LEGISLATURES, INITIATIVES, AND REPRESENTATION - THE EFFECTS OF STATE LEGISLATIVE INSTITUTIONS ON POLICY

Policy advocates in many stales may pursue their policy agendas either by traditional legislative politics or by direct legislation. I show that this choice matters: policy outcomes resulting from direct legisl ation often reflect different interests than policy outcomes resulting From the legislative process, even on similar issues. Using data from California statewide elections, I analyze policies that were consider ed in both the legislative process and the direct legislation process, and for which the two processes led to different outcomes. I demonstr ate that features of the legislature, especially party organization, c an induce individual legislators to vote against their district majori ty preference. In the aggregate, these influences are shown to lead le gislative and direct legislation outcomes to diverge.