ABSTRACT

Local consultative referendums are a widely used democratic innovation. Nevertheless, there is still limited knowledge about the local effects following a referendum, especially in terms of how the public reactions varies given if a citizen has been on the winning or on the losing side of the referendum. The purpose with this study is therefore to add to this line of research by assessing how a local referendum about a municipal merger affects external political efficacy and political trust within a local community. By analysing two cross-sectional datasets collected in a bilingual Finnish municipality before a merger referendum, in 2018 (N = 6,686), and after the referendum, in 2020 (N = 3,133), as a pseudo-experiment of effects of a municipal merger, we show that the aggregated levels of external political efficacy and political trust have increased and vary based on being on the winning or losing side of the referendum.

摘要

地方协商全民投票是一种被广泛使用的民主创新。尽管如此，对于公投后的当地影响，人们仍然知之甚少，尤其是如果公民在公投中获胜或失败，公众的反应会如何变化。因此，本研究的目的是通过评估关于市政合并的地方公投如何影响当地社区内的外部政治效能和政治信任来增加这一研究范围。通过分析 2018 年合并公投前（N = 6,686）和 2020 年公投后（N = 3,133）在双语芬兰市政当局收集的两个横截面数据集，作为市政合并影响的伪实验,