Does the Citizen Initiative Weaken Party Government in the U.S. States?

By placing lawmaking power directly in the hands of citizens, Progressive movement reformers hoped to undercut the ability of political parties to pursue their policy objectives. This article tests the expectations of reformers by examining whether direct democracy alters the ability of partisan legislative majorities and governors to shape the size of the U.S. state public sector. Using a large dataset, I estimate the determinants of state tax effort and compare across jurisdictions the effects of variables that measure the partisan control of government. The results demonstrate that while the partisanship of elected officials is an important predictor of tax effort in pure representative jurisdictions, the relationship between party and policy disappears among initiative states. This analysis not only adds to our understanding of U.S. state budgeting, but also suggests the widespread adoption of direct democracy as a possible explanation for the weak party effects observed in studies of state fiscal policy. during the progressive movement, the citizen initiative was championed by reformers, including Hiram Johnson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson, as a popular check on the power of elected officials and political parties (Mowry 1951; Hofstadter 1955; Smith and Tolbert 2004).1 Progressives had come to believe that parties were unresponsive to the demands of voters. They argued that corrupt party bosses used their control of conventional lawmaking institutions, particularly state legislatures, to act upon the narrow policy interests of their corporate backers while blocking long-needed social and governmental reforms (Cain and Miller 2001). By placing lawmaking authority directly in the hands of ordinary citizens, Progressives hoped to undercut the ability of political parties to pursue their policy objectives, as well as to improve the representation of voters in state government.2