Citizens, Interest Groups, and Local Ballot Initiatives

The state-level ballot initiative process has been criticized for failing to live up to the progressive ideals of a citizen-driven, grassroots endeavor. Much less attention, however, has been paid to the initiative process on the local level. This article assesses the democratic credentials of the local initiative process by analyzing which groups sponsor initiatives and what types of issues they attempt to influence. Using a dataset of California initiatives between 2001 and 2008, I find that the local initiative process is a mix of interest group politics and citizen-driven efforts. There are many examples of "grassroots" campaigns that resemble twentieth-century progressives' hopes for direct democracy. By contrast, established interest groups frequently use ballot measures to accomplish their political goals, similar to dynamics observed at the statewide level. This is a result of the relatively small size of jurisdictions, which creates conditions favorable to both types of politics.