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Gun Behind the Door? Ballot Initiatives, State Policies and Public Opinion
Abstract
One of the most important claims about the ballot initiative process is that it makes government more responsive to public demands than would be the case under a purely representative system. This argument has not been subject to systematic empirical analysis. In this article we test the claim about enhanced responsiveness, drawing on public opinion data, measures of policy outcomes, and information about the use of initiatives in the American states. We find no evidence that initiatives make for more responsive policy. We also offer a number of possible explanations for this conclusion.
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Citations
Cited by
Gay Rights in the States: Public Opinion and Policy Responsiveness
LAX, J. R., & PHILLIPS, J. H. (2009) · American Political Science Review · doi:10.1017/s0003055409990050 · Cited by 666
Political institutions and policy choices: evidence from the United States
Besley, T. (2002) · Working Paper Series · doi:10.1920/wp.ifs.2002.0213 · Cited by 577
The Democratic Deficit in the States
Lax, J. R., & Phillips, J. H. (2012) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00537.x · Cited by 574
DIRECT DEMOCRACY: New Approaches to Old Questions
Lupia, A., & Matsusaka, J. G. (2004) · Annual Review of Political Science · doi:10.1146/annurev.polisci.7.012003.104730 · Cited by 408
Political Institutions and Policy Choices: Evidence from the United States
Besley, T., & Case, A. (2003) · Journal of Economic Literature · doi:10.1257/jel.41.1.7 · Cited by 401
Metadata
- Authors
- Lascher, E. L., Hagen, M. G., & Rochlin, S. A.
- Venue
- The Journal of Politics
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 1996-08
- Volume
- 58
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 760-775
- ISSN
- 0022-3816 (ISSN-L)
- 1468-2508
- OpenAlex
- W1977338826
- Cited by
- 185
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 2.37
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Gun Behind the Door? Ballot Initiatives, State Policies and Public Opinion. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.2307/2960443
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- Lascher, E. L., Hagen, M. G., & Rochlin, S. A. (1996). Gun Behind the Door? Ballot Initiatives, State Policies and Public Opinion. The Journal of Politics. https://doi.org/10.2307/2960443
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
