Measuring the indirect effect: Voter initiatives and legislative production in the American states
Measuring the indirect effect: Voter initiatives and legislative production in the American states
Date
2010-06-24
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Authors
Randolph, Gregory M.
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Publisher
Sage
Abstract
Recent research has identified important policy differences between voter initiative states and pure representative states despite a lack of enough observable voter initiative campaigns to explain the policy differences. This paper investigates the indirect effects of the voter initiative process on legislative production by estimating the number of bill enacted in the American states. The results indicate that legislators in voter initiative states enact more legislation as the difficulty in qualifying a voter initiative for the ballot decreases, as the legislature is less able to alter the effects of successful voter initiatives, and as the average number of voter initiatives that appear on the ballot increases. These results provide some statistical evidence of the indirect effect of the voter initiative and are consistent with the theory that policy differences in voter initiative states are the result of the indirect effect of the voter initiative process.
Description
Accepted Manuscript
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Article