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Mobilizing Interests: Group Participation and Competition in Direct Democracy Elections

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Abstract

We examine group mobilization in direct democracy elections by assessing the conditions under which interests will actively support or oppose ballot measures. Motivating our analysis is that the decision to mobilize is driven by the costs and benefits of group participation, a calculus shaped by issue characteristics, state political institutions, and the electoral context. Using data from initiative and referendum measures appearing on statewide ballots from 2003 to 2008, we find that ballot measures involving social and tax issues are likely to produce competition among groups and increase the overall number of groups involved. In addition, we find that group competition and levels of mobilization increased in response to how difficult it would be for the legislature to undo the change brought about from passage of a ballot measure. Lastly, group competition and levels of mobilization increased for ballot measures appearing in nonpresidential election years and for ballot measures featuring a close election. Taken together, our results suggest that groups engage strategically in direct democracy elections to pursue a mix of policy and political goals.

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Notes

  1. Additionally, 21 states allow for the popular referendum, a process whereby voters can invalidate existing state laws. While the popular referendum is seldom used, on occasion these elections can be quite contentious such as the Ohio’s Issue 2 in 2011 where voters repealed legislation that limited collective bargaining for the state’s public employees.

  2. We exclude automatically refered referendums (many states require that voters be asked periodically if they would like to hold a constitutional convention) or referendums offered by actors besides state legislatures (e.g., the Arizona Commission on Salaries for Elective State Officers or the Florida Constitutional Revision Commission).

  3. Robust standard errors are not an option for seemingly unrelated regression models in Stata. When the two models are run separately with robust standard errors the results are unaffected.

  4. The specification of the SUR model may raise concerns about simultaneity, as groups may mobilize not just in response to the factors we identify, but also to the presence of opposing groups. When the analysis presented in columns two and three of Table 2 is estimated controlling for the number of opposing groups, the coefficients are positive and significant (.62 for number of con groups and .78 for the number of con groups) and the effects for Social Issue, Legislative Insulation, and Tax Increase (pro group model) are dampened, while Economic Dominance and Competitive (pro group model) falls out of significance.

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Acknowledgments

We are thankful to Matt Barreto and Baodong Liu for helpful comments. We are indebted to Denise Roth Barber of the National Institute on Money in State Politics for providing us with her institute’s data on ballot measures. All interpretations of the data, of course, are our own. For RWJ—friend and mentor.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 4505 Maryland Parkway, Box 455029, Las Vegas, NV, 89154, USA

    David F. Damore

  2. Department of Political Science, School of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts, University of California, Merced, 5200 North Lake Road, Merced, CA, 95343, USA

    Stephen P. Nicholson

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  1. David F. Damore
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Correspondence to Stephen P. Nicholson.

Appendix. Measurement and data sources for independent variables

Appendix. Measurement and data sources for independent variables

Variable name

Measurement and data sources

Issue characteristics

 Social Issue a

Dummy variable that is coded one if a measure addresses a social issue, zero otherwise. Data from Biggers (2011)

 Tax Increase

Dummy variable that is coded one if a measure proposed to increase taxes, zero otherwise. Data from the National Conference of State Legislatures Ballot Measure Database

Political institutions

 Referendum

Dummy variable that is coded one if a measure was a legislatively proposed referendum, zero otherwise. Data from the National Conference of State Legislatures Ballot Measure Database

 Legislative Insulation

A nine level measure where higher values indicate greater insulation from legislative interference after passage of an initiative. Data from Bowler and Donovan (2004)

 Constitutional Amendment

Dummy variable that is coded one if the measure seeks to amend a state’s constitution, zero otherwise. Data from the National Conference of State Legislatures Ballot Measure Database

 Group Density

Interval level measure coded as the log of the number of interest groups per capita. Data from Gray and Lowery (1996)

 Economic Dominance

Interval level measure that is coded as the ratio of for profit to nonprofit interest groups in a state. Data from Gray and Lowery (1996)

Electoral context

 Competitive b

Dummy variable that is coded one if the final vote difference was equal to or less than five percent, zero otherwise. Data from state election returns

 Presidential Election

Dummy variable that is coded one if the measure was on the ballot during a presidential election, zero otherwise

 Party Difference

Interval level variable coded as the absolute value of the difference in Ceaser and Saldin’s (2005) major party index for the Republican and Democratic parties. Data from http://scholar.harvard.edu/saldin/data

  1. aSpecifically, a measure was considered a social issue if its content focused on any of the following: same sex marriage, domestic partnerships or homosexual rights, creation of an official state language, access to governmental services for non-legal residents, immigration, affirmative action, abortion rights, legalization of marijuana or medical marijuana, stem cell research, the death penalty, or euthanasia
  2. bAlthough the ex post nature of this variable is a limitation, previous research on the closeness of elections has made ample use of this type of indicator (e.g., Cox and Munger 1989). Furthermore, as a practical matter it is the best indicator available to us since very few ballot measures are the subject of media polling. To assess if the measurement of Competitive affects the performances of the other independent variables included in the analyses presented below, the models were estimated with and without Competitive. These diagnostics indicate no substantive differences suggesting that the inclusion of Competitive is not biasing our estimates

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Damore, D.F., Nicholson, S.P. Mobilizing Interests: Group Participation and Competition in Direct Democracy Elections. Polit Behav 36, 535–552 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-013-9252-2

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