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Taking the Initiative: Direct Legislation and Direct Democracy in the 1980s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

David B. Magleby
David B. Magleby*
Affiliation:
Brigham Young University
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Extract

The last decade has seen a resurgence in interest in three direct democracy devices—the initiative, the popular referendum and the recall. These processes reflect the Progressive Era reformers' aim of enlarging the role of citizens and voters as well as restricting or checking the power of intermediary institutions such as state and local legislatures, political parties, and elected executives. The focus of this article is to examine the increased use of the initiative and popular referendum at the state level as well as how the process actually works. The related processes of the recall and teledemocracy are addressed in other articles in this symposium.

Statewide Provisions for Initiative, Popular Referendum and Recall

The initiative process permits petitioners to write and, if a sufficient number of valid signatures are gathered, place those proposals on the ballot. The initiative can be placed directly on the ballot (the direct initiative); or before the legislature. If the legislature does not enact the measure or otherwise satisfy the sponsors of the initiative, the sponsors can gather additional signatures and place their proposal on the ballot (the indirect initiative). Five times as many states have the direct initiative as the indirect and, in states that permit both, proponents typically prefer to go directly to the ballot.

Type
Research Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , Summer 1988 , pp. 600 - 611
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1988

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Footnotes

*

The survey data reported in this paper were made available by the California Poll/Field Research Institute through the State Data Program, University of California, Berkeley; by the Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, California; The Massachusetts Poll, provided by the Boston Globe and Research Analysis, Boston; Becker Polls, provided by the Boston Herald American; Market Opinion Research, Detroit, Michigan. The KBYU-Utah Colleges Exit Poll was designed by students in my public opinion course and the data were collected by students from seven Utah colleges and universities. Data collection at the state level is difficult, I have been very fortunate in the generosity of those who have provided these data. I accept full responsibility for the analysis.

I am also indebted to Sue Thomas, editor of Initiative Quarterly, and to Patrick McGuigan and Julie Ingersoll of the Initiative and Referendum Report for providing me with their recent tallies of initiative and popular referendum activity. Sue Thomas read and commented on the manuscript as did Gary Bryner, Rob Eaton, Eugene Lee, Linda Magleby and Mark Westlye. Research and computing assistance was provided by Brad McLaws, Martin Nichols and Dan Nielson. Research support for this article was provided by the College Research Committee of the College of Social Sciences, Brigham Young University.

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