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When Voters Make Laws

How Direct Democracy Is Shaping American Cities

University of Southern California, Los Angeles

Mathew D. McCubbins

University of California, San Diego

Three challenges affect the use of initiatives and referendums concerning bonds to fund local infrastructure. First, public officials can often make take-it-or-leave-it offers to voters, conferring substantial power on the agenda setters and not necessarily leading to policy that the voters prefer. Second, initiatives are subject to sequential-elimination agendas that can result in suboptimal policy. This problem is compounded in local direct democracy by the presence of multiple jurisdictions and an aggregate limit on bond capacity, leading to a "race to the polls." Third, in some but not all cases, voters can be faced with an information environment that precludes making reasoned decisions at the polls. The authors assess several case studies to determine whether trustworthy voting cues are available to voters in elections on infrastructure bonds.

Key Words: direct democracy • infrastructure • local bond measures • voting cues • initiatives and referendums

Public Works Management & Policy, Vol. 13, No. 1, 39-61 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1087724X08321016


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