SynEval Policy Evaluation in the Swiss Political System

Caroline Schlaufer
Ph.D. Student

Subproject 3: Direct Democratic Campaigns and Evaluation

Evidence-based argumentation in direct-democratic campaigns. An empirical analysis of the use of evaluation results in campaign discourse of Swiss direct-democratic campaigns

This doctoral thesis aims at analyzing how evidence in the form of evaluation results is used in Swiss direct-democratic campaigns. Despite the growing interest in direct-democratic campaigns and in evidence-based policy making, there is still a lack of systematic empirical research on the use of evidence in campaigns. This doctoral thesis aims at closing this gap by addressing the following questions: (1) How are evaluation results used in campaigns? (2) What characteristics of campaigns and of evaluations foster the use of evaluation results in a direct-democratic campaign?(3) To what extent does the deliberative quality differ in lines of argumentation using evidence?

The research design includes:

1) a descriptive analysis of use of evidence campaign communication material

2) comparative qualitative case studies comparing

1. evaluations used in campaigns with evaluations not used in campaigns
2. lines of argumentation using evaluation results with lines of argumentation not using evaluation results

University of Bern
Center of Competence for Public Management
Schanzeneckstrasse 1
CH-3001 Bern