Society & Culture - Posted by Patricia Donovan-Buffalo on Wednesday, December 2, 2009 17:32 - 8 Comments 
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Trust in government gets a no-vote
Political scientist Joshua Dyck has found that ballot initiatives actually lead to distrust of government. “The evidence presented in this study strongly supports the notion that distrust is an institutional byproduct of direct democratic institutions,” Dyck explains, “a finding that should motivate researchers to question more seriously the effect of this distrust on policymaking in direct democratic environments.”
U. BUFFALO (US)—Ballot initiatives, long thought to encourage democratic citizenship, may actually have the opposite effect of fostering distrust in state government, a new study finds.
Share this article
Email
Republish this article
The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
Joshua Dyck, assistant professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, says state ballot initiatives on things like same-sex marriage, eminent domain, tax reform, education, and a host of other issues actually create an environment that encourages citizens to distrust their governments.
“The evidence presented in this study strongly supports the notion that distrust is an institutional byproduct of direct democratic institutions,” Dyck explains, “a finding that should motivate researchers to question more seriously the effect of this distrust on policymaking in direct democratic environments.”
He makes his argument in a paper published in the journal American Politics Research. Dyck says his study is one of the first to question existing notions about whether living in a richly democratic ballot initiative environment has a positive effect on democratic citizenship.
Dyck notes that until recently it has been difficult to test the influence direct legislation has on trust because when national surveys ask about trust in government they specify trust in the federal government. Ballot initiatives occur at the state level, however, and so should have the greatest effect on voter trust in state government.
In order to assess how trust in government is related to state ballot initiatives, Dyck examined data from two surveys.
The first, the 2004 National Annenberg Election Survey, asked more than 3,500 respondents “how much confidence do you have in state elected officials: a great deal, a fair amount, not too much, or none at all.”
Dyck found that citizens exposed to the highest frequency of ballot initiative usage are about 11 percent more likely than those with no exposure to choose “not too much confidence” or “none at all.”
The second study, the 1997 Pew Trust in Government Study, asked 800 respondents similar questions. Here, as well, Dyck found that the use of ballot initiatives predicts lower levels of trust in state government.
“Indeed, across multiple surveys the effect is apparent. Exposure to ballot initiatives leads to lower levels of trust among Americans,” Dyck says.
Dyck notes that studies by political scientist Marc Hetherington of Vanderbilt University have found that the key change in American public opinion over the last 40 years is that Americans of all stripes have lost faith in the federal government to implement and administer public policy.
Dyck adds that this distrust fuels volatility in the political system, making distrusters more likely to support non-incumbent candidates or vote for political outsiders, and less likely to support social spending programs.
Should ballot initiatives lead to decreasing levels of trust at the state level, potentially negative repercussions of that decline would be expected, he says.
“The American progressive movement in favor of direct legislation in the early part of the 20th century was founded on prospects of good government and perceived failings of representative democracy at the state and local level,” Dyck says.
“The belief at the time was that the initiative, referendum and recall would empower citizens in a manner that would make both the inputs and outputs of government fall more closely in line with majority opinion.” he says, “In fact, many scholars have argued that direct legislation has positive secondary effects on democracies by encouraging citizens to become more involved in government.
“But all the conflict and turmoil generated by these elections has also put citizens in an adversarial relationship with their governments and has led them to alter their view of the political process—namely, to question if public officials are trustworthy,” Dyck says.
University at Buffalo news: www.buffalo.edu/news/
Please wait
8 Comments
DRUGI DOM » Inflacija referendumov, manj zaupanja v politike
DiscoDan
This guys seems to have found an interesting correlation, but that does not mean that he has found the cause of that correlation. So “Exposure to ballot initiatives leads to lower levels of trust among Americans” seems a bit presumptuous.
For example, people are not forcefully “exposed” to these ballots, but are asked “Would you like to take part in this survey?” What if the people who have less trust in government are more likely to take part in such surveys, perhaps to air their grievances? In this case (voluntary) exposure to the ballots is not the cause of the lack of trust in government, but the same result would be found, i.e. people who take part in lots of ballots are more likely to have little trust in government. The ballots are merely skewed towards attracting people who do not trust the government.
I’m not saying that the above is correct, and perhaps these effects have been accounted for in the study (I have not read the actual study), but the article does seem to draw conclusions that might not be fully supported by the actual correlation reported.
Does direct democracy lead to distrust? « The Democratic Society Blog
[...] think futurity.org is rather overselling this study by the University of Buffalo: Ballot initiatives, long thought to encourage democratic citizenship, may actually have the [...]
In addition to greater political knowledge and stronger sense of citizenship which accompany or maybe are caused by having elements of citizen-led democracy a heathy scepticism about public institutions and politicians would seem desirable for better public governance.
One reason for lack of trust in central government of the USA could be that there is no direct democracy. It is remote and people must lack a sense of control. Some such as National Initiative for Democracy http://ni4d.us/ propose that this (dd) should be introduced.
Why do not political scientists work more to discover how barriers to the introduction of more democracy can be identified and overcome, for instance in about half of the USA states?
Regards,
Michael
I&R ~ GB
http://www.iniref.org/carta.htm election campaign call
http://www.iniref.org/index.enter.html web site index
Madrocketscientist
And assuming the distrust is real, the source of the distrust could be a matter of how elected officials react & respond to the ballot initiatives. If a state legislature makes a habit of passing legislation that effectively invalidates voter initiatives, then that will certainly build a healthy level of distrust among voters.
Seems Joshua has cherry-picked divisive issues. He needs to look at models from 2 states: Colorado and Oregon.
Here in Colo., ballot initiatives recently gave us the country’s first Renewable Energy Mandate (Amendment 37), the country’s strongest ban on lobbyists giving politicians ANYTHING (41), campaign finance reform (27), increased K-12 funding (23), Background Checks at Gun Shows (22), Medical Marijuana (20), cleaner hog farms (14) and Term Limits (12), just in the last 6 general elections. Research with the National Conference of State Legislatures’ database: http://www.ncsl.org/programs/legismgt/elect/dbintro.htm
Oregon just passed a law allowing for Citizen Initiative Review, in which randomly-selected citizen juries would hold hearings, take expert testimony, debate, consider amendments, and issue reports, so voters get the kind of info legislators get, but conducted independently from the Legislature. http://healthydemocracyoregon.org/node/125
I’m afraid that Joshua may be carrying water for those who are looking for ways of eliminating ballot initiatives because of some problem initiatives which get all the publicity. Strangely, most of these folks call themselves “Democrats.”
“The cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy” NY Gov. Al Smith, D. Current Dems lack vision and boldness and, want to turn back the clock on citizen participation because of trauma over a few bad apples. My Congressman Jared Polis is a sterling exception. http://spryeye.blogspot.com/2008/12/my-congressman-jared-polis-on-record.html He sponsored CO Amendments 41 and 23.
My second attempt to post this comment.
In addition to greater political knowledge and stronger sense of citizenship which accompany or maybe are caused by having elements of citizen-led democracy a heathy scepticism about public institutions and politicians would seem desirable for better public governance.
One reason for lack of trust in central government of the USA could be that there is no direct democracy. Some such as National Initiative for Democracy http://ni4d.us/ propose that this should be introduced.
Why do not political scientists work more to discover how barriers to the introduction of more democracy can be identified and overcome, for instance in about half of the USA states? (Sentence added like: People must lack a sense of control.)
Regards,
Dr. Michael Macpherson
I&R ~ GB
http://www.iniref.org/carta.htm election campaign call
http://www.iniref.org/index.enter.html web site index
Call to Action- WILL YOU HELP WITH THE SAN DIEGO VOTER INITIATIVE….
I found your entry interesting thus I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog :)…
[...] Should ballot initiatives lead to decreasing levels of trust at the state level, potentially negative repercussions of that decline would be expected, he says. Trust in government gets a no-vote [...]