Populists in the Pluralist Heaven:

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legislature (Gerber 1996; Matsusaka 1994; Boehmke 1999). By increasing the chance that a group will successfully attain its goal of policy in uence, access to the initiative process should increase the number of groups that decide to pay the costs of mobilization. States that allow for direct democracy should therefore have more groups trying to accomplish their policy goals. The analysis in this paper con rms this hypothesis and indicates that more groups are responding to it at the same time as use of the initiative process has grown. This tells us little, however, about the ultimate consequences of direct democracy for representation in the interest group universe. If the initiative process just serves to exac- erbate the well known bias in interest group populations then it fails, at least in part, to achieve its original goal of leveling the political playing eld. 2 But if it helps groups over- come the collective action problem then the biggest gains should not be among the already mobilized business interests, but among broader-based citizen and membership groups. 3 The conclusion reached in this paper is that direct democracy increases the diversity of interest representation and that much of the gains are in the latter types of groups, speci cally those active in social and government policy areas. This is an important nding, partially as a con rmation of the success of the Progressives in achieving their goals, but primarily as an example of a political institution that has 2 Mowry (1954) discusses the history and goals of the ProgressiveMovement in California, primary among them usurption of power from extremely wealthy business interests including the owners of the Southern Paci c Railroad. Magleby (1984) and Cronin (1989) also provide summaries of its origins and growth in America in their books on direct democracy. 3 This assymmetric e ect is also to be expected since business groups are better known for their ability to defeat new legislation on the ballot rather than create it (Gerber 1999). 2
helped reduce the known pro-business bias in interest representation. Certainly the ability to increase representation in the interest group universe does not guarantee that the resulting policies are more representative, but that is the direction they would likely take. Further, most of the empirical work on policy in initiative states has found it to be more representative of voters' preferences than in non-initiative states (Matsusaka 1994; Gerber 1996; Boehmke 1999). To better understand exactly how the initiative process increases the number of groups and the diversity of group representation, I next discuss some of the relevant theories on the topic. 2 Institutions and Incentives for Group Mobilization The most basic of choice-based models for group formation would take into account three relevant factors: the cost of mobilizing, the potential bene t of mobilizing and the probability of achieving that bene t. 4 As the latter two increase, the expected bene ts of becoming active increase and groups should be more likely to form. As the cost increases, groups are less likely to form and as Olson (1965) points out, membership groups face the additional cost brought on by the collective action dilemma their potential members face. The voluminous cost-side literature has been guided by this logic and focuses on the ways in which groups can reduce the cost of joining to potential members, but these studies focus on individual groups. 4 This is just an application of the Riker and Ordeshook (1962) model of voters' decisions to turn out to interest group mobilization. The biggest di erence is that groups have amuch greater probability of being pivotal so for certain types of groups there is less need to suggest they mobilize out of a sense of public duty. 3
Page 1 and 2: Populists in the Pluralist Heaven:
Page 3: 1 Introduction The bias in the inte
Page 7 and 8: institutions are critical in shapin
Page 9 and 10: to seventy-one, a thirteen percent
Page 11 and 12: The concept of diminishing marginal
Page 13 and 14: coe cients. The Virginia School's w
Page 15 and 16: whole e ect since they do not accou
Page 17 and 18: and thirty in Ohio and Michigan. Th
Page 19 and 20: to circumvent the legislature in se
Page 21 and 22: standard error in three subpopulati
Page 23 and 24: diverse than non-initiative states.
Page 25 and 26: it drops to 0.147 in 1990, moving i
Page 27 and 28: initiative process. Strong support
Page 29 and 30: Greene, William H. 1993. Econometri
Page 31 and 32: and Social Movements. Ann Arbor: Un
Page 33 and 34: Table 3: OLS Results for Total Grou
Page 35 and 36: Table 5: Florida's Interest Group P
Page 37 and 38: 0 AZ CA WA CO SD MO IL NE OH OK MI
Page 39 and 40: 180 1975 1980 1990 160 140 120 100
Page 41 and 42: 1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 Percent Change 0
Page 43 and 44: Table 7: OLS Results for Mining Sub
Page 45 and 46: Table 9: OLS Results for Manufactur
Page 47 and 48: Table 11: OLS Results for Trade Sub
Page 49 and 50: Table 13: OLS Results for Service S
Page 51: Table 15: OLS Results for Social Su

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