Electoral Competition and the Frequency of Initiative Use in the U.S. States

• Author: Robert J. McGrath
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X10388143
• Date: 01 May 2011
• Published date: 01 May 2011
• Subject Matter: Articles

American Politics Research

39(3) 611 –638

© The Author(s) 2011

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X10388143

http://apr.sagepub.com

388143APR39310.1177/1532673X1038

8143McGrathAmerican Politics Research

© The Author(s) 2011

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1University of Iowa, Iowa City

Corresponding Author:

Robert J. McGrath, Department of Political Science, The University of Iowa,

341 Schaeffer Hall, Iowa City, IA 52242-1498

Email: robert-mcgrath@uiowa.edu

Electoral Competition

and the Frequency

of Initiative Use in

the U.S. States

Robert J. McGrath1

Abstract

To what extent has direct democracy, specifically the ballot initiative process,

served to substitute for perceived deficiencies of representative democracy

in the United States? Despite extensive literatures on both direct democ-

racy and democratic representation, there exist very few direct evaluations

of the interplay between the two. I examine whether variation in the fre-

quency of a state’s initiative use is related to the extent to which that state’s

representative institutions lack electoral competition. I find that initiative

states with a higher percentage of uncontested elections for representative

office see more initiative use than states with more competitive elections,

conditional on the ideological divergence between citizens and legislators.

The results contribute much to our understanding of the processes driving

cycles of initiative use and identify a tangible consequence of the presence of

misrepresentative state institutions.

Keywords

direct democracy, electoral competition, state politics, representation, initiatives

612 American Politics Research 39(3)

I believe in the initiative, which should be used not to destroy representative

government, but to correct it when it becomes misrepresentative.

Theodore Roosevelt

While many share Theodore Roosevelt’s belief that direct legislation should be

used as a complement to representative democracy, none have assessed whether

it is used in response to the presence or perception of “misrepresentative”

institutions. Do proponents of initiativ es use them in r esponse to certain

variable qualities of representative government? Although initiative cam-

paigns are often framed as assertions of the power of the people against

legislatures that have somehow forgotten that their authority flows from

the “consent of the governed,” there is no previous empirical evidence that

the competitive qualiti es of legislative elections precipitate m ore initiativ e

use. In this article, I argue that the ballot initiative process is in fact used

as Roosevelt recommends—as an intended corrective to perceived fail-

ings in our contemporary system of representative democracy. As very

few studies treat initiative use as a dependent variable (Banducci, 1998;

Boehmke, 2005; Matsusaka & McCarty, 2001; Price, 1975), this article

contributes to our understanding of the processes driving cycles of initia-

tive use. Perhaps as importantly, it identifies a tangible consequence of the

oft-noted and increasingly prevalent lack of electoral competition for state

legislative seats.

The ballot initiative process1 has become an increasingly popular political

outlet in recent years. Twenty-four states currently allow citizens to initiate

ballot measures,2 more than 70% of the American population has access to the

initiative process at either the state or local level (Matsusaka, 2004), and

the number of initiatives that qualify for ballots has increased substantially in

recent elections. During the 2006 midterm elections, citizens were faced with

more than 200 initiatives and legislative referendums on statewide ballots,

the largest number in history.

As the initiative process is enjoying a resurgence to beyond its usage at the

beginning of the century, there is an emerging consensus regarding the current

health of representative democracy in the United States—with some likening

the infirmity of today’s representative bodies to their sickly ascendants from

the Progressive Era (Donovan, 2007; Donovan & Bowler, 2004; Tolbert, 2003).

As electoral rules and institutions in the early 20th century tended to favor

“plutocracies,” these authors argue that these same institutions lead now to

considerable rates of incumbent reelection, elite polarization, an increasing

role for money in politics, uncompetitive and even uncontested seats, and