TRENDS: Following the Money? How Donor Information Affects Public Opinion about Initiatives

• DOI: 10.1177/1065912921990744
• Author: Scott A. MacKenzie,Cheryl Boudreau
• Published date: 01 September 2021
• Date: 01 September 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912921990744

Political Research Quarterly

2021, Vol. 74(3) 511 –525

© 2021 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912921990744

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Article

In states with direct democracy, citizens make policy

directly as opposed to relying exclusively on government

officials. The initiative and referendum entrust citizens

with crucial responsibilities, including decisions about

social issues (e.g., abortion, same-sex marriage, and the

death penalty), spending and taxation levels (e.g., income

and sales tax hikes), and institutional reforms (e.g., term

limits, primary and redistricting rules). Previous research

offers reason to question whether citizens can perform

these responsibilities competently. Citizens are uninformed

about politics in general (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996),

and they typically know little about the issues at stake in

direct democracy elections (Bowler and Donovan 1998;

Cronin 1989). Nonetheless, the process remains popular

and no state electorate has voted to terminate direct democ-

racy institutions once they have been implemented.

Due to the salience of many initiatives, the difficulty of

changing policies implemented via direct democracy, and

the absence of campaign spending limits, elite efforts to

influence citizens’ opinions about initiatives are substan-

tial. For example, fifteen groups in California spent nearly

$660 million on state and local ballot measures over a ten-

year period—more than they contributed directly to candi-

dates and party committees, and spent lobbying the state

legislature combined (California Fair Political Practices

Commission [FPPC] 2010). Between 2000 and 2012, total

spending on initiatives in the state exceeded $2 billion

with three initiatives garnering more than $130 million

apiece (Public Policy Institute of California 2013). In

2016, $473 million was spent on seventeen statewide bal-

lot measures in California, more than twice what

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump reported

spending on his campaign (Bollag 2016).

Concerns about the effects of such unfettered spending

have led state and local governments to devote significant

resources to informing citizens about their choices in

direct democracy settings. One strategy has been the

enactment of disclosure laws, which require those who

contribute to campaigns for and against initiatives to

report their activities. For example, a recent law in

California requires the state’s campaign finance watch-

dog, the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC), to

publicize lists of the top donors to these campaigns. The

legal justification for such disclosure laws has been that

information about who is funding efforts to pass or defeat

initiatives enables citizens to make informed decisions

990744PRQXXX10.1177/1065912921990744Political Research QuarterlyBoudreau and MacKenzie

research-article2021

1University of California, Davis, USA

Corresponding Author:

Cheryl Boudreau, Department of Political Science, University of

California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA.

Email: clboudreau@ucdavis.edu

TRENDS: Following the Money?

How Donor Information Affects

Public Opinion about Initiatives

Cheryl Boudreau1 and Scott A. MacKenzie1

Abstract

Citizens are typically uninformed about politics and know little about issues at stake in direct democracy elections.

Government efforts to inform electorates include requiring donors to initiative campaigns to report their activities

and then circulating such donor information to citizens. What effects does donor information have on citizens’

opinions? We conduct a survey experiment where respondents express opinions about initiatives in a real-world

election. We manipulate whether they receive donor information, party cues, policy information from a nonpartisan

expert, or no additional information. We find that donor information influences citizens’ opinions in the aggregate,

with effects comparable to those of party cues and policy information. However, donor information has negligible

effects on uninformed citizens, who have difficulty inferring donors’ policy interests and connecting them to their

own. These results underscore the potential benefits of efforts to inform electorates via disclosure laws and highlight

disparities in their effectiveness for informed and uninformed citizens.

Keywords

donors, party cues, political knowledge, campaign finance disclosure, policy information, direct democracy