Resumen de The impact of direct democracy on state spending priorities

Daniel C. Lewis, Saundra K. Schneider, William G. Jacoby

• Do direct democracy institutions affect governmental policy? Previous research on the American states has generated a disparate variety of findings, so there is no scholarly consensus on this question. We argue that many earlier works were limited by their focus on single policy areas or static analyses. To overcome these issues, we analyze yearly data on governmental spending priorities across a full array of policy areas in the 50 states from 1982 through 2011. Our results clearly show that direct democracy states devote more resources to collective goods policies while non-direct democracy states emphasize particularized benefits. This difference occurs because public preferences in direct democracy states are more closely aligned with policy priorities than is the case in states without direct democracy institutions.