▪ Abstract Until recently, direct democracy scholarship was primarily descriptive or
normative. Much of it sought to highlight the processes' shortcomings. We describe new …

This paper surveys the extensive literature that seeks to estimate the effect of the initiative
and referendum on public policy. The evidence on the referendum uniformly finds that …

Municipal governments play a vital role in American democracy, as well as in governments
around the world. Despite this, little is known about the degree to which cities are responsive …

Curiously, economists, whose discipline has much to do with human well-being, have shied
away from factoring the study of happiness into their work. Happiness, they might say, is …

Americans often complain about the operation of their government, but scholars have never
developed a complete picture of people's preferred type of government. In this provocative …

Early in the 1950s my parents tired of summer holidays mostly spent on chilly wind-swept
beaches and embarked, with hire car, tents, and four young children, on what was, in the …

Trust in government has been declining for more than three decades now. E‐government
has been proposed as a way to increase citizen trust in government and improve citizen …

That there is a" digital divide"—which falls between those who have and can afford the latest
in technological tools and those who have neither in our society—is indisputable. Virtual …

The Public Policy Process is essential reading for anyone trying to understand the process
by which public policy is made. Explaining clearly the importance of the relationship …

A rich array of institutional diversity makes the United States an excellent place to study the
relationship between political institutions and public policy outcomes. This essay has three …