Using data from a survey of all high-school graduates in a Swiss canton, we analyze the relationship between students' political orientation and their choice of a university major. Analyzing this question in the context of the Swiss higher education system adds to the existing literature because unlike students in other countries, Swiss students…

Research on evaluation has mainly focused on the use of evaluation and has given little attention to the origins of evaluation demand. In this article, I consider the question of why parliamentarians demand evaluations with parliamentary requests. Building on the literature of delegation, I use a principal-agent framework to explain the origins of…

In education policy, as in many other policy fields, well-designed policy reforms may fail to get enacted because policymakers may suddenly become confronted with a public backlash against their reform agenda. Thus, understanding the dynamics of public opinion is important in order to be able to assess the chances of successful reform. There is a…

The postwar realignment of union-party relations in Switzerland severed old formal ties but left some important links undisturbed; practical and effective cooperation on legislative items supports current informal union-party alliances. Major current problems include the unions' demand for codetermination in industry and the huge numbers of…