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Direct Democracy and Political Efficacy Reconsidered

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Abstract

Some studies have contended that direct democracy has secondary benefits unrelated to its impact on policy. In particular, recent scholarship claims that the American ballot initiative process enhances political efficacy. We began with concerns about the logic and empirical methods underlying this conclusion. We connect this research to the broader political psychology literature and in doing so find little reason to expect a positive relationship between direct democracy and efficacy. Our other contribution is to subject the empirical claim to more extensive testing. In contrast to prior research, we draw from multiple data sources and consider sampling methods. The results consistently fail to indicate that direct democracy generally enhances political efficacy. We find cause for skepticism about the secondary benefits of the ballot initiative process.

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Notes

  1. See especially Haider-Markel et al. (2007) for a useful review of the entire literature in the area of direct democracy and minority interests as well as further evidence of a negative impact. On the logic underlying concerns about protections of rights under direct democracy, see also Ellis (2002, chap. 5) and Gamble (1997).

  2. For instance, efficacy but not trust is related to political participation (Rosenstone and Hansen 1993).

  3. Clarke and Acock (1989) find that efficacy is much more sensitive to winning than to participating.

  4. Boehmke (2002) finds that direct democracy tends to increase the size and diversity of interest group populations in states. While this might be a positive development from a pluralist perspective, surveys of citizens in states with direct democracy show that one of the biggest complaints about the system is that special/moneyed interests are too powerful (Dyck and Baldassare n.d.). Even though empirical research suggests the influence of money in these contests is not all that powerful (Banducci 1998), perception would matter more to political efficacy than reality.

  5. A recent study by Bowler et al. (2006) suggests that response to racially and ethnically charged ballot initiatives have moved Latino voters to the Democratic party. It stands to reason, then, that the potential for majority tyranny might affect efficacy levels of non-White voters.

  6. Florida’s Amendment 3 passed in 2006 with 58% of the vote; Florida only has the constitutional initiative process.

  7. The measure is a combination of two dichotomous questions about external efficacy from the ANES cumulative data file: “public officials don’t care much about what people like me think” and “people like me don’t have any say about what government does”.

  8. Before 1988, the ANES only asked the question as a dichotomy, and so we use only the 88–04 answers. The 1992 ANES uses a five point scale: strongly agree, somewhat agree, neither agree nor disagree, somewhat disagree, strongly disagree.

  9. See Appendix for details.

  10. For the 1992 ANES data, we were unable to find the variable “State Economy Worse” used in the model after a very thorough search of the available data. The variable is not significantly related to either composite measures of internal or external efficacy used in Bowler and Donovan (2002). We specified numerous models in an attempt to replicate the finding from Smith and Tolbert (2004) using the 1988–1998 cumulative ANES. We were unable to do so and are willing to share our data and logs of attempts at this replication upon request. Notably, our sample size is larger by over 1000 cases.

  11. Given that the outcome is measured as a three category variable, we considered alternative specifications to OLS for Models 6–8 in Table 1. Using an ordered logit did not alter the substance of the findings in any meaningful way; these results are available from the authors upon request.

  12. Appendix Table 5 demonstrates that the findings from Table 1 do not change if we alter the specification of the independent variable of interest, Direct Democracy Use, to a dummy variable.

  13. We also examined data from the 1985 GSS that included efficacy questions. We do not include this analysis in the present article because some contextual control variables are unavailable for that year. Including the 1985 GSS data would not change any of our findings: political efficacy is unrelated to direct democracy in that survey.

  14. In the course of specifying our models, we ran separate models on each of the individual questions summed to the index. Absent any major differences in interpretation, we present the analysis of the indexed measures only.

  15. The PEW data were collected using a random-digit-dial telephone sample.

  16. A likelihood-ratio test determined that the proportional odds assumption was not violated in any of the models presented.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Richard Ellis, John Hibbing, Paul Quirk, Robert Wassmer, and the anonymous Political Behavior referees for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. In addition, we are grateful to the American National Election Study, the General Social Survey, and PEW for making their data available. The authors alone are responsible for the results and conclusions presented.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Political Science Department, University at Buffalo, SUNY, Buffalo, NY, 14260, USA

    Joshua J. Dyck

  2. Department of Public Policy and Administration, California State University Sacramento, Sacramento, CA, 95819-6081, USA

    Edward L. Lascher Jr.

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Correspondence to Joshua J. Dyck.

Appendix

Appendix

Dependent Variable Coding

American National Election Studies––Cumulative Models

External Efficacy (1988–2004): additive index ranges from 0 to 4 based on 3-point Likert responses (agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree) to the statements “People like me don’t have any say about what government does” and “I don’t think public officials care much what people like me think.” (coded so higher values represent higher efficacy).

Internal Efficacy (1988–2000): variable ranges from 1 to 3 based on Likert responses (agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree) to the statement, “sometimes politics and government seem so complicated that a person like me can’t really understand what’s going on.” (coded so higher values represent higher efficacy).

1992 American National Election Study

External Efficacy (1992): index ranges from 2 to 9 following exact coding of Bowler and Donovan (2002, 390a). Questions are identical to those used for the 1988–2004 index, but the answers vary over 5 categories: agree strongly, agree somewhat, neither agree nor disagree, disagree somewhat, disagree strongly.

Internal Efficacy (1992): index ranges from 4 to 20 following exact coding of Bowler and Donovan (2002, p. 390a). Each question is a five point Likert scale ranging from agree strongly to disagree strongly based on responses to the following statements: “sometimes politics and government seem so complicated that a person like me can’t really understand what’s going on,” “I consider myself well qualified to participate in politics,” “I feel that I could do as good a job in public office as most other people,” and “I feel that I am better informed about politics than most people.”

General Social Survey, 1996

External Efficacy: additive index ranges from 0 to 16 constructed from five-point Likert scale responses (recoded from 0 to 4 so that higher numbers indicated higher efficacy) to the following statements: “The average person can influence politicians,” “I don’t have any say about what the government does,” “Even the best politician cannot have much impact,” and “Elections are a good way of making government pay attention.”

Internal Efficacy: additive index ranges from 0 to 8 constructed from five-point Likert scale responses (recoded from 0 to 4 so that higher numbers indicated higher efficacy) to the following statements: “I have a pretty good understanding of the issues,” and “Most people are better informed about politics than I.”

PEW Survey, 1997

External Efficacy: “Public officials don’t care what people like me think.” (Likert scale responses 1 (strongly agree), 2(somewhat agree), 3(somewhat disagree), 4(strongly disagree), with higher values indicating higher efficacy).

Independent Variable Coding

Independent Variable coding is the same across the GSS, ANES and PEW data, except where noted.

Direct Democracy Use: average number of initiatives from 1972 until the survey year.

State Racial Diversity: 1990 and 2000 Census measure of proportion of the non-White/non-Hispanic population.

California Resident (0,1): dummy variable.

Divided State Government: dummy variable.

State Political Culture: Sharkansky’s (1969) measure of Elazar’s political culture.

Age: in years, 18–99.

Female, African American, Hispanic, Asian, Non-White: all coded as dummy variables.

Education: highest degree completed (1–6).

Income: percentiles (1–5).

Strong Democrat, Strong Republican, Pure Independent: dummy variables from 7 point party identification.

National Economy Worse: retrospective evaluation coded better(1), same(2), worse(3).

Presidential Loser: coded 0 if voted for the winner, 1 for all else (including non-voters).

Senate Loser: same coding as Presidential Loser.

Voted in Election: 0-non-voter, 1-voter.

Political Knowledge: interviewer identified measure ranges from 1 (uninformed) to 5 (informed).

Exceptions in the PEW Data

Democrat and Republican are dummy variables; the survey did not include branching party ID probes.

Present National Situation asks citizens to evaluate the present situation of the country on a 1–10 scale, with higher numbers indicating more favorable evaluations (this is used as a substitute for economic retrospective voting in the ANES models).

Clinton Favorability is a four-point Likert response to the current President’s favorability (used as a substitute for loser’s consent).

Regular Voter is a four-point Likert response to the question, “how frequently do you vote?” (1-never, 2-sometimes, 3-most of the time, 4-always).

Table 5 Models of direct democracy’s impact on political efficacy, American national election studies, 88–04, dummy variable models
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Dyck, J.J., Lascher, E.L. Direct Democracy and Political Efficacy Reconsidered. Polit Behav 31, 401–427 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-008-9081-x

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