A number of studies has investigated the impact of direct democratic options and their use on several aspects of equality during the last decades. Most of these studies focused either on socioeconomic measures or legal or political minority rights. As direct democracy has a long history in Switzerland and several US states, most studies focus on these countries. Comprehensive, cross-national analyses are almost missing. In addition, the impact of context factors is ignored in most studies, pointing at a large research gap.

Empirical findings on direct democracy’s impact on socioeconomic equality are still rare and rather mixed (Moser and Obinger 2007; Berry 2009; Feld and Kirchgässner 2000; Wagschal and Obinger 2000; Matsusaka 2004; Freitag and Vatter 2006). While Merkel (2011, 2015) bases his contra-equality assessment mostly on anecdotal evidence and assumptions, Berry (2014) indeed finds education spending to be lower and more unequal in US states with direct democratic options than in states without these. The theoretical expectation that resourceful groups use their influence to enforce their interests and prevent redistribution is also partly confirmed in case studies of German subnational direct democratic votes. These studies insinuate that the potentially higher turnout of the better-off can hinder pro-equality impacts of direct democratic instruments (Töller and Vollmer 2013; Schäfer and Schoen 2013). Feld et al. (2010) come to a more nuanced conclusion when comparing Swiss cantons with different direct democratic options: they find social welfare spending to be lower in cantons with more direct democratic options. However, contrary to the pessimistic conclusions about socioeconomic equality that might be drawn from this finding, the amount of social welfare spending had no influence on income equality. The level of income equality was not related to the extent of direct democratic options. Socioeconomic inequality was not affected by direct democracy. Finally, Blume et al. (2009) and Blume and Voigt (2012) detected in their cross-national analysis that the effect of direct democratic options on welfare spending depends on the applied direct democratic instruments: while countries with mandatory referenda spend less on welfare, expenditures are higher in countries allowing citizens’ initiatives at the national level.

Findings for direct democracy’s effect on legal and political equality are mixed as well. Several scholars studying the fate of minorities in the US states discovered that especially the rights of linguistic minorities and LGBTQ citizens can be at risk in direct democratic votes (Gamble 1997; Lewis 2013; Haider-Markel et al. 2007). In contrast, studies on Switzerland arrive at more optimistic conclusions. In Switzerland, the rights of certain minorities are often protected and enhanced by popular vote (Donovan and Bowler 1998; Hajnal et al. 2002; Frey and Goette 1998). The median voter theorem (Black 1948; Downs 1957)—presuming that direct democratic decisions are close to median voter attitudes—seems to provide a useful empirical answer. If the median voter is in favor of the minority concerned, this most likely results in minority-friendly outputs of direct democratic votes. In contrast, if s/he regards the minority as an out-group, its legal and political equality might be endangered by direct democracy (Matsusaka 2004; Töller and Vollmer 2013; Vatter and Danaci 2010). All in all, context factors like the kind of minority and their perception in society influence the popular vote considerably (Helbling and Kriesi 2004; Bollinger 2007; Vatter and Danaci 2010; Christmann and Danaci 2012).

Taking socioeconomic, legal, and political equality into account, Geissel, Krämling, and Paulus (2019a) reveal that between 1990 and 2015, bottom-up national votes in European democracies produced more contra- than pro-equality outputs, while it was the other way around for mandatory and top-down referenda. This contradicts the findings of Blume et al. (2009, 2012) only at first sight, as the negative record of bottom-up referenda exclusively stems from the legal and political dimensions of equality, whereas these referenda show a positive record for socioeconomic equality.

To get a first impression if context does play a role regarding the equality-output of direct democratic votes, a recent article evaluates national-level referenda in European democracies between 1990 and 2015 according to different European regions. Descriptive analyses reveal that socioeconomic equality is fostered more often in Eastern Europe and Switzerland, whereas political and legal equality are more often decreased in these countries. In the other European regions, pro- and contra-equality outputs are more balanced (Geißel et al. 2019b).

These findings point to the importance of context. But which factors are decisive? Research in this regard is scarce and patchy. For example, in their cross-national, comparative studies Blume et al. (2009) and Blume and Voigt (2012) took the age of democracy into account.Footnote 1 Other studies looked at indicators such as the level of equality, education, population size, and attitudes—e,g, the share of fundamentalists (Haider-Markel et al. 2007; Donovan and Bowler 1998).

Research on the effects of context variables on the equality-related influence of direct democratic votes is sparse. The literature concentrates on the following factors: (1) the level of socioeconomic, legal, and political equality in a country, and (2) how long the country has been governed democratically. In addition and for the sake of completeness, we discuss (3) how much importance citizens place on equality—although this variable cannot enter our regression analyses due to data problems. We outline the reasons for our selection below.

Besides these country-level factors, the direct democratic instrument employed can also be assumed to play a vital role in determining whether a vote has pro- or contra-equality outputs. Picking up on previous research, we investigate the effects of bottom-up, top-down, and mandatory referenda.

Why are these variables expected to play a crucial role in whether equality is fostered or decreased in direct democratic votes? First, the level of equality in a country is most likely a decisive context factor, as already mentioned above, and contradictory assumptions can be found. One could assume that the probability for pro-equality direct democratic outputs might be higher in countries with low levels of socioeconomic, legal and political equality. For example, socioeconomic inequality might increase grievances and thereby result in more pro-equality outputs. In line with this thought, high levels of equality might decrease the likelihood of pro-equality outputs, because citizens consider further equality-enhancing actions as unnecessary. Yet, it could also be the other way around: in countries with high levels of inequality, citizens might endorse liberal values and reject social ones. And high levels of legal and political equality might be necessary to initiate a successful direct democratic bill promoting equality. Furthermore, in countries with high inequality worse off groups might not possess the financial, legal and political resources to campaign in direct democratic votes. Looking at the voter turnout, in unequal societies the better-off might have considerably more means to push their interests. This could result in more contra-equality outputs (see for example Merkel and Ritzi 2017). As possible effects could run both ways, we refrain from formulating clear-cut hypotheses and instead perform exploratory analyses to figure out whether high levels of equality increase or decrease the likelihood of pro-equality outputs.

Second, the age of democracy is promising in several regards. It is an indicator for “the stability of political rights”, which most likely has an effect on how direct democracy and equality are related (Blume et al. 2009; Blume and Voigt 2012, p. 295). In systems, where rights have been instable and the rule of law is not implemented properly, citizens might consider popular votes on equality probably as less meaningful. However, it could also be the other way round and citizens living in countries with low stability of political rights are more inclined to vote for more equality, when they have the chance in a popular vote. The age of democracy might have also a socializing effect. When citizens are used to exercise power in long-term democracies, they might feel more efficacy to cast a pro-equality ballot in popular votes. But it might also be possible that citizens living in a young democracy are especially keen to take part in a pro-equality referendum. Again, we do not formulate a hypothesis on the direction of the effect and we apply an explorative approach.

Third, the last country-level variable is citizens’ attitudes towards equality. In line with the median voter theorem, we might expect that attitudes prevalent in society determine the results of referenda. The more importance citizens place on equality, the higher should be the probability that direct democratic votes have pro-equality outputs. In contrast to the variables mentioned above, the opposite effect is pretty unlikely: there are no reasons to expect direct democratic outputs leaning towards contra-equality in countries where citizens value equality to a high degree.

Fourth, we include the direct democratic instrument employed. Theoretical considerations as well as empirical findings on equality-promoting impacts of different instruments seem to be contradictory. Considering bottom-up instruments, on the one hand, we could expect them to be especially positive for legal and political equality, as they give marginalized groups the opportunity to put their interests on the agenda (Eder and Magin 2008). Similar arguments can be made regarding socioeconomic equality: bottom-up votes could be used by the poor to enhance their situation. On the other hand, bottom-up instruments could also be used by wealthy, dominating groups to suppress legal or political minorities and to increase their status and wealth, which is why bottom-up instruments might decrease equality (Gamble 1997; Vatter and Danaci 2010; Blume et al. 2009; Blume and Voigt 2012). Considering mandatory instruments, no assumptions are possible. Mandatory instruments often refer to changes in the constitution and thus more often to legal and political issues than to socioeconomic equality. But findings on equality related outputs are missing. Finally, we have no definite expectations regarding top-down referenda: governments might either use direct democratic instruments to improve their reputation by decreasing or increasing existing inequalities or by legitimizing the status quo via popular vote. Or governments might want to boost their popularity or answer to pressures from minority groups or the European Union by proposing equalizing measures. Our explorative analysis will show which direction of effect holds true.

In sum, we consider levels of socioeconomic, legal, and political equality, the age of democracy, attitudes towards equality, and the direct democratic instrument employed as crucial context factors. As a result of contradicting theoretical arguments as well as empirical findings, we refrain from formulating hypotheses regarding the direction of these variables’ effects on the equality-output of direct democratic votes.

Besides these rather general factors, which can be analyzed quantitatively, more specific circumstances of a popular vote might be decisive for a pro- or contra-equality output, for example, the role of the church or trade unions in the country, or specific events in the run-up to the referendum. These factors are difficult to consider in regression analyses. Therefore, we investigate them separately in a preliminary case study of two cases (see also Methodology and Data).

To sum up, we identify three research gaps: first, research on context variables influencing the effect of direct democratic votes on equality is scarce and patchy. Second, with few exceptions, existent studies focus on single countries, either doing case studies or comparing Swiss cantons or US states. Third, most of the literature only investigates direct democratic options and/or the numbers of referenda without looking at the concrete content of the bills. We address these research gaps by investigating the effects of context variables on the probability of successful direct democratic votes with pro-equality outputs in comparative perspective looking at the actual output. To account for votes in one country being more similar to each other than votes from different countries, we undertake multilevel logistic regression analyses. The methods employed for coding the outputs and for our analysis are described in the next section, which also entails descriptive findings.