Pivotal Politics and Initiative Use in the American States

Boehmke, Frederick J.; Osborn, Tracy L.; Schilling, Emily U.

doi:10.1177/1065912915606234

Cited by 16 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Although divided government and polarization are likely to be the central factors driving ballot-box budgeting, Boehmke, Osborn, and Schilling (2015) present evidence that pivotal legislators in a gridlocked environment may purposefully block legislation because they prefer the initiative version. These key legislators occupy places along the one-dimensional spatial model that can either move legislation along or kill it.…”

Section: Explaining Ballot-box Budgetingmentioning

confidence: 79%

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The Determinants of Ballot-box Budgeting in California

Cummins

2018

State and Local Government Review

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Although California often receives national attention for its budgeting at the ballot box, virtually all states engage in some level of it because bonds and constitutional amendments involving fiscal matters require voter approval. These decisions can constrain the discretion of policy makers, often making it harder to adopt annual budgets. Despite these consequences, little scholarly attention has been paid to this phenomenon. This article investigates the factors that lead to initiative use on budgetary matters. Specifically, data on California initiatives that earmark revenue or cut taxes from 1948 to 2004 are used to estimate count models. The results show that divided government and party polarization are central factors in determining the number of initiatives on the ballot, but they have divergent effects on earmarks and tax cuts. These factors increase initiative earmarks, while they reduce tax-cut initiatives. Budget conditions also play a significant role in the frequency of these measures.

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Section: Explaining Ballot-box Budgetingmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…To test the pivotal politics model of initiative use, three variables from models estimated by Boehmke, Osborn, and Schilling (2015) are used. Specifically, their filibuster interval, veto interval, and gridlock interval variables are employed.…”

Section: Research Design and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

The Determinants of Ballot-box Budgeting in California

Cummins

2018

State and Local Government Review

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“…The literature has repeatedly shown the effect of direct democractic institutions to depend on features of the representative system (e.g. Gerber, 1996b;Hug, 2009;Boehmke et al, 2015;Leemann and Wasserfallen, 2016;Matsusaka, 2018). Yet, there is comparatively little research focused specifically on understanding which features of the representative system matter.…”

Section: Direct Democracy and The Representative Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the literature has shown the effect of direct democractic institutions to depend on features of the representative system (e.g. Gerber, 1996b;Boehmke et al, 2015;Matsusaka, 2018), there has been little research focused specifically on understanding which features of the representative system matter. We explore an aspect of the respresentative system that is particularly important in shaping decision-making processes: the size of the governing coalition (Bawn and Rosenbluth, 2006;Persson et al, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Direct democracy, coalition size and public spending

2020

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This article contributes to the literature on direct democracy and public spending in two ways. First, we explore how direct democratic institutions interact with a specific aspect of the representative system, the size of the governing coalition, to influence public spending. Second, based on newly collected data, we examine the relationship between three different direct democratic institutions, coalition size and public spending over the period from 1860 to 2015. Empirically, we find that initiatives increase the size of the public sector under single-party governments, but this positive relationship disappears as coalition size increases. In contrast, we find that financial referendums slow down the growth of public spending, while law referendums are not systematically associated with public spending. Finally, we find that the relationship between direct democratic institutions, coalition size and public spending does not change over time despite the long period under investigation.

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“…Also, major infrastructural projects in Germany are often planned in cooperation with citizen associations to avoid public protest at a later stage.3 Recently,Boehmke et al (2013) have shown that in US states, the length of the gridlock interval (the area in the policy space where no reforms are possible) is a better (positive) predictor of initiative use than signature requirements, which turn out to be insignificant.…”

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confidence: 99%

Signature requirements and citizen initiatives: Quasi-experimental evidence from Germany

Arnold

Freier

2014

Public Choice

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Signature requirements are often used as hurdles to prevent overuse of direct democratic instruments such as citizen initiatives. We evaluate the causal effect of lowering signature requirements on the number of observed citizen initiative petitions. Based on municipal-level data for Germany, we make use of changes in signature requirements that occur at specific population thresholds to build an identification strategy using a regression discontinuity design. We find that reducing the signature requirement by 1 % point increases the probability of observing an initiative petition in a given city-year by 8-10 % points.

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Pivotal Politics and Initiative Use in the American States

Cited by 16 publications

References 28 publications

The Determinants of Ballot-box Budgeting in California

The Determinants of Ballot-box Budgeting in California

Direct democracy, coalition size and public spending

Signature requirements and citizen initiatives: Quasi-experimental evidence from Germany

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