Political science is slowly catching up with the initiative process. Direct citizen decision making on laws has long been a feature of many American states, particularly those in the West. Although there has been a steady increase in the number of ballot measures that have qualified since the 1960s, including measures like California's Proposition 13 that ushered in the “tax revolt” of the early Reagan era, use of initiatives in the states reached a new peak in the 1990s. In that decade, there were nearly four hundred initiatives on state ballots—far more than during any other decade.