Legislatures, Initiatives, and Representation: The Effects of State Legislative Institutions on Policy

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Abstract
Policy advocates in many states may pursue their policy agendas either by traditional legislative politics or by direct legislation. I show that this choice matters: policy outcomes resulting from direct legislation often reflect dif ferent interests than policy outcomes resulting from the legislative process, even on similar issues. Using data from California statewide elections, I analyze policies that were considered in both the legislative process and the direct legislation process, and for which the two processes led to differ ent outcomes. I demonstrate that features of the legislature, especially party organization, can induce individual legislators to vote against their district majority preference. In the aggregate, these influences are shown to lead legislative and direct legislation outcomes to diverge.