For the Many or the Few: The Initiative, Public Policy, and American Democracy

by John G. Matsusaka

Direct democracy is alive and well in the United States. Citizens are increasingly using initiatives and referendums to take the law into their own hands, overriding their elected officials to set tax, expenditure, and social policies. John G. Matsusaka's For the Many or the Few provides the first even-handed and historically based treatment of the subject.

Drawing upon a century of evidence, Matsusaka argues against the popular belief that initiative measures are influenced by wealthy special interest groups that neglect the majority view. Examining demographic, political, and opinion data, he demonstrates how the initiative process brings about systematic changes in tax and expenditure policies of state and local governments that are generally supported by the citizens. He concludes that, by and large, direct democracy in the form of the initiative process works for the benefit of the many rather than the few.

An unprecedented, comprehensive look at the historical, empirical, and theoretical components of how initiatives function within our representative democracy to increase political competition while avoiding the tyranny of the majority, For the Many or the Few is a most timely and definitive work.

206 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 2004

Reviews

[Ostap · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best book I read this year.

The author sets to investigate (using all available data) how citizen initiatives affect budget policies in the US states where they're allowed vs the US states where they are not. I haven't tried myself to replicate the author's regressions on his datasets, so I can't 100% guarantee their correctness. But other than that it's a perfect scientific book, a scientific book as it should be: concise, rigorous and lucid. It answered many questions about direct democracies that I had and inspired me to think about new ones.

Especially interesting for me was the counterintuitive insight (not a claim!) that direct democracy could be actually more suitable for bigger, not smaller, societies.

Highly recommended for everybody, an absolute must for those who want to discuss pros and cons of direct democracy.

[Liz Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matsusaka argues that the initiative really is an instrument of the majority rather than of special interests. My main concern with this conclusion was that he's using public opinion data to say that the majority of people really do support the fiscal policies implemented through initiatives - which seems sort of obvious, right? You ask the people whether they want to cut taxes and spending, and if they say yes, we shouldn't be too surprised to see that initiatives are associated with modest cuts in taxes and spending. I think maybe instead what we should be trying to measure is how much influence special interests have over the majority opinion. Cronin's work on direct democracy from 1989 made a point of saying that in low-information environments, a t.v. blitz of advertising during the last week or so before an election can sway those voters who are on the fence. It's possible to imagine a situation where majority opinion is actually undecided (or, as one of the surveys Matsusaka referenced says, the majority want to keep taxing and spending around the current level). Then, into this environment of people who might not have a strong opinion one way or another, inject a special interest group that is spending a lot of money to promote a tax cut. Now we have Matsusaka's public opinion and initiative outcomes replicated, but the conclusion is different.

To me, what would make the argument really convincing would be some more information on how the majority opinion is developed. Why were voters suddenly more conservative than their legislatures in the 1970s? Who are the two men who developed Proposition 13 in California (I forget the names, but one went on to propose several other tax-cutting initiatives)?

[Kurt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was good, if maybe overtly diplomatic. Matsusaka spent a lot of time trying to make the initiative look like a tool of (mainly fiscal) conservatism. Sometimes he did this in a less-than-honest way. An example:

He showed surveys where people were asked if they prefer creating tax revenue from income taxes or sales taxes and the results were very lopsided in the direction of sales taxes. Only problem is that (of course) people don't want to be taxed themselves. They want the rich to be taxed, for the most part. He didn't specify what kind of income tax it was (progressive or regressive) so people answered 'sales taxes'. He did this time and time again, and didn't even mention progressive taxation even once. Very dishonest, in my opinion. But conservatives are idiots, so maybe it worked on some of them. And in that case, maybe the end justifies the means in this regard, if that's possible.

That said, it was on okay book. I learned some about initiatives in America, which is high value knowledge for me. There are a lot of hard numbers and charts and graphs so certain sections of the book were essentially useless to me, but I'm glad someone's concerning themselves with the hard data. I'm just not convinced that the initiative is a tool of fiscal conservatism, nor will I ever be. If there was a proposition on the ballot for raising the taxes on the wealthy, I think it would have a pretty good chance of passing.

Hell, I'd vote for it.

[Eliswiney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting analysis of initiatives that goes beyond the more boring denunciations one is likely to find, albeit with a bit of a clear slant. I wish I had the stats expertise to evaluate the quant findings.