The Indirect Effect of Direct Legislation

Download or read book The Indirect Effect of Direct Legislation written by Frederick J. Boehmke and published by Ohio State University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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.