Ballots and Guns: Is Compliance with Swiss Military Service Correlated with Extensive Use of Initiative Rights?

This article investigates the potential correlation between compliance with military service and the extensive use of initiative rights in Switzerland. While political rights are often believed to influence civic duties, this study examines whether such a relationship exists in the Swiss context, where both direct democracy and a citizen army are prominent. Based on multivariate regressions using panel data from 26 cantons between 2010 and 2022, we do not find significant correlations between the extensive use of initiative rights and effective fitness for military service once linguistic and cultural factors are controlled for. Our expanded analysis reveals that German-speaking cantons consistently show higher military service fitness rates, particularly those that integrated earlier into the Old Swiss Confederacy. Additionally, we find that religious composition and Swiss citizenship percentage are strongly associated with military service compliance. These findings suggest that civic duties, specifically military service obligations, are closely linked to cultural heterogeneities related to the tradition of classical republicanism rather than extended political rights per se. JEL codes: D72; H56; N44; Z13