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Measuring the Effect of Direct Democracy on State Policy: Not All Initiatives Are Created Equal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2021

Shaun Bowler  and
Todd Donovan
Shaun Bowler
Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside
Todd Donovan
Affiliation:
Western Washington University
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Abstract

Numerous studies attempt to assess direct democracy's impact on state policy using measures of direct democracy based on dummy variables or the frequency with which initiatives appear on a state's ballots. We offer an alternative to these measures that accounts for how rules governing the initiative process vary among the states. We replicate several studies using different measures of direct democracy and demonstrate that the results of hypothesis tests can be contingent on how these institutions are measured. We contend that commonly used dummy variable measures of state direct democracy have validity problems and that hypothesis tests using such measures produce imprecise estimates of the initiative's effect on policy.

Type
The Practical Researcher
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , Fall 2004 , pp. 345 - 363
Copyright
Copyright © Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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