What Drives the Level of Party Participation in Digital Referendum Campaigns? Evidence from Switzerland

The global referendum proliferation visible since the start of the 1990’s has often been linked to a civil dissatisfaction with representative democracy, but another strand of literature has instead pointed to political agency (i.e. referendums are triggered mainly by political actors and parties with the goal to strengthen their own position) to explain this phenomenon. As this intentional behavior extends to referendum campaigns through which these actors look to influence voter behavior in their favor, a preliminary question yet to be addressed in the literature rises to the fore: to what extent do political parties actively engage in referendum campaigns? A precise quantitative indicator for this can be attained by looking at the referendum campaign finance of the parties, which forms a solid basis for explaining the level of this engagement. An obvious starting place for such a study is Switzerland, where referendums are a staple of the political constellation: the past two years alone has seen the country organise 27 referendums. However, available data on campaign financing by Swiss parties is limited due to laissez-faire transparency regulations. This study attempts to overcome this by constructing a novel dataset, based on the Meta Ad Library, that details the extent to which Swiss political parties have engaged in digital campaigns for the 47 referendums since 2018. Additionally, through multilevel analysis, it will look to single out factors that might explain variation, such as regulations, the context of the referendum and characteristics of the parties themselves.