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Category: Project

Description: The research interest of our project is two-fold: first, our substantial interest is to account for the impact of campaign effects in the context of a vote on climate change policy. We want to know whether campaigns inform voters about their own positions on a given issue, and whether self-interest trumps elite cues provided by parties and associations. While we expect to gain insights into the effect of campaigning in general, the direct democratic context as well as the substantive focus on climate change promise interesting insights beyond the Swiss context. Our second goal speaks more to a methodological interest as we plan to analyze how much the timing of a survey (experiment) influences the results of the subsequent analysis. To evaluate these questions we will conduct a two-wave panel survey during the campaign leading up to a referendum on the revision of the CO2-law in Switzerland. At the end of the data-collection period, accordingly, we plan to write 1-2 papers on the above-mentioned research interests.