = Legislative, Executive or committee

Option 6) The municipal parliament (legislative)

Option 7) The municipal counsel (executive)

Option 8) The naturalization commission

Option 9) The decision is made at the cantonal level (i.e. there are norequirements of municipal citizenship beyond what is required at the cantonlevel)

This independent variable is a subset of Helbling’s three-part independent variable.

For each municipality included in the project (selection principle will be explained

below) there is a value for this variable for each year between 1990 and 2009. Ideally,

for each municipality that changes institution I will have data many years before and

after 2003 (sometimes municipalities didn’t change their institutions until 2004 or 2005)

to use fixed effects to their full potential.

5.4.3 Selection Principle

Ideally I would like to use every municipality (there are about 2,500) in Switzerland for

this project, but only 60% of all municipalities responded to the data collection survey.

This is still quite a substantial number, and it is important to note that the response rate

is 72% if we only consider municipalities which had 10 or more naturalizations during

the 1990 – 2009 period. Amongst this group, a small number cannot be used because

30


their data is incomplete or incomprehensible. Another group cannot be used because

they have had no naturalizations during this period. There are 1,483 municipalities in

my final data set (approx 60%) all Swiss municipalities. While this is only 60% of total

municipalities, the non-respondents tend to be smaller municipalities, many of which

have been verified as having no naturalizations during the 1990 to 2009 period thus

they would not contribute to the analysis even if they were included.

Clearly, there are a few unavoidable problems with this selection principle. First,

there is an element of non-randomness because some municipality clerks are unlikely to

respond for non-random reasons (e.g. they live in a very small municipality, there has

been municipal restructuring etc...). As such, smaller municipalities belong dispropor-

tionately to this group. Despite this, I currently have a larger N than any other study

in this area. Additionally, since I have data points for each municipality in each year,

there is a very large response space.

5.4.4 Dependent Variable: Municipal Naturalization Rate

The dependent variable for the my thesis is the naturalization rate. This is calculated

as the number of naturalizations as a percent of the total foreign population in the year

pervious in each municipality from 1990 – 2009.

As discussed in the significance section, naturalizations rates in Switzerland are

usually very low (between 2 and 3%) mostly due to the fact that the residency require-

ment is quite high and the process is time-consuming (and, as we have seen, can end

in failure).

5.4.4.1 Trends in naturalizations: 1990 – 2009

During the time under consideration in this thesis, the two largest forces influencing

naturalization trends and naturalization policy in Switzerland are first, a desire for

rapprochement with the European Union and second, a feeling of uberfremdung due to

immigrants for ex-Yugoslavia (Riano and Wastl-Walter [2006]). In this section I will

discuss the structure of naturalizations during the 1990 – 2009 period.

Along with the war in the Balkans, a second force to note is both a relative and

absolute decrease in Italian naturalizations over this period. The two graphs below

explore the evolution of naturalizations in Switzerland between 1981 and 2009. Figure

5.1 shows the total number of naturalizations from each of the top ten countries of

origin. Figure 5.2 shows the same relationship, but the value displayed on the y-

axis is the number of naturalizations from the country of origin as a percent of total

naturalizations (from all countries) in that year.

31

5. METHODOLOGY

Figure 5.1

0

0

05000

5000

500010000

1000

0

1000015000

1500

0

15000total number of naturalizations

tota

l num

ber o

f nat

ural

izat

ions

total number of naturalizations1980

1980

19801990

1990

19902000

2000

20002010

2010

2010year

year

yearSerbia and Montenegro

Serbia and Montenegro

Serbia and MontenegroItaly

Italy

ItalyTurkey

Turkey

TurkeyGermany

Germany

GermanyBosnia and Herzegovania

Bosnia and Herzegovania

Bosnia and HerzegovaniaSri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri LankaMacedonia

Macedonia

MacedoniaPortugal

Portugal

PortugalEx-Yugoslavia

Ex-Yugoslavia

Ex-YugoslaviaCroatia

Croatia

CroatiaEvolution of Swiss Naturalizations from Top 10 Countries

Evolution of Swiss Naturalizations from Top 10 Countries

Evolution of Swiss Naturalizations from Top 10 Countries

Data obtained from Swiss Federal Office of Statistics(http: // www. bfs. admin. ch/ bfs/ portal/ fr/ index/ themen/ 01/ 07/ blank/ key/ 03. html )

The story shown in these graphs is clearly the huge surge in Serbian naturalizations

which jumped from around 10% (counting Ex-Yugoslavia) in 1998 to around 25% in

2006, to drop to around 20% of all naturalizations in 2009. This surge in Serbian

naturalizations is accompanied by a drop in Italian and German naturalizations (though

German naturalizations do recover slightly in the 2007 - 2009 period. Now that I have

discussed the methodological set-up, I will turn to my data analysis.

32

http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/fr/index/themen/01/07/blank/key/03.html


Figure 5.2

0

0

0.1

.1

.1.2

.2

.2.3

.3

.3.4

.4

.4Percent of total naturalizations

Perc

ent

of t

otal

nat

ural

izat

ions

Percent of total naturalizations1980

1980

19801990

1990

19902000

2000

20002010

2010

2010year

year

yearSerbia and Montenegro

Serbia and Montenegro

Serbia and MontenegroItaly

Italy

ItalyTurkey

Turkey

TurkeyGermany

Germany

GermanyBosnia and Herzegovania

Bosnia and Herzegovania

Bosnia and HerzegovaniaSri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri LankaMacedonia

Macedonia

MacedoniaPortugal

Portugal

PortugalEx-Yugoslavia

Ex-Yugoslavia

Ex-YugoslaviaCroatia

Croatia

CroatiaEvolution of Swiss Naturalizations from Top 10 Countries (as % of total naturalizations)

Evolution of Swiss Naturalizations from Top 10 Countries (as % of total naturalizations)

Evolution of Swiss Naturalizations from Top 10 Countries (as % of total naturalizations)

Data obtained from Swiss Federal Office of Statistics(http: // www. bfs. admin. ch/ bfs/ portal/ fr/ index/ themen/ 01/ 07/ blank/ key/ 03. html )

33


5. METHODOLOGY

34

6

Data Analysis

In this section I will test the three hypotheses which are stated in section 4. I will do

this by developing three statistical models and running significant subgroup analysis

using one of the models. While doing this analysis, I will be sensitive to variation on

both my independent and dependent variable (necessary for a fixed effects model to

work) and will also explore issues of balance in the data between subgroups.

6.1 Model 1

Model 1 uses the the FE estimator described in the methodology section with insti-

tution binary as the independent variable and naturalizaiton rate as the dependent

variable. In this model, I only consider observations which have values for these two

variables for at least 50% of the time periods (10 or more). This reduces the sample

to a total of 1,428 municipalities. The summary statistics for these municipalities are

shown in Table 6.1 where the averages are given as the average across all time periods.

In Table 6.1, the first three variables are the dependent and independent variables

(using both specifications of the independent variable). naturalizations refers to the

raw number of naturalizations in a given municipality in a given year. Total pop ref-

eres to the total population of a given municipality in a given year. Swiss pop refers

to the number of Swiss citizens living in a municipality in a given year. Foreign pop

refers to the number of foreign nationals living in a municipality in a given year. Ra-

tio foreign swiss is calculated by dividing foreign pop by Swiss pop. Percent foreigners

is found by dividing foreign pop by Total pop . It is important to note that this is not

the same as ratio foreign swiss as the former is the percent of foreigners as compared to

the entire population. Language region is an indicator that is 1 if the language spoken

35

6. DATA ANALYSIS

Table 6.1: Summary statistics

Variable Mean Std. Dev. Min. Max. N

naturalization rate 2.126 4.499 0 200 28824institution binary 0.419 0.493 0 1 28162institution linear 1.391 0.543 0 2 28162naturalizations 14.117 87.302 0 4851 29080total pop 3584.144 12277.92 0 368677 29080swiss pop 2842.485 8722.236 0 262368 29080foreign pop 741.659 3738.594 0 112429 29080ratio foreign swiss 0.148 0.143 0 1.46 29047percent foreigners 11.815 9.112 0 59.349 29047language region 2.587 0.609 1 3 29080

in the municipality is Italian, 2 if the language spoken is French and 3 if the language

spoken is German.

From these summary statistics we can ascertain that the sample in question is

primarily German-speaking (language region = 2.6), has a relatively low naturalization

rate (2.1%), is about 12% foreigners (this is somewhat lower than the average across

Switzerland which is closer to 20%) and has an average total population of about 3,500

inhabitants.

Now, I will consider variation over time of the independent and dependent variable

for these municipalities. The distribution of institution binary over time is shown in

Figure 6.1 and the average naturalization rate over time is shown in Figure 6.2.

We can see that there is quite a bit of over-time variation on both these variables.

Now, we can use the FE estimator described above on model 1. I have clustered the

standard errors by each municipality to break potential serial correlation between the

errors within municipalities. The results from this regression are shown below in Table

6.2. For this, and all subsequent tables, the yearly effects are not included and standard

errors are clustered by municipality.

This analysis indicates that a 1-unit increase in institution binary (going from direct

democracy to not directly democracy) leads to a 0.76 percentage point increase in

naturalization rate. This is a significant increase, especially considering that the average

naturalization rate for this model is around 2.1%. Thus, at least initially, it appears

that we can conclude that direct democracy suppresses naturalization rates. Now, I will

consider the same regression using institution linear to try to disaggregate the effect of

direct democracy at the ballot box from other forms of direct democracy.

36

6.2 Model 2

Figure 6.1: Variation of insitution binary over time -

Table 6.2: Model 1

Variable Coefficient(Cl Std. Err.)

institution binary 0.760∗∗

(0.141)

Intercept 1.243∗∗

(0.146)

Significance levels : † : 10% ∗ : 5% ∗∗ : 1%

6.2 Model 2

Model 2 follows the same specification as Model 1 except it considers institution linear

instead of institution binary in order to test whether considering direct democracy at

the ballot box separately from direct democracy in other forms gives different effects.

As we can see in Figure 6.3, direct democracy at the ballot box only occurs in a

small percent of municipalities, but it does have some variation (directly post 2003).

37

6. DATA ANALYSIS

Figure 6.2: Variation of naturalization rate over time -

Model 2 considers the same municipalities as Model 1 and because institution linear is

already considered in the pervious balance table, and the distribution of the dependent

variable is the same, I will not repeat those graphs here.

Now we can consider running the FE regression on Model 2. The results are dis-

played below in Table 6.3.

Table 6.3: Model 2


institution linear 0.567∗∗

(0.118)


(0.204)


The significant effect which is found when considering ballot box institutions at a

38

6.3 Model 1: Subgroup Analysis

Figure 6.3: Variation of insitution linear over time -

different level is interesting. It seems that even a 1-unit movements in institution linear

generates significant changes in the naturalization rate. This indicates that direct

democracy at the ballot box has an independent effect compared to other forms of

what we might call “moderated direct democracy.” Now that I have established the

general effect of direct democracy on naturalization rates, I will used Model 1 to explore

subgroups within the response space to check for heterogeneity in responses.


Now I will consider Model 1 as specified above, but I will limit my analysis to include

certain groups of municipalities. Because language-region and other municipal charac-

teristics are constant over time, they are differenced out in our original model. Knowing

the general effect for all 1,438 municipalities in my data set is a good first step, but

we may also be curious if this effect is different for different subgroups. First, I will

consider different language-regions. Second, I will consider municipalities of different

39

6. DATA ANALYSIS

sizes. Third, I will consider municipalities which experienced an influx of immigrants.

Fourth, I will consider municipalities which had high SVP support in 2003.

6.3.1 Differences by language-region

In this section, I subset my data by language-regions. Depending on the majority lan-

guage spoken in the municipality, municipalities are coded as either French, German or

Italian (there are not enough Romansch-speaking municipalities to constitute a group).

I will first consider only German-speaking municipalities as they constitute the largest

proportion of my data set (941 municipalities). Running the same regression above on

only these municipalities gives the following results which are displayed in Table 6.4.

Table 6.4: Model 1: German Speaking Municipalities (N=941)



(0.157)


(0.153)


It is interesting to note that this looks almost exactly the same as the previous

regression. This indicates that perhaps the French-speaking and Italian-speaking re-

gions are not contributing to the result. That is to say, French-speaking and Italian-

speaking municipalities do not have significant variation on the independent variable

of institutions (we can conclude this because recall that in a fixed effects estimator the

independent variables is the change in institution relative to the demeaned value for

an individual municipality). To check this, we can graph the types of institutions over

time in the French-speaking and Italian-speaking regions Figure 6.4 displays the distri-

bution of institutions over time in the French-speaking regions as they were distributed

before the re-coding (10 different institutional options) and Figure 6.5 displays the dis-

tribution of institutions over time in the Italian-speaking regions, again with original

coding.

As we can see there is almost no variation at all in the Italian-speaking region.

This means we cannot do differencing analysis on this region (because there is nothing

to difference) and henceforth it will be excluded from data analysis. In the French-

speaking region we observe significant variation in institutions, however, most of the

changes are municipalities which move from legislative to executive institutions. In the

40


Figure 6.4: Variation of all institutions over time: French-speaking municipal-ities (N = 400) -

binary institution variable used for the previous analysis I only differentiate between

directly democratic institutions and all other institutions, where the second category

includes both legislative and executive options. In this model, the French-speaking

region has hardly any variation on the independent variable as we can see from Figure

6.6 which shows the distribution of institutions in the French-speaking region as it enters

our analysis above. We can compare this to Figure 6.7 which shows the distribution of

the same institutions in the German-speaking region.

Given the almost complete lack of variation in Figure 6.6 compared to Figure 6.7,

it is not surprising that the French-speaking regions do not contribute to our result

from Table 1. Looking back at Figure 6.6, however, we can see that there was signifi-

cant variation in French-speaking regions between legislative and executive institutions.

Looking at variation between these two institutions does not allow us to make the same

assumptions of exogeneity of institutional change which were justified in the previous

models due to the fact that changes away from direct democracy were known to be

caused (at least in the large part) by the 2003 court decision. In this case we are sim-

41

6. DATA ANALYSIS

Figure 6.5: Variation of all institutions over time: Italian-speaking municipal-ities (N = 87) -

ply exploring a correlative relationship between these institutions and naturalization

rates. To explore this relationship, I recode the institutions in the French-speaking

regions to capture the relevant change in institution. I propose simply looking at the

difference between legislative and executive institutions because these make up the

majority of the changes (the bright red and pale blue lines from figure 6.6). In this

regression, I make the new variable, french exec, which is 1 if the municipality uses

an executive committee as an institution and 0 if the municipality uses the municipal

legislature as an institution (and is in the French-speaking region). Running a fixed

effects regression of french exec on naturalizaiton rate allows us to see the relationship

between of moving from 0 (legislative institution) to 1 (executive institution) on the

demeaned naturalization rate of a French-speaking municipality which had either leg-

islative or executive institutions between 1990 and 2009 (N= 300). The results of this

analysis are shown in Table 6.5 below.

Table 6.5 indicates that going from a legislative institution to an executive in-

stitution in French-speaking Switzerland leads to a 0.35 percentage point increase in

42


Figure 6.6: Variation of institution binary over time: French-speaking munic-ipalities (N = 400) -

Table 6.5: Model 1: Correlative Results (N=300).

Variable Coefficient(Std. Err.)

french exec 0.350(0.224)


(0.203)


naturalization rates. This effect is not statistically significant and the 95% confidence

interval goes from -0.09 to 0.79 (crossing 0) thus we are not even completely sure if

this effect is positive. This indicates that going from a legislative to executive insti-

tution might have a small positive effect but doesn’t have a significant impact on the

naturalization rates in a given French-speaking municipality. This is not particularly

surprising given that we believe that both legislative and executive institutions require

43

6. DATA ANALYSIS

Figure 6.7: Variation of institution binary over time: German-speaking mu-nicipalities (N = 941) -

substantiation of naturalization decisions and therefore changing from one to the other

should not significantly change the naturalization process.

By observing the effect of institution change on naturalization rates in different

language regions we can assert that changes away from directly democratic institu-

tions mostly occurred in German-speaking Switzerland and therefore our conclusions

regarding the first hypothesis (moving away from directly democratic institutions leads

to increases in municipal naturalization rates) only really apply to German-speaking

Switzerland because observations from French-speaking and Italian-speaking Switzer-

land drop out of our analysis due to lack of variation on institution binary.

6.3.2 Municipality Size

In this section I will subset my data by size of the municipality. While some Swiss

municipalities are large cities, the majority are small towns and villages with relatively

small populations. Figure 6.8 shows the distribution of the total population of German-

44


speaking municipalities in 2003. In 2003 there were 17 German-speaking municipalities

with populations over 20,000 which are not shown in this graph because they made it

impossible to see the distribution of the majority of the municipalities.1

Figure 6.8: Distribution of Municipal Population in German-speaking munici-palities in 2003 -

If we consider only municipalities which had a population of greater than 6,000 in

2003 (the top 15% of municipalities in my sample of 941 German-speaking municipali-

ties). We can assess the effect of institutional change on German-speaking municipali-

ties which large populations. First, we must check if there is adequate variation on the

independent variable. Figure 6.9 shows the distribution of institution binary in these

municipalities.

From Figure 6.9 we can see that there is significant variation on the independent

variable. We can now run the fixed effects regression only on these municipalities. The

results from this regression are displayed in Table 6.6.

1These are: Dubendorf, Uster, Winterthur, Dietikon, Zurich, Bern, Koniz, Thun, Emmen, Kriens,Baar, Zug, Riehen, St. Gallen, Rapperswil-Jona, Chur and Frauenfeld

45

6. DATA ANALYSIS

Figure 6.9: Distribution of institution binary in large German municipalities -

Table 6.6: Model 1: High Pop (N=142)



(0.154)


(0.089)


From Table 6.6, we can see that in these municipalities the effect of changing insti-

tutions away from direct democracy increases the demeaned naturalization rate by 0.45

percentage points. This is significantly lower than the original effect for all German-

speaking municipalities (0.74). We can now compare this to small municipalities with

populations of less than 2,500 in 2003. For these municipalities (64% of our sample

N=595) the distribution of institution binary over time is shown in Figure 6.10 and not

46


surprisingly looks very similar to the distribution of institutions for the whole.

Figure 6.10: Distribution institution binary in small German-speaking munic-ipalities -

Running the regression to find the relationship between institution and naturaliza-

tion rate in these municipalities gives the following results which are displayed in Table

6.7.

Table 6.7: Model 1: Low-Pop (N=595)



(0.237)


(0.244)


Again, we observe that the effect of institutional change on naturalization rate is

47

6. DATA ANALYSIS

lower for these municipalities than the whole. As a comparison, I also investigated

the effect for mid-sized municipalities (population between 2,500 and 6,000 in 2003)

which constitute 21% (N=204)of the sample. For these municipalities the distribution

of institution binary is shown in Figure 6.11

Figure 6.11: Distribution institution binary in mid-sized German-speaking mu-nicipalities -

The results from the regression on this group reveals a surprising result. The effect

of institutional change on naturalization rates is much higher. The results from this

regression are shown below in Table 6.8.

As we can see, for these 204 municipalities, the effect of moving away from directly

democratic institutions increases the demeaned naturalization rate by 1.22 percentage

points. This effect is nearly twice as large as the effects in the high-population or low-

population groups. This indicates that municipality size leads to heterogeneous effects

of institution change with both small and large municipalities seeing a smaller effect

whereas mid-sized municipalities see a much larger effect. Of course, we can’t read

too far into these effects because of the limits of statistics. One way to get some more

48

6.4 Model 3: Interaction Effects

Table 6.8: Model 1: Mid-pop (N=204)



(0.198)


(0.084)


traction on this question is to consider a third model which includes interaction effects

which allows us to actually test if the three different sizes constitute separate effects.


The model with interaction effects is very similar to the standard FE model used in

this analysis, but it includes dummy variables. Model 3, in general, looks like this:

yit = aβ1xti + bβ2xit + cβ3xit + uit

In this model a, b and c are a dummy variables which indiciate whether the mu-

nicipality is in the high, medium or low population group. Running the fixed effects

estimator on the model above I will again limit myself to German-speaking municipal-

ities (N=941). The F-test statistic produced by this analysis (Table 6.9) is 29.30 and

allows us to reject the null hypothesis that these three groups have the same effect.

Finally, we might consider how these three groups compare to each other on sum-

mary statistics (see Tables 6.10, 6.11, 6.12)

49

6. DATA ANALYSIS

Table 6.9: Model 3: Interactions (N=941)


interaction high 0.452∗∗

(0.154)

interaction mid 1.224∗∗

(0.197)

interaction low 0.627∗∗

(0.237)


(0.156)


Table 6.10: Summary statistics: High Population


naturalization rate 1.995 1.392 0 11.551 2880institution binary 0.44 0.496 0 1 2791institution linear 1.391 0.579 0 2 2791naturalizations 68.84 220.793 0 4851 2880total pop 15991 30802.129 4658 368677 2880swiss pop 12598.766 22496.797 3635 262368 2880foreign pop 3392.234 8475.901 141 112429 2880ratio foreign swiss 0.252 0.141 0.024 1.013 2880percent foreigners 19.239 8.093 2.39 50.319 2880language region 3 0 3 3 2880

Table 6.11: Summary statistics


naturalization rate 1.927 1.822 0 17.742 4088institution binary 0.186 0.389 0 1 4045institution linear 1.142 0.459 0 2 4045naturalizations 9.856 10.389 0 93 4100total pop 3778.682 987.518 0 6617 4100swiss pop 3220.908 832.029 0 5801 4100foreign pop 557.774 355.897 0 2448 4100ratio foreign swiss 0.179 0.122 0.011 0.84 4090percent foreigners 14.361 7.858 1.08 45.664 4090language region 3 0 3 3 4100

50


Table 6.12: Summary statistics: Low Population


naturalization rate 2.171 5.513 0 200 11762institution binary 0.199 0.399 0 1 11813institution linear 1.163 0.455 0 2 11813naturalizations 1.552 3.002 0 54 11960total pop 1002.481 639.77 0 3151 11960swiss pop 918.963 573.134 0 2984 11960foreign pop 83.518 100.298 0 780 11960ratio foreign swiss 0.079 0.076 0 0.722 11937percent foreigners 6.951 5.701 0 41.944 11937language region 3 0 3 3 11960

51

6. DATA ANALYSIS

6.4.1 Influx of immigrants

Another factor we may expect to lead to a heterogeneous effect is whether a particu-

lar municipality experienced an influx of immigrants in the pre-treatment (pre-2003)

period. To do this, I will create a variable, delta percent foreigners which measures

the difference between the ratio of foreigners to Swiss citizens (ratio foreign swiss·100)

in 2003 and in 1990. In this section I will subset the German-speaking municipalities

into three groups. First, I will consider those which saw a large influx. Second, I will

consider those which saw either no influx or a very small influx. Third, I will consider

municipalities which saw a decrease (negative influx) in the percent of foreigners in their

populations. Again, for each group I will check and see if there is adequate variation

on the independent variable.

Figure 6.12 shows the general distribution of changes in the foreign population

between 1990 and 2003 for all German-speaking municipalities in my sample (N=941).

Figure 6.12: Distribution of delta percent foreigners in German-speaking mu-nicipalities -

As we can see, the majority of municipalities did not see a huge change in the

52


percentage of their population that are foreigners during this period. In order to have

adequate observations to garner significant results, I was not able to subset my data as

much as I would have liked to on this variable. First, I will consider municipalities with

an influx of more than 2.5% (57% of the sample) in their foreign population between

1990 and 2003. The distribution of institution binary in these municipalities is shown

in Figure 6.13.

Figure 6.13: Distribution of institution binary in German-speaking municipal-ities which saw a high influx of immigrants (N=540) -

Running the regression on this subsample gives the result shown in Table 6.13.

For these 540 municipalities. moving away from direct democracy leads to a 0.63

percentage point increase in naturalization rate. This is slightly lower than the result

for all German-speaking municipalities, but is fairly comparable. It would be very

interesting to look at the effect of larger increases (5% or 10%) but these results are

inconclusive because there is not enough observations at those levels.

Now we can consider municipalities which saw a positive, but low influx of foreigners

between 1990 and 2003. For these municipalities (30% of the sample) the distribution

53

6. DATA ANALYSIS

Table 6.13: Model 1: High Influx of Immigrants (N=540)



(0.160)


(0.137)


of institution binary over the period 1990 2009 is shown below in Figure ??.

Figure 6.14: Distribution of institution binary in German-speaking municipal-ities which saw a low influx of immigrants (N=285) -

There appears to be significant variation in institutions amongst these municipalities

and the results of running the regression on them are given in Table 6.14.

For these 285 municipalities the effect of moving away from direct democracy leads

to an increase of 0.87 percentage points in naturalization rate. This is slightly higher

54


Table 6.14: Model 1: Low Influx Immigrants (N=285)



(0.288)


(0.426)


than overall increase (0.74 percentage points). Some of the municipalities (12% of the

sample) experienced decreases in the percentage of foreigners living in them between

1990 2003. It would be interesting to consider these as a separate subgroup. Un-

fortunately there are not enough observations in this group to generate statistically

significant point estimates of the effect. Instead I will consider the effect of a 2% influx

of less (including negative values) 37% of the sample. The distribution of institu-

tion binary for these municipalities is shown in Figure 6.15 below.

Given that there is adequate variation in institutions for these municipalities, I then

run the regression subset on them. The results are shown in Table 6.15.

Table 6.15: Model 1: Low to negative influx of immigrants (N=341)



(0.314)


(0.215)


As we can observe, the results are very similar to the ones shown in Table 9 (coef-

ficient = 0.90). This seems to indicate that a decrease in the foreign population does

not constitute a hugely different effect. Overall, these results indicate that a moderate

influx (2.5% or more) dilutes the effect of moving away from direct democracy whereas

a low influx slightly increases it, however, we cannot read too far into these results

because of the limits of statistical significance. To gain better traction on this effect

I will again consider an interaction model. The model is the same as the model 3

except there are only two dummy variables, a and b and instead of referring to the

municipality size, they refer to either a high, low/negative influx. The results from this

55

6. DATA ANALYSIS

Figure 6.15: Distribution of institution binary in German-speaking municipal-ities which saw a low or negative influx of immigrants (N=341) -

model are shown below in Table 6.16. The F-statistic of 18.76 allows us to again reject

the null that these two groups are the same (though not as strongly as with regard to

population).

Table 6.16: Model 3: Interactions with influxes of immigrants (N=941)


interaction high influx 0.631∗∗

(0.160)

interaction low influx 0.897∗∗

(0.313)


(0.151)


56


Finally, we might consider how these two groups compare to each other on summary

statistics which are shown in Table 6.17 and Table 6.18.

Table 6.17: Summary statistics: High influx of immigrants



Table 6.18: Summary statistics: Low to negative influx of immigrants



In general, we can conclude that for municipalities which experience a low to nega-

tive influx of immigrants, the effect of institutional change away from directly democ-

racy is higher than in those municipalities in which there is a high influx of immigrants.

Now I will consider a third source of potential heterogeneity between municipalities:

SVP vote share in 2003.

6.4.2 Level of SVP support in 2003

Another factor which may distinguish municipalities is their support for the SVP. As

mentioned above, the SVP is the right-wing anti-immigrant party. In this section I use

SVP support in 2003 to subset my data into two groups. This additional data reduces

57

6. DATA ANALYSIS

my data set to 912 municipalities because a certain number either did no stage a SVP

candidate in 2003 or were not in one my data sets. The distribution of SVP support

in 2003 amongst my sample is shown in Figure 6.16

0

0

02

2

24

4

46

6

68

8

8percent

perc

ent

percent0

0

020

20

2040

40

4060

60

6080

80

80SVP vote share in 2003

SVP vote share in 2003

SVP vote share in 2003Distribution of 2003 SVP vote share in German-speaking Municipalities

Distribution of 2003 SVP vote share in German-speaking Municipalities

Distribution of 2003 SVP vote share in German-speaking Municipalities

Figure 6.16: Distribution of institution binary in German-speaking municipal-ities which saw a low or negative influx of immigrants (N=341) -

First, I will consider municipalities which have a SVP vote share in 2003 of less

than 35%. These municipalities constitute 46% of my current data set. Given this

large percent I will assume that there is enough variation on the independent variable.

The results of running my regression on this data are displayed below in Table 6.19.

From Table 6.19 we can see that municipalities with low SVP support in 2003 have

a somewhat lower value for increase in naturalization rate relative to the German-

speaking region as a whole. While this point estimate seems rather low, the 95%

confidence interval on this estimate is quite large (0.21 to 0.99). Now we can compare

the complementary municipalities which had a SVP vote share of 35% or more in

2003. These municipalities constitute 54% of the sample. The results from running the

regression on these municipalities are shown in Table 6.20.

58


Table 6.19: Model 1: Low SVP (N=417)



(0.198)


(0.188)


Table 6.20: Model 1: High SVP (N=495)



(0.241)


(0.244)


Table 6.20 shows that moving away from direct democracy leads to an increase

of 0.83 percentage points in naturalization rate for the municipalities which had SVP

support of 35% or more in 2003. This result is the opposite of what we would predict

from ECT and PPH. Instead of more anti-immigrant areas having lower naturalization

rates, they seem to have higher ones (however, keep in mind that the 95% confidence

intervals overlap significantly).

Again, I will estimate a version of Model 3 using the same logic as perviously. The

F-statistic generated from this model is 20.53 which indicates that these are statistically

different subgroups (see Table 6.21)

Finally, we may want to consider the summary statistics for these two groups which

as displayed in Table 6.22 and Table 6.23.

In general, areas with higher SVP support in 2003 (ostensibly more anti-immigrant)

see a bigger increase in naturalization rates after moving away from direct democracy.

Now I will consider subgroups formed by the union of the subgroups discussed so far.

59

6. DATA ANALYSIS

Table 6.21: Model 3: Interactions SVP (N= 912)


interaction high svp 0.834∗∗

(0.241)

interaction low svp 0.598∗∗

(0.198)


(0.157)


Table 6.22: Summary statistics: Low SVP


naturalization rate 2.018 3.34 0 100 8364institution binary 0.254 0.435 0 1 8257institution linear 1.256 0.511 0 3 8257naturalizations 21.333 131.722 0 4851 8420total pop 5716.359 19196.16 0 368677 8420swiss pop 4644.373 14143.19 0 262368 8420foreign pop 1071.986 5153.217 0 112429 8420ratio foreign swiss 0.144 0.121 0 0.959 8417percent foreigners 11.692 8.231 0 48.962 8417

Table 6.23: Summary statistics: High SVP


naturalization rate 2.172 5.436 0 200 9722institution binary 0.212 0.409 0 1 9820institution linear 1.187 0.492 0 3 9820naturalizations 7.303 20.622 0 439 9940total pop 2358.071 3124.547 0 24414 9940swiss pop 1977.156 2385.856 0 17059 9940foreign pop 380.915 826.644 0 9246 9940ratio foreign swiss 0.114 0.119 0 1.013 9910percent foreigners 9.369 8.097 0 50.319 9910

6.5 Unions of Subgroups

In this section I will consider how my most heterogeneous subgroups (population and

influxes of immigrants and, SVP support in 2003) interact. I will show the results from

60


these interactions when they are statistically significant at the 10% level or lower. First

I will consider the subgroups formed by union between my population indicators and

the influx of immigrant indicators. These are shown in Tables 6.24, 6.25, 6.26, 6.27 and

6.28.

Table 6.24: Model 1: Mid Pop + Low immigrant influx (N=53)



(0.361)


(0.152)


Table 6.25: Model 1: High Population + Low influx of immigrants (N=11)



(0.397)

Intercept 0.503(0.318)


Table 6.26: Model 1: Low Pop + High influx of immigrants (N=270)


institution binary 0.711∗

(0.299)


(0.265)


61

6. DATA ANALYSIS

Table 6.27: Model 1: Mid pop + High influx of immigrants (N=142)



(0.181)


(0.094)


Table 6.28: Model 1: High pop + High influx of immigrants (N=128)



(0.164)


(0.095)


62


It is interesting to note that the largest change occurs in medium-sized municipali-

ties (population between 2,500 and 6,000 in 2003) which also saw a low increase (2% or

less) or a decrease in their foreign population (as a percent of the municipal population)

between 1990 and 2003. In contrast, the smallest change occurs in large municipalities

(population greater than 6,000 in 2003) which also see a moderate (to large) influx of

immigrants (2.5% or more). Of course, in this case, it is important to note that there is

a somewhat large confidence interval on this effect. Next, I will analyze the interaction

between SVP support in 2003 and population. The statistically significant (at the 10%

level or lower) results are shown in Tables 6.29, 6.30, 6.31 and 6.32.

Table 6.29: Model 1: Mid Pop + Low SVP support (N=100)



(0.277)


(0.111)


Table 6.30: Model 1: Low Pop + High SVP support (N=352)



(0.333)


(0.345)


63

6. DATA ANALYSIS

Table 6.31: Model 1: Mid Pop + High SVP support (N=96)



(0.285)


(0.121)


Table 6.32: Model 1: High pop + High SVP support (N=47)



(0.214)


(0.133)


64


Again, it seems that municipalities with a medium population (2,500 to 6,000 in-

habitants in 2003) see larger effects. Now I will consider the interaction between SVP

support in 2003 and influx of immigrants between 1990 and 2003. The statistically

significant (at the 10% level or lower) results are shown in Tables 6.33, 6.34 and 6.35

Table 6.33: Model 1: High SVP + High influx of immigrants (N=250)



(0.240)


(0.163)


Table 6.34: Model 1: Low SVP + High influx of immigrants (N = 212)


institution binary 0.717†

(0.432)


(0.238)


Table 6.35: Model 1: Low SVP + Low influx of immigrants (N=124)



(0.437)


(0.404)


65

6. DATA ANALYSIS

Now, I will consider the full cross product of these interactions. The results are

only listed if they are significant at the 10% level or lower. Additionally, it is important

to note that the numbers of municipalities in these groups is somewhat lower. These

results are shown at the end of the section.

Table 6.36: Model 1: Low Pop + High SVP + High Influx of Immigrants (N=151)



(0.386)


(0.260)


Table 6.37: Mode1: Mid pop + Low SVP + Low influx of immigrants (N=16)



(0.773)


(0.247)


Table 6.38: Model 1: Mid pop + Low SVP + High Influx of immigrants (N=80)



(0.237)


(0.124)


66


Table 6.39: Model 1: Mid-pop + High SVP + Low influx of immigrants (N=35)



(0.393)


(0.160)


Table 6.40: Model 1: Mid pop + High SVP + High influx of immigrants (N=56)


institution binary 0.462†

(0.266)


(0.152)


Table 6.41: High Pop + High SVP + High influx of immigrants (N=43)



(0.210)


(0.144)


67

6. DATA ANALYSIS

68

7

Discussion

The data analysis reveals some interesting results. To interpret these results, recall

that the coefficients recovered by this analysis represent the change in naturalization

rates due to the removal of direct democracy. Larger numbers indicate that the effect

of direct democracy was more deleterious in those areas because, for whatever reason,

it suppressed naturalization rates compared to their values after its removal. I will

present each of my hypotheses from section 4 and show how my work response to their

claims.

7.1 H1: Removing directly democratic institutions leads

to increased naturalization rates

Removing directly democratic institutions in favor of legislative, executive or other in-

stitutions which require the substantiation of opinions, does indeed lead to increased

naturalization rates. I find this effect to be an increase in the naturalization rate of 0.7

percentage points, which considering that naturalization rates are usually between 2 and

3%, constitutes a significant increase. Having leveraged both the quasi-experimental

nature of my data and a fixed effects transformation to remove time-constant confound-

ing variables, I am prepared to defend this as a causal effect, however, this conclusion

is still subject to time-variant confounders and relies on a few key assumptions which

I believe are plausible in this case, but which could potentially be violated.

Further work indicates that this conclusion is mainly valid for the German-speaking

municipalities in Switzerland because the majority of Italian-speaking and French-

speaking municipalities drop out of the analysis due to inadequate variation on the

independent variable.

69

7. DISCUSSION

7.2 H2: The effect does not depend on initial conditions

such as size of municipality or increases in the foreign

population

I find that, contrary to what Helbling predicts, the effect of moving away from direct

democracy is heterogeneous across different categories of municipalities. Most of all,

I find that having a mid-sized population of between 2,500 and 6,000 inhabitants in

2003 leads to a much stronger effect of 1.2 percentage points. When we consider this in

relation to the usual naturalization rate of 2 to 3% we can see that even in municipalities

which have higher naturalization rates, this constitutes around a around a 40% increase.

I use a model with interaction effects (Model 3) to test if these three-levels of population

constitute statistically different effects and I find that they do.

This is an interesting effect. It means that in these municipalities, putting citizen-

ship decisions in the hands of the citizenry suppressed naturalization rates much more

than in small or large municipalities. Why would we see this effect? I believe that

the answer lies in the literature on ethnic threat (see, for example, Schneider [2007]).

In small municipalities (which are predominately rural) there are probably fewer im-

migrants relative to the population so the threat posed by their presence is less. In

large municipalities, while there might be large groups of immigrants, their presence

is probably less surprising in urban areas. We may also think that urban areas are

correlated with higher education which has been shown in many studies to improve

attitudes towards immigrants (Hainmueller and Hiscox [2007, 2010]).

In mid-sized municipalities, immigrant groups are likely to visible to the native

citizens. Literature on ethnic threat predicts the the relative size and visibility of

the immigrant outgroup is likely to determine the level of tension between the two

groups (Schneider [2007], Quillian [1995], Forbes [1997]). While some attribute this

tension to economic competition (Quillian [1995]) more recent works (Hainmueller and

Hiscox [2010], Schneider [2007]) have shown that self-interested theories of immigrant

threat are not backed up by the data and that immigrants, especially those of different

ethnicities (Schneider [2007]) seem to pose a primarily cultural threat. While I cannot

test this directly with my data, the replacement of Italian immigrants by immigrants

from ex-Yugoslavia during this period (see the discussion of naturalization trends in

the methodology section) seems to lend credence to this theory.

Second, I find that having a low influx of foreigners in the pre-treatment period

(1990 –2003) (2% or less) leads to a larger increase in naturalization rates once directly

democratic institutions are removed. The effect for this group is around 0.9 percentage

70

7.3 H3: A high level of SVP support suppresses naturalization rates

points, as compared with their high-influx compatriots which see only a 0.6 percentage

point increase. Using an interaction effects model (Model 3) to test if these two effects

are statistically different, I find that they are.

The reason for this effect is probably related to the previous observation regarding

the size of municipalities. When we observe the summary statistics, we see that areas

with a high influx of immigrants had an average population of 5,511 whereas are areas

with a low influx of immigrants had an average population of 1,665. The average number

of naturalizations over the entire 1990 - 2009 period for the low-influx municipalities

was 3.4 compared to the high influx municipalities which averaged 21.0. This may

indicate that in areas where there are larger groups of immigrants and naturalizations

are more common, putting the decisions in the hands of the citizens is not as deleterious

to outcomes as in small communities in which there are very few naturalizations.

7.3 H3: A high level of SVP support suppresses natural-

ization rates

I find that having a high level of SVP support in 2003 (35% or more of the municipal

vote share) leads to relatively larger increase (0.8 percentage points) in naturaliza-

tion rate after direct democracy is removed when compared with municipalities with

lower SVP support which only saw increases of 0.6 percentage points. This indicates

that in the municipalities which saw high SVP support, the effect of directly demo-

cratic institutions was more deleterious to immigrants wishing to naturalize. Given

the anti-immigrant and explicitly anti-naturalization stance supported by the SVP it is

not surprising that removing the naturalization decision from the hands of right-wing

supporters lead to a larger increase in naturalization rates than for their less radical

counterparts. The effect, however, is not huge compared to the one observed for mid

sized municipalities.

It is interesting to note that municipalities with a low level of SVP support in 2003

tended to have higher populations (average population of 5,716) compared to munic-

ipalities with high SVP support which had an average population of 2,358. Between

these two groups, however, the ratio of foreigners to Swiss citizens (relative size of the

outgroup) is very similar (0.14 for low SVP areas and 0.11 for high SVP areas). This

means that given similarly sized outgroups, SVP support seems to deter immigrants

from naturalizing when the institution is directly democratic.

71

7. DISCUSSION

7.4 Trends recovered from finer-grained analysis

In my more fine grained analysis, I recover a few other trends. The conditions which

seem to mitigate the effect of direct democracy, (that is to say, lead to lower coefficients

that are statistically significant) are:

1. High population, High influx of immigrants (coefficient 0.37*)

2. Mid sized population, High SVP, High influx of immigrants (coefficient 0.46†)

3. High population, High SVP, High influx of immigrants (coefficient 0.58**)

On the other hand, the conditions in which direct democracy suppresses naturaliza-

tion rates much more strongly than average (that is to say, there are high coefficients

which are statistically significant) are:

1. Mid sized population, Low influx of immigrants (coefficient 1.63**)

2. High population, Low influx of immigrants (coefficient 1.30**)

3. Mid sized population, Low SVP support (coefficient 1.18**)

4. Mid sized population, High SVP support (coefficient 1.30**)

5. High population, High SVP support (coefficient 0.93**)

6. Low population, Low influx of immigrants (coefficient 1.11*)

7. Mid sized population, High SVP, Low influx of immigrants (coefficient 1.78**)

8. Mid sized population, Low SVP support, Low influx of immigrants (coefficient

1.66*)

9. Low population, High SVP, High influx of immigrants (coefficient 1.22**)

On the whole, it seems that high influxes of immigrants tend to be the most deter-

minate in dampening the effect of directly democratic institutions, whereas low influx

of immigrants lead to a suppression in naturalization rates. This is not surprising given

that in areas where there are more immigrants there is a larger group of potential

applicants.

On the other hand, in municipalities with mid sized populations (especially when

combined with low influxes of immigrants) we see much more deleterious effects from

the presence of directly democratic institutions. This seems to reify the theories of

ethnic threat discussed above.

72

7.4 Trends recovered from finer-grained analysis

A final interesting detail is the 9th observation in the last list (low population,

high SVP support and a high influx of immigrants). This seems to indicate that in

small, conservative, areas a large influx in the number of immigrants leads to some sort

of potential backlash through the suppression of naturalization rates. Following the

theories of ethnic threat, we could speculate that large numbers of immigrants moving

to these areas would be very visible and would increase the level of ethnic tension.

73

7. DISCUSSION

74

8

Conclusion

In this thesis I have explored the effect of direct democracy on local naturalization rates

in Switzerland. I have found that conferring citizenship through direct democracy has

a deleterious effect on naturalization rates, and moving away from directly democratic

institutions leads to a significant increase in local naturalization rates. Additionally, I

explored the heterogeneity of this effect and identified a series of conditions which lead

certain municipalities to see a much greater effect than their compatriots. Somewhat

surprisingly, the most prominent of these was simply being a mid-size municipality.

This thesis contributes to the literature on citizenship, naturalization and immigra-

tion in Switzerland where these issues are highly contentious. Most importantly, how-

ever, this thesis makes a more generalizable contribution to the literature on the effects

of direct democracy because it is one of the few studies to leverage a quasi-experimental

set-up allowing me to make causal claims about the effect of directly democratic insti-

tutions. Given this evidence, policy makers may want to consider moving away from

direct democracy in order to protect minority rights. Lyndon B. Johnson, once said

that “the vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down

injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are differ-

ent from other men,” however, in this case, I find that allowing citizens to vote on the

rights of their neighbors leads to one such injustice.

75

8. CONCLUSION

76

References

admin.ch. Regular naturalisation. http://www.bfm.admin.ch, feb 2010. URL http:

//www.bfm.admin.ch. 2

C. H Church. The politics and government of Switzerland. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

ISBN 9780333692776. URL http://books.google.com/books?id=ZoFPsjwHOu0C.

8

C Cochrane and N Nevitte. Support for far-right anti-immigration political parties in

advanced industrial states: 1980-2005. In Proceedings from the General Conference

of the European Consortium for Political Research, Pisa, Italy, September 2007. 9

dailymail.co.uk. Proposed swiss immigration laws show ’rise of new

racism and xenophobia’ | mail online. www.dailymail.co.uk, Septem-

ber 2007. URL http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-480493/

Proposed-Swiss-immigration-laws-rise-new-racism-xenophobia.html. 12

Rafaela Dancygier. Mobilizing against citizenship: Voter and party responses to the

naturalization of immigrants. In Prepared for the 17th International Conference

of the Council of Europe Studies, Montreal, Canada, April 15-17, 2010., volume

Unpublished Manuscript., Montreal, Canada, April 2010. 9

P Dardanelli. The swiss federal elections of 2007. Electoral Studies, 27(4):748–751,

December 2008. ISSN 02613794. doi: 10.1016/j.electstud.2008.04.010. URL http:

//linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0261379408000553. 8

Steven Erlanger and Nick Cumming-Bruce. Swiss ban building of minarets on mosques.

www.nytimes.com, November 2009. URL http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/

world/europe/30swiss.html. 13

H. D Forbes. Ethnic conflict: commerce, culture, and the contact hypothesis. Yale

77

http://www.bfm.admin.ch

http://www.bfm.admin.ch

http://books.google.com/books?id=ZoFPsjwHOu0C

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-480493/Proposed-Swiss-immigration-laws-rise-new-racism-xenophobia.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-480493/Proposed-Swiss-immigration-laws-rise-new-racism-xenophobia.html

http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0261379408000553

http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0261379408000553

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/world/europe/30swiss.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/world/europe/30swiss.html

REFERENCES

University Press, 1997. ISBN 9780300068191. URL http://books.google.com/

books?id=FnYOn7sMqrQC. 70

Bruno S. Frey and Lorenz Goette. Does the popular vote destroy civil rights? American

Journal of Political Science, 42(4):1343–1348, October 1998. ISSN 00925853. URL

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2991861. ArticleType: research-article / Full pub-

lication date: Oct., 1998 / Copyright c© 1998 Midwest Political Science Association.

3

Barbara S. Gamble. Putting civil rights to a popular vote. American Journal of

Political Science, 41(1):245–269, January 1997. ISSN 00925853. URL http://www.

jstor.org/stable/2111715. ArticleType: research-article / Full publication date:

Jan., 1997 / Copyright c© 1997 Midwest Political Science Association. 3

D. M Gross. Immigration to Switzerland, the case of the former Republic of Yugoslavia.

World Bank, 2006. URL http://books.google.com/books?id=uKbogsR0030C. 2,

11

Jens Hainmueller and Michael J. Hiscox. Educated preferences: Explaining attitudes

toward immigration in europe. International Organization, 61(2):pp. 399–442, 2007.

ISSN 00208183. URL http://www.jstor.org/stable/4498150. 70

Jens Hainmueller and Michael J. Hiscox. Attitudes toward highly skilled and low-

skilled immigration: Evidence from a survey experiment. American Political Science

Review, 104(01):61, March 2010. ISSN 0003-0554. doi: 10.1017/S0003055409990372.

URL http://www.journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0003055409990372. 70

M. Helbling. Practising citizenship and heterogeneous nationhood: naturalisations in

Swiss municipalities. Amsterdam University Press, 2008. ISBN 9789089640345. URL

http://books.google.com/books?id=Lg8PvE7IdUEC. 15

Marc Helbling. Naturalisation politics in switzerland: explaining rejection rates at

the local level. In T. Caponio and M. Borkert, editors, The Local Dimension of

Migration Policymaking, pages p.33–53. Amsterdam University Press, 2010. ISBN

9789089642325. URL http://books.google.com/books?id=wiO-5YsffjoC. 16, 17,

18, 19, 20, 21

A. Ladner. Politische Gemeinden, kommunale Parteien und lokale Politik: eine

empirische Untersuchung in den Gemeinden der Schweiz. Seismo Verlag, Sozial-

wissenschaften und Gesellschaftsfragen, 1991. ISBN 9783908239031. URL http:

//books.google.com/books?id=IjqNAAAAMAAJ. 19

78

http://books.google.com/books?id=FnYOn7sMqrQC

http://books.google.com/books?id=FnYOn7sMqrQC

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2991861



http://books.google.com/books?id=uKbogsR0030C


http://www.journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0003055409990372

http://books.google.com/books?id=Lg8PvE7IdUEC

http://books.google.com/books?id=wiO-5YsffjoC

http://books.google.com/books?id=IjqNAAAAMAAJ

http://books.google.com/books?id=IjqNAAAAMAAJ

REFERENCES

Andreas Ladner. Size and direct democracy at the local level: the case of switzerland.

Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 20(6):813–828, 2002. ISSN

0263-774X. doi: 10.1068/c0226. URL http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?

id=c0226. 2

PETRA. La population etrangere en suisse, 2009. URL http://www.bfs.admin.ch/

bfs/portal/fr/index/themen/01/07/blank/key/03.html. 7

Lincoln Quillian. Prejudice as a response to perceived group threat: Population com-

position and anti-immigrant and racial prejudice in europe. American Sociological

Review, 60(4):pp. 586–611, 1995. ISSN 00031224. URL http://www.jstor.org/

stable/2096296. 70

Yvonne Riano and Doris Wastl-Walter. Immigration policies, state discourses on

foreigners, and the politics of identity in switzerland. Environment and Plan-

ning A, 38(9):1693–1713, 2006. ISSN 0308-518X. doi: 10.1068/a37411. URL

http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=a37411. 6, 7, 31

S. L. Schneider. Anti-Immigrant attitudes in europe: Outgroup size and perceived

ethnic threat. European Sociological Review, 24(1):53–67, July 2007. ISSN 0266-

7215. doi: 10.1093/esr/jcm034. URL http://esr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/doi/

10.1093/esr/jcm034. 70

Elaine Sciolino. Immigration, black sheep and swiss rage - NYTimes.com.

www.nytimes.com, October 2007. URL http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/08/

world/europe/08swiss.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all. 12

D. Skenderovic. The radical right in Switzerland: continuity and change, 1945-2000.

Berghahn Books, 2009. ISBN 9781845455804. URL http://books.google.com/

books?id=wP7-a7NC0mkC. 8, 9, 10, 11

Jeffrey Wooldridge. Econometrics. Cengage Learning India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, 2009.

ISBN 9788131509609. 25, 26

79

http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=c0226

http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=c0226





http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=a37411

http://esr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/doi/10.1093/esr/jcm034

http://esr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/doi/10.1093/esr/jcm034

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/08/world/europe/08swiss.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/08/world/europe/08swiss.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

http://books.google.com/books?id=wP7-a7NC0mkC

http://books.google.com/books?id=wP7-a7NC0mkC

Date post:	15-May-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	buidat
View:	218 times
Download:	4 times

How Direct Democracy A ects Local Naturalization Rates ...wise/Undergrad Thesis/Tess Wise...How...

Documents