Direct democracy is extraordinarily popular and has become a pervasive policymaking tool at the state and local level. Repeated surveys demonstrate that Americans strongly approve of allowing people to vote on citizen-proposed laws, a method currently allowed in about half the states and in many...

Direct democracy, particularly the initiative process, has become an important feature of the political landscape and influences the national agenda. California candidates for governor regularly sponsor and endorse measures that appear on the ballot with their candidacies. This article combines...

Through direct democracy, California voters pass local and state initiative measures, assuming the role of the legislature and many times mandating how government should act or spend funds. But are voters really getting what they want through the initiative process? Initiatives known as...

In a survey of over 1,000 Californians, we found substantial divides in public opinion on issues related to constitutional change. Beyond partisan differences, there are racial and ethnic divides as well as unexpected differences between counties. Latinos and Asian-Americans (the growing "new"...

Over the past 45 years, 15 American states have held constitutional conventions to confront the pressing concerns of the day. These conventions pursued markedly different paths toward constitutional reform, and achieved widely varying degrees of success. The experience of these states provides...

Political science research has long established a list of factors associated with higher levels of political knowledge. Among these are: education, income, political attentiveness, voter participation, and age. This analysis, using questions from California Field Polls taken in 2005 and 2009,...

Abstract Does the state ballot initiative process affect American states’ ability to meet widely accepted standards of “good governance?” This question is relevant in many places, but especially in California which makes the heaviest use of the popular initiative. While much recent...

Abstract Voters are thought to rely on elite endorsements in helping them make decisions. Their ability to use these endorsements is especially important in direct democracy, since ballot measures are complex policy proposals that lack partisan cues printed on the ballot. Using an exit survey,...

Summary Most German states changed their local constitutions during the 1990s in order to become more citizen-friendly. To reach that goal, many local constitutions now allow for the direct election of mayors, initiatives and referenda, and vote-aggregation as well as vote-splitting....