For many, direct democracy is said to increase political interest. To date, however, empirical findings regarding this relationship remain inconclusive. In this article, we claim that this inconclusiveness can be partly ascribed to the diverse effects that direct democracy has on individuals. In other words, direct democracy influences political interest, but how and to what degree depends on an individual’s personality traits. Running hierarchical regression models with survey data from random samples of eligible American and Swiss voters, we arrive at the following three conclusions: First, in both countries, the use of direct democracy is not directly connected to political interest. Second, the Big Five personality traits affect the interest in politics. Third, neuroticism, in particular, alters the relationship between direct democracy and political interest, suggesting that a certain personality type is likely to be more sensitive to popular votes, and a vibrant democratic environment can help to inspire interest in politics for people who, because of their personality, tend to be detached from it. Quite intriguingly, these relationships hold irrespective of the country and research period.

对许多人来说，据说直接民主会增加政治兴趣。然而，迄今为止，关于这种关系的实证结果仍然没有定论。在本文中，我们声称这种不确定性可以部分归因于直接民主对个人的不同影响。换句话说，直接民主会影响政治利益，但如何以及在何种程度上取决于个人的个性特征。使用来自符合条件的美国人和随机样本的调查数据运行分层回归模型瑞士选民，我们得出以下三个结论：首先，在这两个国家，使用直接民主与政治利益没有直接关系。其次，大五人格特质影响政治兴趣。第三，特别是神经质改变了直接民主和政治利益之间的关系，这表明某种人格类型可能对普选更敏感，而充满活力的民主环境有助于激发人们对政治的兴趣，因为他们的个性，往往会脱离它。非常有趣的是，这些关系与国家和研究时期无关。