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Some studies have contended that direct democracy has secondary benefits unrelated to its impact on policy. In particular, recent scholarship claims that the American ballot initiative process enhances political efficacy. We began with concerns about the logic and empirical methods underlying this conclusion. We connect this research to the broader political psychology literature and in doing so find little reason to expect a positive relationship between direct democracy and efficacy. Our other contribution is to subject the empirical claim to more extensive testing. In contrast to prior research, we draw from multiple data sources and consider sampling methods. The results consistently fail to indicate that direct democracy generally enhances political efficacy. We find cause for skepticism about the secondary benefits of the ballot initiative process.

Using 1989 and 2002 California survey data, this article offers a multivariate statistical analysis of factors that determine individual support for further growth in one's county as well as support for regional coordination of local land-use decisions. Women and residents of higher per capita income counties were more likely to believe that their county had reached its growth limit. In 2002 we also found that aging changes one's opinion on this issue. Additionally, people who believed “sprawl” to be a very important issue in their region in 2002 were more likely to favor a state mandate requiring the regional coordination of local land uses.

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JohnMatsusaka raises important questions about the methodology we used in earlier work to assess the impact of the initiative process (Camobreco 1998;Lascher, Hagen, and Rochlin 1996). Statistical tools applied routinely can nevertheless be applied thoughtlessly, and Matsusaka's uncommon attention to the fit between method and substance merits careful consideration. We ourselves have benefited from thinking the issues through, and we are pleased to have this opportunity to make more explicit the underpinnings of our work.In the end, however, we believe that the criticism is off the mark and that our conclusions stand. The data and methods we have used are perfectly suited to test the null hypothesis to which we applied them: government policy is no more responsive to the electorate's preferences in states where ballot initiatives are permitted than in states where they are not. Our purpose in this note is to sketch our reasoning in more detail. Like Matsusaka, we conclude with some observations about the accumulated evidence on the value of ballot initiatives. Estimating ResponsivenessWe can address Matsusaka's critique best by expressing it formally. The heart of the matter is the theoretical relationship between the policy of a state government and the policy preferred by the state's electorate, represented by