Abstract
Direct democracy is praised by some commentators and scholars as an effective form of government that is closer to the average citizen, increases voter awareness and as a result increases the trust placed on the government. Others cast doubt on these claims while raising other concerns such as takeover by special interests groups and its inability to mobilize citizens that are less likely to vote. Nonetheless, direct democracy is continuing to spread all over the world. so continued study is well justified. This thesis seeks to answer an important research question regarding the use of the initiative process: “Does the initiative process affect the performance of state governments within the United States?” For comparison purposes, the paper investigates states that allow for the initiative process and states that provide only a representative democracy. I built on an a rare empirical study of the governance question by Dalton (2008). I updated his work with more recent data from the Pew Center for the States and also added additional variables that were previously not included in his analysis. As a result of existing controversy in the literature regarding the best way to represent the initiative process, I applied three models in my thesis. The first model used only the continuous variable that measures the number of initiatives passed between 1960 and 2008, the second model used only the dichotomous measure of whether or not a state has an initiative process and employs a third model that includes both a dichotomous measure and the continuous variable. The three multiple regression models are designed to account for the Government Performance Project grades each state received for 2008. The results of my regression analysis generally suggest that the initiative process results in lower state performance grades, consistent with Dalton’s (2008) analysis. These findings have policy implications for state governments’ capacity to implement and manage government services effectively, as well as for possible reforms of the state ballot initiative process.