Counting on Initiatives?: An Empirical Assessment

Counting on Initiatives?: An Empirical Assessment

Abstract

Book Review Counting on Initiatives?: An Empirical Assessment MICHAEL S. KANG John G. Matsusaka. For the Many or the Few: The Initiative, Public Policy, and American Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 206 pp., $29.00. Daniel A. Smith & Caroline J. Tolbert. Educated by Initiative: The Effects of Direct Democracy on Citizens and Political Organizations in the American States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004, 252 pp., $65.00 (hardcover), $22.95 (paperback). Neither John Matsusaka’s For the Many or the Few,4 nor Daniel Smith and Caroline Tolbert’s Educated by Initiative,5 is ground-breaking, but both are important contributions to the study of direct democracy. Both books focus on the initiative, rather than the recall and other forms of referenda,6 and compare outcomes in states that use the initiative, to those that do not have it or use it less.7 Although the authors disavow “building a case for or against the initiative,”8 they provide empirical support for advocates See, e.g., Richard L. Hasen, Comments on Baker, Clark, and Direct Democracy, 13 J. Contemp. Legal Issues 563, 564–65 (2004); Samuel Issacharoff, Collateral Damage: The Endangered Center in American Politics, 46 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 415, 436–37 (2004); Richard H.