Enhancing political participation : Citizen proposals and voter turnout in Swedish municipal elections

Sammanfattning: This paper investigates whether the use of citizen proposals has affected voter turnout in Swedish municipal elections. I use a staggered difference-in-difference approach, exploiting the variation in policy adoption amongst Swedish municipalities, using municipal data at the yearly level between 1985 and 2014. I find that the introduction of citizen proposals does not increase voter turnout in current or up-coming municipal elections, and neither does an increased share of people handing in citizen proposals. I find some evidence that, on average, treated municipalities suffer from lower levels of voter turnout compared to untreated municipalities. This paper provides additional information regarding how citizen initiatives affect local political participation.