Direct Democracy and the Executive Branch

Abstract

The executive branch seems like a bystander in direct democracy. The main instruments of direct democracy—the initiative and the referendum—are legislative in nature, and the ultimate purpose of direct democracy is to break the legislature’s monopoly over law making. Not surprisingly, the study of how direct democracy impacts the legislature has been a staple of the literature for decades. Little, if any, research is available that focuses specifically on how direct democracy impacts the executive branch.1 Yet, in a system where government is fragmented between branches of government and constrained by a system of checks and balances, a reduction in the power of one branch might be expected to have repercussions on the power and functions of the other branches. The executive branch may stand to gain from a vigorous use of direct democracy Indeed, governors have been the driving force behind adoption of the initiative and the referendum from Hiram Johnson in California in 1911 to Kirk Fordice in Mississippi in 1992.