The eclipse of legislatures: Direct democracy in the 21st century

Matsusaka, John G.

doi:10.1007/s11127-005-4760-1

Cited by 90 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…The fact that the increases in satisfaction match the increases in participation (i.e., for both male and female respondents for the general project, but only for female respondents for the women's project), and the fact that these results are unaffected by controlling flexibly for the project chosen, lend support to this view. To the extent the results here generalize more broadly, they lend support to the view that the ability to participate in the political process may affect utility (Frey and Stutzer 2005), and may help explain the growth of citizen referenda and initiative petition systems, despite the many issues associated with such systems (Matsusaka 2005a(Matsusaka , 2005b). …”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 64%

Direct Democracy and Local Public Goods: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia

Olken

2010

Am Polit Sci Rev

303

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T his article presents an experiment in which 49 Indonesian villages were randomly assigned to choose development projects through either representative-based meetings or direct election-based plebiscites. Plebiscites resulted in dramatically higher satisfaction among villagers, increased knowledge about the project, greater perceived benefits, and higher reported willingness to contribute. Changing the political mechanism had much smaller effects on the actual projects selected, with some evidence that plebiscites resulted in projects chosen by women being located in poorer areas. The results suggest that direct participation in political decision making can substantially increase satisfaction and legitimacy.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 64%

Direct Democracy and Local Public Goods: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia

Olken

2010

Am Polit Sci Rev

303

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“…As there is an ongoing and controversial debate about the relevance of institutional settings for the use of direct democratic instruments (Banducci 1998;Barankay et al 2003;Magleby 1994;Matsusaka 2005;Trechsel 2000;Vatter 2000Vatter , 2002, the aim of this article has been to answer the question of whether institutions matter for initiative use in the German La¨nder. The emphasis was on the circulation stage and its requirements regarding number of signatures to be collected, the time granted to do so and the mobilisation coefficient derived from them.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Institutional Design and the Use of Direct Democracy: Evidence from the German Länder

Eder¹,

Vatter²,

Freitag³

2009

West European Politics

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Despite growing interest in direct democratic institutions, the empirical evidence on the relationship between institutional design and the actual use of popular rights remains rather sparse. The authors use a novel data set on institutional openness and test its link to the number of popular initiatives in the German La¨nder for the period of 1997-2005. Their empirical analysis reveals a strong and robust negative effect of higher institutional requirements on the number of popular initiatives in the 16 German La¨nder; whereas other factors appear to be of minor importance. They thus come to the conclusion that the comparatively high institutional hurdles in the La¨nder impose costs of initiation, thereby limiting the number of popular initiatives.

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“…Direct democratic institutions significantly affect a number of economic outcomes such as government spending, government deficits and even total factor productivity [see, e.g., the survey by Matsusaka (2005)]. These effects could be called the outcome effects of direct democracy.…”

Section: Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does direct democracy make for better citizens? A cautionary warning based on cross-country evidence

Voigt

Blume

2015

Const Polit Econ

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It has been shown that both formal existence and actual use of direct democratic institutions have effects on a number of variables such as fiscal policies, quality of governance but also economic growth. Further, it has been argued that direct democratic institutions would not only have an impact on policy outcomes but influence citizen participation and attitudes toward politics. For the first time, these conjectures are tested in a large cross-country sample here. Overall, we do not find strong effects and some of the significant correlations are rather small substantially. In contrast to previous studies, voter turnout is not higher when direct democracy is available or used. Further, and also in contrast to previous studies, citizens do not express a greater interest in politics in countries with direct democracy institutions. Finally, they display lower trust in government and parties but not in parliament. These results shed some doubt on the hope that direct democracy would make for better citizens.

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The eclipse of legislatures: Direct democracy in the 21st century

Cited by 90 publications

References 35 publications

Direct Democracy and Local Public Goods: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia

Direct Democracy and Local Public Goods: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia

Institutional Design and the Use of Direct Democracy: Evidence from the German Länder

Does direct democracy make for better citizens? A cautionary warning based on cross-country evidence

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