Theoretical background and objectives

This project examines explanations of political behaviour in referenda about immigration issues. Is political information provided during campaigns effective in changing how citizens behave in the voting booth? Practitioners and political scientists have theorised about this fundamental question of electoral politics, but existing empirical tests have been limited to either artificial laboratory settings or subjective survey data. Although parties increasingly invest considerable financial resources in political campaigns (e.g. in mailings, canvassing, and advertising) we still lack knowledge about whether the information provided during political campaigns is indeed effective.

We combine theoretical accounts of preference formation over immigration policy with recent research that has used survey and lab experiments to explore the role of frames and partisan cues in more detail. We explore the effects of frames and partisan cues on how citizens vote in a referendum over immigration policy in a field experiment that provides information about key arguments and partisan cues to citizens immediately prior to the referendum. Our crucial interest concerns the relative strength of frames and cues and their interaction. While arguments provided by a frame should play a larger role than cues according to deliberative theory, as they aid in increasing citizens' level of information and thereby enable them to make a more educated decision, rational theories of democracy emphasise that cues can fully substitute for becoming informed. This suggests that cues are at least as consequential for how citizens vote as the provision of arguments.

Research design, data and methodology

Following the logic of clinical trials, we intend to assess the effectiveness of political information by randomly assigning municipalities to different informational and framing treatments (mailings) prior to referenda. This design will deliver causal estimates of the effect of information and framing on voter behaviour. The results will provide important knowledge about the effects of political information and how voters form their policy preferences in the context of an important upcoming Swiss referendum about immigration ("Ausschaffungsinitiative").