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Brexit and the British
Who Do We Think We Are?
Stephen Green
Haus Publishing, 2017
Whatever the eventual outcome of Britain’s negotiations to leave the European Union, the critical questions remain: what does the Referendum vote tell us about British society? As with the election of Donald Trump in the United States, why did so few people in Britain see the result coming? Why was there such a fundamental misunderstanding about divisions in society that had existed for years?
In this short but powerful book, Stephen Green argues that it is time to acknowledge that underlying all the sound and fury of the Brexit debate were fundamental questions—whether or not fully recognized—about British identity. Are the British different, special, and capable of finding their own way in the world? Who are they, those who call themselves British? Is it all too easy to blame Brexit on post-industrial decline in the traditional heartlands of the Labor Party, or scaremongering by a band of deluded “Little Englanders”? Or is British identity more complex, deep-rooted—and perhaps, in some sense, troubling—than those of other European nations?
 
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Demanding Choices
Opinion, Voting, and Direct Democracy
Shaun Bowler and Todd Donovan
University of Michigan Press, 2000
Referenda on important public policy questions have come to play a central role in policy making in many states. Referenda, or ballot propositions, have resulted in limits on taxation and limits on the number of terms of elected officials, and have dealt with bilingual education, campaign finances, and affirmative action, in states all over the country.
Shaun Bowler and Todd Donovan present a searching and original examination of how voters make decisions in direct referenda. The authors ask if voters have some information about the issue easily at their disposal and if they make choices that seem sensible given their interests and the information they have. Looking at the way voters respond to different kinds of questions, the authors suggest that while direct democracy has its failings, the flaws do not necessarily lie with citizens being "duped," nor with voters approving propositions they do not want or do not understand at some basic level.
As cynicism about government has increased many have sought to take policy questions out of the hands of elected officials and put the questions directly before the voters for decision. And yet many are skeptical about the ability of voters to make intelligent decisions about complex policy issues. This important book demonstrates that voters are capable of responding thoughtfully to referenda questions.
This book will appeal to students of contemporary American politics and electoral politics.
Shaun Bowler is Associate Professor of Political Science, University of California at Irvine. Todd Donovan is Associate Professor of Political Science, Western Washington University.
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Direct Democracy
The Politics of Initiative, Referendum, and Recall
Thomas Cronin
Harvard University Press, 1989

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Educated by Initiative
The Effects of Direct Democracy on Citizens and Political Organizations in the American States
Daniel A. Smith and Caroline J. Tolbert
University of Michigan Press, 2004
"This body of research not only passes academic muster but is the best guidepost in existence for activists who are trying to use the ballot initiative process for larger policy and political objectives."
--Kristina Wilfore, Executive Director, Ballot Initiative Strategy Center and Foundation

Educated by Initiative moves beyond previous evaluations of public policy to emphasize the educational importance of the initiative process itself. Since a majority of ballots ultimately fail or get overturned by the courts, Smith and Tolbert suggest that the educational consequences of initiative voting may be more important than the outcomes of the ballots themselves. The result is a fascinating and thoroughly-researched book about how direct democracy teaches citizens about politics, voting, civic engagement and the influence of special interests and political parties. Designed to be accessible to anyone interested in the future of American democracy, the book includes boxes (titled "What Matters") that succinctly summarize the authors' data into easily readable analyses.

Daniel A. Smith is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida.

Caroline J. Tolbert is Associate Professor of Political Science at Kent State University.


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For the Many or the Few
The Initiative, Public Policy, and American Democracy
John G. Matsusaka
University of Chicago Press, 2004
Direct democracy is alive and well in the United States. Citizens are increasingly using initiatives and referendums to take the law into their own hands, overriding their elected officials to set tax, expenditure, and social policies. John G. Matsusaka's For the Many or the Few provides the first even-handed and historically based treatment of the subject.

Drawing upon a century of evidence, Matsusaka argues against the popular belief that initiative measures are influenced by wealthy special interest groups that neglect the majority view. Examining demographic, political, and opinion data, he demonstrates how the initiative process brings about systematic changes in tax and expenditure policies of state and local governments that are generally supported by the citizens. He concludes that, by and large, direct democracy in the form of the initiative process works for the benefit of the many rather than the few.

An unprecedented, comprehensive look at the historical, empirical, and theoretical components of how initiatives function within our representative democracy to increase political competition while avoiding the tyranny of the majority, For the Many or the Few is a most timely and definitive work.
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Gay Rights at the Ballot Box
Amy L. Stone
University of Minnesota Press, 2012

The passage of the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 in California in 2008 stunned gay rights activists across the country. Although facing a well-funded campaign in support of the ballot measure, LGBT activists had good reasons for optimism, including the size and strength of their campaign. Since 1974, the LGBT movement has fought 146 anti-gay ballot initiatives sponsored by the religious right and has developed innovative strategies to oppose these measures. In Gay Rights at the Ballot Box, Amy L. Stone examines how the tactics of LGBT activists have evolved and unravels the complex relationship between ballot measure campaigns and the broader goals of the LGBT movement.

The first comprehensive history of anti-gay ballot measures, both those merely attempted and those successfully put before voters, this book draws on archival research and interviews with more than one hundred LGBT activists to provide a detailed account of the campaigns to stop such ballot measures from passing into law. As Stone shows through in-depth case studies, although LGBT activists lost the vast majority of these fights, they also won significant statewide victories in Oregon in 1992 and Arizona in 2006, and local successes, including ones in Ypsilanti, Michigan, in 1998 and 2002.

Stone analyzes how LGBT activists constantly refined their campaign tactics in response to both victories and defeats. She also stresses that such campaigns have played both a complementary and contradictory role within the LGBT movement. Specific anti-ballot campaigns and the broader movement do often strengthen each other. However, ballot measure campaigns sometimes distract activists from the movement’s more general goals, and activists at the movement level can pressure local campaigns to take on more than they can handle. With gay rights coming under increasing assault from the religious right, this book is a vital resource for LGBT activists and others working to block their efforts.

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Giving Voters a Voice
The Origins of the Initiative and Referendum in America
Steven L. Piott
University of Missouri Press, 2003
Giving Voters a Voice studies the origins of direct legislation, one of the most important political reforms enacted during the Progressive Era. Steven L. Piott begins with the source of the idea in the United States and proceeds to the earliest efforts aimed at generating a national movement to expand the parameters of popular democracy in the 1890s. He then broadens his examination to include the unique ways in which twenty-two states came to enact legislation allowing for the statewide initiative and referendum between 1898 and 1918. The book’s appendix offers the only comprehensive listing of all the ballot propositions and vote totals for the period.
Most historians of the Progressive Era have concluded that narrow self-interest prevented labor, farmers, and the middle class from working together to achieve important reforms. Giving Voters a Voice demonstrates that middle-class reformers, trade unionists, and farm organizers formed loose political coalitions and directed grass-roots campaigns to gain passage of initiative and referendum statutes because direct legislation offered the best means to correct political, economic, and social abuses. But there was more than just a shared sense of common interest that brought these seemingly oppositional groups together. What really made them willing to speak, lobby, and work together was quite simply the frustration felt by voters who sensed that they had become economically dependent and politically powerless.
Each state in which proponents conducted an active campaign to win adoption of direct legislation is studied in detail. The book analyzes the crucial roles played by individuals who led the movement to empower voters by enabling them to enact or veto legislation directly, and reveals the arguments, the stumbling blocks, and political compromises that are often slighted in generalized overviews. Each state possessed its own political dynamic. Giving Voters a Voice offers the reader a richness of detail and a completeness of coverage not found elsewhere.
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THE INDIRECT EFFECT OF DIRECT LEGISLATION
HOW INSTITUTIONS SHAPE INTEREST GROUP SYSTEMS
FREDERICK J BOEHMKE
The Ohio State University Press, 2005
Frederick J. Boehmke's book makes explicit the many consequences—intended and unintended—of having direct legislation possible in a state. Many studies of the initiative process argue that it is a flawed process that rewards wealthy interests. While evidence to support this conclusion is often drawn from a number of high-profile, high-expenditure initiative campaigns, ballot campaigns are merely one consequence of the initiative process. The ability to propose legislation directly to the people fundamentally changes the process through which citizens are represented by organized interest groups, benefiting typically underrepresented interests.

To demonstrate this, the author models the incentives that the initiative process creates for interests to organize and for how they communicate their preferences to policy makers. Interests that represent a broader range of the public are found to gain the most from the option to propose initiatives, implying that the set of organized interests in initiative states should reflect this advantage. Ironically, an effect of direct legislation is to potentially increase the effectiveness of special interest lobbying in state legislatures—in a sense, the opposite of the direct control that gives direct legislation its theoretical appeal. Yet, the clear effect is one of empowering voices that traditionally had very little effect in the legislative process. If greater representation is the goal of direct legislation, it is a clear success, even though that success does not really come in the act of ballot initiatives itself.
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Initiatives without Engagement
A Realistic Appraisal of Direct Democracy’s Secondary Effects
Joshua J. Dyck and Edward L. Lascher, Jr.
University of Michigan Press, 2019
Arguments about the American ballot initiative process date back to the Progressive Era, when processes allowing citizens to decide policy questions directly were established in about half of the states.

When political scientists began to systematically examine whether the state ballot initiative process had spillover consequences, they found the initiative process had a positive impact on civic engagement. Recent scholarship casts doubt on these conclusions, determining the ballot initiative process did not make people believe they could influence the political process, trust the government, or be more knowledgeable about politics in general. However, in some circumstances, it got them to show up at the polls, and increased interest groups’ participation in the political arena. In Initiatives without Engagement, Dyck and Lascher develop and test a theory that can explain the evidence that the ballot initiative process fails to provide the civic benefits commonly claimed for it, and the evidence that it increases political participation. This theory argues that the basic function of direct democracy is to create more conflict in society.  
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Reforming Legislatures
American Voters and State Ballot Measures, 1792-2020
Peverill Squire
University of Missouri Press, 2024
Legislatures are ubiquitous in the American political experience. First created in Virginia in 1619, they have existed continuously ever since. Indeed, they were established in even the most unlikely of places, notably in sparsely populated frontier settlements, and functioned as the focal point of every governing system devised.
 
Despite the ubiquity of state legislatures, we know remarkably little about how Americans have viewed them as organizations, in terms of their structures, rules, and procedures. But with the rise of modern public opinion surveys in the twentieth century, we now have extensive data on how Americans have gauged legislative performance throughout the many years. That said, the responses to the questions pollsters typically pose reflect partisanship, policy, and personality. Generally, respondents respond favorably to legislatures controlled by their own political party and those in power during good economic times. Incumbent lawmakers get ratings boosts from having personalities, “home styles” that mesh with those of their constituents. These relationships are important indicators of people’s thoughts regarding the current performance of their legislatures and legislators, but they tell us nothing about attitudes toward the institution and its organizational characteristics.
 
This study offers a unique perspective on what American voters have historically thought about legislatures as organizations and legislators as representatives. Rather than focusing on responses to surveys that ask respondents how they rate the current performance of lawmakers and legislatures, this study leverages the most significant difference between national and state politics: the existence of ballot propositions in the latter. At the national level Americans have never had any say over Congress’s structure, rules, or procedures. In contrast, at the state level they have had ample opportunities over the course of more than two centuries to shape their state legislatures. The data examined here look at how people have voted on more than 1,500 state ballot propositions targeting a wide array of legislative organizational and parliamentary features. By linking the votes on these measures with the public debates preceding them, this study documents not only how American viewed various aspects of their legislatures, but also whether their opinions held constant or shifted over time. The findings reported paint a more nuanced picture of Americans’ attitudes toward legislatures than the prevailing one derived from survey research. When presented with legislative reform measures on which concrete choices were offered and decisions on them had to be made, the analyses presented here reveal that, counter to the conventional wisdom that people loved their representatives but hated the legislature, voters usually took charitable positions toward the institution while harboring skeptical attitudes about lawmakers’ motives and behaviors.
 
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