Direct Democracy and Higher Education: The State Ballot as an Instrument of Higher Education Policy Making

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Abstract
A topic to which students of higher education politics and public policy have paid no attention is the resurgent direct democracy movement in the American states. This article seeks to clarify the nature and scope of the statewide ballot phenomenon as it affects the higher education policy domain. The article embeds the issue of higher education balloting in historical context by examining the conceptual origins and contemporary debate surrounding the direct democracy movement in the United States. The article then defines the boundaries of higher education ballot activity by analyzing ballot trends affecting higher education over the past decade. Results reveal that although voters recently have decided a range of important campus governance questions, the two most significant areas of ballot activity over the past decade involve money and morality. The authors explore a variety of theoretical implications of the research.

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