Preferences, Fiscal Policies, and the Initiative Process

Camobreco, John F.

doi:10.2307/2647650

Cited by 81 publications

(86 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Similar results appear in Gerber and Hug's (1999) work on minority rights, while results questioning this general conclusion appear in Lascher, Hagen and Rochlin (1996) and Camobreco (1998).…”

supporting

confidence: 78%

“…While this empirical specification is widespread both Hug (2001) and Matsusaka (2001) show that they do not allow for direct tests of whether referendums bias policy toward the voters' preferences and that the estimated coefficient for the referendum indicator is potentially biased toward 0. Several scholars attempt to circumvent this problem by adding in addition an interaction effect between the preference variable and the referendum dummy in a linear regression (e.g., Lascher, Hagen and Rochlin, 1996;Camobreco, 1998;Funk and Gathmann, 2006).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Cross-National Comparative Study of the Policy Effects of Referendums

Hug

2006

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With the adoption of new constitutions in Eastern and Central Europe containing numerous provisions allowing for referendums, cross-national comparative work on the policy effects of referendums across the European continent have become possible. This allows us to close an important gap in the literature on referendums, namely to assess the consequences of these institutions at the national level. More precisely, we wish to assess whether the well-documented policy effects at the subnational level (e.g., in the United States or Switzerland) carry over to the national level. Some of these subnational studies support the theoretically derived implication that the possibility of referendums leads to policies more closely reflecting the voters' wishes. The present paper provides empirical tests of this, but contrary to other empirical studies so far, proposes a comparative analysis at the national level. For several policies in the domain of labor regulation we show that the presence of institutions allowing for referendums reduces the difference between policy outcomes and the voters' wishes as assessed in surveys. We carry out these tests on the basis of several datasets covering a range of mainly Western countries, and rely on a diverse set of methodologies to assess policy outcomes.

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supporting

confidence: 78%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Cross-National Comparative Study of the Policy Effects of Referendums

Hug

2006

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“…This indicated higher overall congruence between abortion opinion and policy for these direct democracy states. However, my findings are not consistent with those of lascher Jr., hagan, rochlin, and Camobreco, whose research did not find significant effects of direct democracy on the responsiveness of state policy to public opinion (Camobreco 1998;hagen et al 2001;lascher et al 1996).…”

Section: Easy and Difficult Implementation States With Initiative Andcontrasting

confidence: 56%

Direct Democracy and the Politics of Abortion: Evaluating the Responsiveness of State Abortion Policy to State Abortion Attitudes

Holquist¹

2014

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In 1993, researchers began to explore whether public policies in states with initiative and referendum mechanisms are more responsive to public opinion than in those states that do not have such mechanisms. There is yet no conclusive answer to this question. To examine this relationship, I add to the work of Kevin Arceneaux’s 2002 study, which utilizes public opinion data to analyze the responsiveness of state abortion policies to citizen abortion attitudes in states with and without initiatives and referendums. Additionally, my analysis looked to differentiate policy responsiveness along the lines of how difficult the implementation environment is within a state. My results showed that there is stronger responsiveness to public opinion in direct democracy states as contrasted to states with no initiative and referendum procedures. Further, I found measured statistical differences within direct democracy states when contrasting easy and difficult implementation procedures.

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“…The standard format is a comparison of different political units within federations, either in the US or Switzerland. Most of these studies provide evidence that US states with the ballot initiative have policies closer to the will of the majority (Gerber 1996(Gerber , 1999Arceneaux 2002, Bowler and Donovan 2004, Matsusaka 2004, Burden 2005, although the finding is not universal (Lascher et al 1996, Camobreco 1998; but see Matsusaka 2001). A related question is whether policy in these states is better in some objectively measurable sense.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constitutions and Policy Comparisons: Direct and Representative Democracy when States Learn from Their Neighbours

Hugh-Jones

2007

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Voters in democracies can learn from the experience of neighbouring states: about policy in a direct democracy ("policy experimentation"), about the quality of their politicians in a representative democracy ("yardstick competition"). Learning between states creates spillovers from policy choice, and also from constitutional choice. I model these spillovers in a simple principalagent framework, and show that voter welfare may be maximized by a mixture of representative and direct democratic states. Because of this, empirical work examining voter welfare under direct democracy may need to be reinterpreted. Also, I show that the optimal mix of constitutions cannot always be achieved in a constitutional choice equilibrium involving many states.

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Preferences, Fiscal Policies, and the Initiative Process

Cited by 81 publications

References 10 publications

A Cross-National Comparative Study of the Policy Effects of Referendums

A Cross-National Comparative Study of the Policy Effects of Referendums

Direct Democracy and the Politics of Abortion: Evaluating the Responsiveness of State Abortion Policy to State Abortion Attitudes

Constitutions and Policy Comparisons: Direct and Representative Democracy when States Learn from Their Neighbours

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