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Direct Democracy and the Selection of Representative Institutions: Voter Support for Apportionment Initiatives, 1924–62

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2021

Jonathan Woon
Jonathan Woon*
Affiliation:
Carnegie Mellon University
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Abstract

If voters had the opportunity to choose the characteristics of their representative institutions directly, how would they do so? Voters in several states selected the base of their state legislative apportionment through the initiative process prior to the reapportionment revolution of the 1960s, which provides a unique opportunity to answer this question. This study examines 13 such initiatives in four states between 1924 and 1962. Four factors are hypothesized to influence vote choice on these initiatives: urban-rural conflict, partisanship, race, and economic self-interest. Through regression analysis of the county-level vote in these elections I find that economic self-interest consistently influences voter support for apportionment initiatives while these other factors influence it only occasionally. This finding suggests that distributive politics drive voters' evaluation of representative institutions and that the influence of other political factors depends on the historical and local context of an initiative.

Type
Research Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , Summer 2007 , pp. 167 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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