 Political Resource Allocation: Benefits and Costs of Voter InitiativesJohn Matsusaka and Nolan M McCarty The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 2001, vol. 17, issue 2, 413-48 Abstract: This article explores the benefits and costs of the voter initiative, a direct democracy device that allows policy decisions to be made by voters rather than their elected representatives. Previous research suggests that by introducing "competition" into the proposal process, the initiative leads to policies that are closer to the median voter's ideal point. In our model, in contrast, the effect of the initiative is conditional on the severity of representative agency problems and uncertainty about voter preferences. The initiative always makes the voter better off when representatives are faithful agents, but when voter preferences are uncertain, initiatives can cause "shirking" representatives to choose policies farther from the voter's ideal point. Our evidence shows that initiatives are more common in states with heterogeneous populations, and initiatives reduce state spending when Democrats control the government and when citizens have diverse preferences. Copyright 2001 by Oxford University Press. Date: 2001 There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:17:y:2001:i:2:p:413-48 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization is currently edited by Andrea Prat More articles in The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.