Neue indikatoren zur bestimmung der arithmetischen regierungskonkordanz

Concordance, which is an important characteristic of the government system in Switzerland, is frequently used as a descriptive, or explanatory, variable in comparative politics. The purpose of this paper is firstly to clarify the conceptual differences between political and arithmetic concordance and secondly to propose a new measure of arithmetic concordance, one that solves the problems of the usual indicator - the share of parliamentary seats held by governing parties. Our first measure, "the absolute degree of concordance", takes into account the concordance deficits found in cases where parties do not receive government seats proportional to their parliamentary strengths. In addition, our second indicator, the "standardised degree of concordance", controls for differences across cantons with respect to the number of government seats and the number of parliamentary parties. The analysis of the relationship between concordance and the use of direct democracy in the Swiss cantons confirms the superiority of our two measures over the usual indicator.