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32 Const. Pol. Econ. 1 (2021)

handle is hein.journals/constpe32 and id is 1 raw text is: Constitutional Political Economy (2021) 32:1-30 https://doi.org/10.1007/si0602-020-09322-6 ORIGINAL PAPER Power sharing at the local level: evidence on opting-in for non-citizen voting rights Alois Stutzer' . Michaela Slotwinski Accepted: 29 October 2020 / Published online: 15 November 2020 ©The Author(s) 2020 Abstract The enfranchisement of foreigners is likely one of the most controversial frontiers of institutional change in developed democracies, which are experiencing an increasing number of non-citizen residents. We study the conditions under which citizens are willing to share power with non-citizens. To this end, we exploit the setting of the Swiss canton of Grisons, where municipalities are free to decide on the introduction of non-citizen voting rights at the local level (a so called opting-in regime). Consist- ent with the power dilution hypothesis, we find that enfranchisement is less likely when the share of resident foreigners is large. Moreover, municipalities with a large language/cultural minority are less likely to formally involve foreigners. In con- trast, municipality mergers seem to act as an institutional catalyst, promoting demo- cratic reforms. A supplementary panel analysis on electoral support for an opting-in regime in the canton of Zurich also backs the power dilution hypothesis, showing that a larger share of foreigners reduces support for an extension of voting rights. We are grateful to Jean-Thomas Arrighi, Joachim Blatter, Janine Dahinden, Johan Elkink, Eva Green, Dominik Hangartner, Ron Hayduk, Anita Manatschal, Lorenzo Piccoli, Didier Ruedin, Klaudia Wegschaider and the participants of the research seminar at the Immigration Policy Lab Zurich, the meeting of the NCCR - on the move as well as of the Max-Planck conference on citizenship for helpful comments. Special thanks go to Marco Hurzeler, Tobias Schib and Roman Uhlig for excellent research assistance. Furthermore, we thank Thomas Kollegger of the Amt fur Gemeinden des Kt. Graubunden for his support of the Project. We acknowledge financial support from the Swiss National Science Foundation and its National Center of Competence in Research - The Migration-Mobility Nexus. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1060 2-020-09322-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. E Alois Stutzer alois.stutzer @unibas.ch Michaela Slotwinski michaela.slotwinski @unibas.ch Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Basel, Peter Merian-Weg 6, 4002 Basel, Switzerland Springer

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