Do ballot initiatives help to improve people’s knowledge about politics? In new research which uses election survey data from more than 120,000 voters across 48 states Nicholas R. Seabrook, Joshua J. Dyck and Edward L. Lascher, Jr. find that ballot initiatives have no positive effect on general political knowledge. They write that these results hold no matter how often ballot initiatives are used, how many initiatives are on the ballot during an election, and how much money was spent by the initiative’s supporters and opponents

Dyck, Joshua J.

Lascher, Jr., Edward L.

Seabrook, Nicholas R.

LSE Research Online

blogs.lse.ac.ukhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2015/08/14/the-ballot-initiative-process-does-not-make-people-more-generally-knowledgeable-about-politics/The ballot initiative process does not make people moregenerally knowledgeable about politicsDo ballot initiatives help to improve people’s knowledge about politics? In new research whichuses election survey data from more than 120,000 voters across 48 states Nicholas R.Seabrook, Joshua J. Dyck and Edward L. Lascher, Jr. find that ballot initiatives have nopositive effect on general political knowledge. They write that these results hold no matter howoften ballot initiatives are used, how many initiatives are on the ballot during an election, and howmuch money was spent by the initiative’s supporters and opponents. Many scholars and public commentators have claimed that citizens will be more informed,knowledgeable and aware if granted a greater stake in their democracy.  The logic is that bytransferring the choice burden to citizens, they will take a collective greater interest in publicaffairs and make better decisions.  (In our more cynical moments, we suspect some also think theskies will open, the flowers will bloom, and people will join hands in the streets singing songs oftriumph and togetherness.)  We agree that it would be nice if people were generally moreinformed about politics, government, and public affairs.  But the matter is made more poignantwhen we realize that the average American spends more time Keeping Up with the Kardashiansthan contemplating Capitol Hill.  Our own investigation into the relationship between the initiativeprocess and political knowledge indicates that voting on ballot measures does not provide even apartial tonic to the problem of declining civic engagement.Unlike electorates in most other democracies, U.S. citizens living in about half the states typicallyand repeatedly need to make decisions about specific policy questions.  These matters areplaced on the ballot by collecting sufficient signatures through the initiative process, enshrined inmany state constitutions.  In recent years, scholars have become increasingly interested in the effects of the stateinitiative process on civic engagement.  More specifically, some have claimed that the ballot initiative processmakes people more knowledgeable about politics generally.  The underlying idea is essentially that “more isbetter.”  That is, a greater volume of information supplied to citizens and increased opportunities to make politicaldecisions will cause people to learn more about government and politics.Proponents essentially claim two mechanisms may be at work.  First, ballot measures may enhance citizens’sense of political efficacy by giving them a stronger sense of their ability to affect policy.  This will motivate them tobetter understand political topics.  Second, initiatives may increase media coverage of politics, thereby providingpeople with non-costly information and in turn increasing their knowledge.Yet there are good reasons to be skeptical.  Recent empirical literature has failed to support a connection betweenthe ballot initiative process and political efficacy.  Only specific types of information have been shown to increasepolitical knowledge, and these may not include the types that are typical produced for mass media initiativecampaigns.  And some social psychology literature suggests that facing a larger number of decisions may actuallybe demobilizing rather than encouraging greater interest and involvement.We decided to subject the knowledge claim to a more thorough examination than had been the case previously,using better statistical techniques and improved data. We analyzed extensive survey data from the 2004 and 2008National Annenberg Election Surveys (NAES) and the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES).Together, these organizations surveyed more than 120,000 American voters across three general elections askingquestions designed to measure the levels of general political knowledge of those responding.  We paired this datawith a variety of measures of exposure to ballot initiatives.While previous studies have used opinion polls with significantly smaller sample sizes, as well as problematicsampling methods for estimating state level effects, these more recent surveys were specifically designed toachieve representative samples of voters across all 48 of the contiguous United States (Hawaii and Alaska wereexcluded due to data limitations). We also utilized more sophisticated hierarchical statistical modeling techniquesto appropriately analyze the effects of both state and individual level predictors of general political knowledge. Theresults could not be clearer.Figure 1 – % Effect of having the initiative process (0,1) on political knowledgeNote: Coefficient estimate with 95% confidence intervalFigure 2 – % Effect of 1 additional initiative per year, on average, on political knowledgeNote: Coefficient estimate with 95% confidence intervalAs Figures 1 and 2 illustrate, across all three elections, none of the measures of ballot initiative usage or exposurewere associated with a significant positive effect on general political knowledge. This finding holds whetherknowledge was measured using a series of factual questions about government, or based upon the interviewer’ssubjective evaluation of the respondent. Furthermore, these results were consistent across respondents in states,like Oregon and California, which vote on ballot initiatives frequently, as well as those in states that have directdemocracy but rarely if ever use it, such as Mississippi or Illinois. As Figures 3 and 4 show, it also made nodifference how many initiatives were on the ballot in a given election, or how much money was spent during thecampaign by supporters and opponents – there was simply no reliable evidence that ballot initiatives serve toincrease citizens’ levels of general political knowledge in any significant way.Figure 3 – % Effect of 1 additional initiative in a given year on political knowledgeNote: Coefficient estimate with 95% confidence intervalFigure 4 – Effect of 1 additional dollar of per capita ballot measure spending on political knowledgeNote: Coefficient estimate with 95% confidence interval Nor can our results be explained by differences in state participatory culture, or by a possible historical trendtowards higher turnout states being more likely to adopt the initiative process in the first place. Using a propensityscore matching algorithm to compare voters in states with and without direct democracy, we found no underlyingdifferences between the populations of voters in initiative and non-initiative states in terms of the determinants ofpolitical knowledge. This gives us a great deal of confidence that any effects of direct democracy, or lack thereof,uncovered in the multi-level models stem from the actual effects of exposure to and frequency of ballot initiativeuse, rather than differences in the underlying populations.It is possible that direct democracy may help increase citizens’ levels of knowledge about policy-specific issues,especially those that may be under consideration on the ballot in a given election.  Yet there is no evidence thatthe use of direct democracy has any positive effect on citizens’ overall levels of political knowledge outside of thislimited context. Our findings should be sobering for advocates of participatory theory and direct democracy whohave argued that direct democracy is at least a partial cure for voter apathy, as well as for scholars who haveoffered more favorable overall assessments of the ballot initiative process generally. And for Europeans hearingclaims that adoption of direct democracies in their own countries would help to invigorate citizen politicalengagement, our advice is “be suspicious.”This article is based on the paper, ‘Do Ballot Initiatives Increase General Political Knowledge?’, in PoliticalBehavior.Featured image credit: Brian Cantoni (Flickr, CC-BY-2.0)Please read our comments policy before commenting.           Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, norof the London School of Economics.Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/1N72BSY _________________________________ About the authorsNicholas R. Seabrook – University of North FloridaNicholas Seabrook is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and PublicAdministration at the University of North Florida. His research interests include constitutional law;American government and politics; judicial behavior; direct Democracy; fair housing policy;political geography, and elections. Joshua J. Dyck – University of Massachusetts LowellJoshua J. Dyck is Associate Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Center forPublic Opinion at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. He studies American politics, with afocus on public opinion, voting behavior, and state politics. Much of his research is motivated bythe interplay between public opinion and different social and institutional settings, examining theway that democratic citizens react to democratic environments and political institutions. Edward L. Lascher, Jr. – California State University, SacramentoEdward (Ted) L. Lascher, Jr. is Professor of Public Policy and Administration and incomingdepartment chair at California State University, Sacramento. A political scientist by training, hisresearch has focused on such topics as the politics of ideas, direct democracy, political parties,local elections, regulatory policy, and political careers. Lascher is the author of The Politics ofAutomobile Insurance Reform: Ideas, Institutions, and Public Policy in North America and co-editor of two books.CC BY-NC 3.0 2015 LSE USAPP

The ballot initiative process does not make people moregenerally knowledgeable about politics

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