Direct Democracy
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The Roots of Direct Democracy in the United States: South Dakota's 1898 Referendum Creating the First Statewide Initiative Process
State Politics and Policy Quarterly 24:432-446, 2024
Abstract. We investigate voter preferences for changes in voting rules, focusing specifically on creation of citizen-initiative processes that were originally adopted in South Dakota in 1898 and eventually enacted by half of the states. Various claims have been advanced about why the process was adopted and who supported or opposed it, but without presenting evidence from referenda where voters approved creation of the process. We test these claims by examining county-level election returns from South Dakota's 1898 referendum that created the first statewide initiative process in the United States. We find that support for the initiative process was generally higher among groups that are disadvantaged in various ways by existing representative institutions and perceived advantages in creating direct democratic institutions capable of bypassing representative processes. These findings stand in contrast to the notion that adoption of constitutional rules will be relatively free from calculations rooted in self-interest and perceived advantage from the rules changes.
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Don’t You be My Neighbor: Support for Racial-Exclusion Constitutional Provisions in Mid-19th Century Indiana and Illinois
American Politics Research 49: 504-516, 2021.
Abstract. Racially discriminatory provisions in the U.S. Constitution and southern state constitutions have been extensively analyzed, but insufficient attention has been brought to these provisions when included in northern state constitutions. We examine constitutional provisions excluding blacks from entering the state that were adopted by Midwestern states in the mid-19th Century. Previous scholarship has focused on the statements and votes of the convention delegates who framed these provisions. However, positions taken by delegates need not have aligned with the views of their constituents. Delegates to state constitutional conventions held in Illinois in 1847, Indiana in 1851, and Oregon in 1857 opted to submit to voters racial-exclusion provisions separate from the vote to approve the rest of the constitution. We exploit this institutional feature by using county-level election returns in Illinois and Indiana to test claims about the importance of partisan affiliation, religious denomination, social-welfare policy concerns, labor competition, and racial-threat theory in motivating popular support for entrenching racially discriminatory policies in constitutions. We find greater levels of support for racial exclusion in areas where Democratic candidates polled better and areas closer to slave-holding states where social-welfare policy concerns would be heightened. We find lower levels of support for racial exclusion in areas (in Indiana) with greater concentrations of Quakers. Our findings are not consistent with labor competition or racial-threat theories.
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Support for Progressive Reforms: Evidence from California's 1911 Referenda
Journal of Interdisciplinary History 51: 209-234, 2020
Abstract. Adoption of important reforms during the Progressive Era has prompted scholars to study who supported these reforms and whether their support was uniform. In this article, we investigate support for Progressive reforms by analyzing county-level election results in a 1911 California special election. Voters in that election considered state constitutional amendments addressing a range of issues, including women suffrage, direct democracy, home rule, worker safety, and business regulation. We find that certain socially active Protestant denominations supported most of these reforms. Otherwise, there was little uniformity in group support for these measures. Urban counties supported multiple reforms while opposing women suffrage. Meanwhile, counties with greater wealth, proportion of immigrants, and several other religious denominations were associated with support for particular reforms but had no effect on support for any other reforms. Although leaders and chroniclers of the movement typically claimed that Progressivism was a coherent movement, our study lends support to scholars who have challenged this interpretation, by showing the varied patterns of support for Progressive reforms and the notable divergence in support for women suffrage compared with other reforms.
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Voting on Prohibition: Disentangling Preferences on Federalism and Alcohol
Social Science History 43: 113-130, 2019
Abstract. We contribute to an understanding of the determinants of voter support for U.S. prohibition policies in the early 1900s, by separating substantive preferences for wet versus dry policies from preferences for centralized versus decentralized control. Prior studies of prohibition referenda have generated various conclusions about which groups supported and opposed prohibition, whether regarding the role of religion, urban/rural residence, immigrant status, gender, or class. But none of these studies has considered the impact of preferences regarding decentralization on voter support for prohibition measures. We exploit a combination of referenda unique to the 1933 Ohio ballot, where voters considered prohibition-repeal measures alongside a county home-rule amendment. By viewing support for home-rule as a proxy for decentralization preferences we clarify and explain anomalies in prior studies regarding determinants of support for prohibition and its repeal, especially regarding urban counties and some Evangelical denominations, which are shown to have been guided by a preference for local control of alcohol policy, and counties with larger proportions of women, which are associated with greater support for more centralized and uniform alcohol policy.
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Support for Repealing Prohibition: An Analysis of State-wide Referenda on Ratifying the 21st Amendment
Social Science Quarterly 95: 636-651, 2014
Abstract. Objectives: The 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution repealing national prohibition is the only amendment ratified by state conventions rather than state legislatures. The referenda held to select delegates for these conventions offer a promising source of data for identifying determinants of support for prohibition repeal. Methods: We use various proxy measures to determine the importance of economic, political, and demographic forces in motivating support for electing pro-repeal delegate slates to state ratifying conventions. Results: Urbanization, per-capita income, percentage of Catholics, and support for the Democratic Party were correlated with support for prohibition repeal. Neither the percentage of Evangelical denominations, gender distribution, nor foreign-born population appeared to significantly influence referenda returns. Conclusions: This study confirms the conventional understanding regarding Catholic opposition to prohibition and higher-income areas' support for repeal. The findings also indicate that congressional backers of repeal were correct in calculating that submitting the 21st amendment to popularly elected state conventions, rather than rural-dominated state legislatures, would improve the chances of ratification. Moreover, support for repeal among Democratic congressmembers and party leaders appears to have extended to rank-and-file Democratic voters as well.
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Voting on Voting with the Feet: A Cross-County Analysis of the Tennessee Popular Referenda to Secede from the Union
Constitutional Political Economy 18: 83-97, 2007
Abstract. We analyze a unique case of voting on voting with the feet, when Tennessee twice considered secession from the Union in 1861 by popular referenda. The initial votes to hold a convention, and to send disunion delegates to a convention, failed, but after the Confederate states adopted a new constitution and the bombing of Fort Sumter took place, a second set of votes to separate from the union, and to join the confederacy, passed. Regression results support the importance of both economic interests and political tendencies, along with regional differences, in explaining the variation in votes across counties. Class distinctions were not found to be significant.
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The Anti-Tobacco Movement during the Progressive Era: A Case Study of Direct Democracy in Oregon
Explorations in Economic History 42: 529-546, 2005
Abstract. Little attention has been given to the cigarette bans that were enacted by many states in the late-19th and early-20th century. The recent study by Alston et al. (2002) represents the only empirical analysis of this issue. Alston et al., as typical for many other studies of historical regulatory movements, rely on legislative vote outcomes. In this article we examine the only occasion when a cigarette ban was put to a popular vote, in Oregon in 1930, and highlight the benefits of studying direct democratic votes to assess support for regulatory movements. To study the relationship between the anti-cigarette movement and other reform movements of the era, we compare the determinants of support for the cigarette ban with support for an Oregon alcohol prohibition referendum in 1933. Our results suggest that supporters of both reform movements were more likely to be found in counties with higher percentages of women, evangelical Protestants, and rural residents, which contrasts with Alston et al.'s study of state legislative behavior. In addition, greater support for alcohol prohibition in particular was found in counties with a larger percentage of immigrants and, to a lesser extent, more registered Republicans.