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Of Models and Methods: A Response to Matsusaka

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2021

Melissa J. Marschall  and
Anirudh V.S. Ruhil
Melissa J. Marschall
Affiliation:
Rice University
Anirudh V.S. Ruhil
Affiliation:
Ohio University
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Extract

Do instruments of direct democracy affect policymaking and, if so, how? The political science literature is rife with increasingly sophisticated empirical efforts to answer these questions (Matsusaka 2004; Lupia and Matsusaka 2004). Having expended much energy over the past two decades studying the initiative's effects on state and local policy, Matsusaka (1995, 2004) is convinced that initiative states spend and tax less than states without the initiative (2004, 3; 1995). Agnostic about whether initiative states spend and tax more or less than noninitiative states but puzzled by scholars' failure to account for the endogeneity of the initiative in their models, we sought to determine whether the fiscal conservatism ascribed to the initiative remained after explicitly modeling states' initiative status. Our study, published in this issue of State Politics and Policy Quarterly contradicts Matsusaka's conclusions.

Type
Research Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , Winter 2005 , pp. 364 - 372
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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