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Consultants and Direct Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

David B. Magleby  and
Kelly D. Patterson
David B. Magleby
Affiliation:
Brigham Young University
Kelly D. Patterson
Affiliation:
Brigham Young University
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Extract

Proponents of direct legislation maintain that the initiative and popular referendum empower ordinary citizens to set the agenda of politics. Some argue it shifts “ultimate authority from representatives in state legislatures, city councils, and even Congress to the people themselves” (Schmidt 1989, vii). Such elections, so the argument goes, produce greater voter interest in elections and higher voter turnout. Those in favor of the process also contend that it is an important check on special interests which exert too much control over elected politicians (Magleby 1984, chap. 2; Cronin 1989).

Critics of direct democracy raise concerns about the quality of deliberation voters give to issues. Voters can be confused by ballot question wording or respond negatively to the length of the ballots. Moreover, because voters lack the simplifying devices of partisanship and candidate appeal, they may be more susceptible to the manipulations of campaign consultants.

How well do these longstanding arguments for and against direct legislation reflect our actual experience with the process in the 1990s? Arguments for direct democracy depend largely on how the process is conducted. If the process can be manipulated by special interests or relies on questionable tactics, then many of the advantages claimed for the process disappear. In this article, we argue that political consultants play a significant role in the conduct of direct democracy. These consultants normally work directly for organized interests without the constraints imposed by candidates or parties.

Type
Discussion
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , June 1998 , pp. 162 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1998

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Footnotes

*

We wish to thank the political consultants who granted us interviews for this paper. Those interviews were transcribed by Katherine Marinello, Sally Schneider, David Vezzani, and Kimberly Wilson. Michelle Brown, Ariane Holtkamp, Suzette Nelson, Laura Owen, Elizabeth Pipkin, Hilarie Robison, Eric A. Smith, and Carter Z. Swift provided research assistance and helped make appointments for interviews, assisted with the transcriptions, and verified the transcriptions against the recorded interviews. We wish to thank the secretaries and research assistants for their excellent work. Research support for this paper was provided by the College Research Committee of the College of Family, Home and Social Sciences at BYU.

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