WELL-HEELED INTEREST GROUPS USUALLY DON’T SUCCEED IN BUYING ELECTIONS, SAYS UC SAN DIEGO POLITICAL SCIENTIST

Wealthy interest groups that funnel vast sums of money into political campaigns in the hopes of influencing the outcome of a ballot initiative are usually not successful, according to Elisabeth Gerber, a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, who has completed the first systematic study of how money and interest groups actually affect the initiative process.

“The widely held perception that wealthy interests buy elections is simply not true, at least when it comes to ballot initiatives,” said Gerber. “Moneyed interests such as the insurance industry, trial lawyer associations, and the tobacco industry have learned by defeats at the ballot box. They now realize that if citizens are opposed to a proposed initiative, then waging an expensive, high-profile campaign is not going to change voters’ minds, and in fact, it could even be self-defeating.”

The study, which is presented in Gerber’s new book, “The Populist Paradox: Interest Group Influence and the Promise of Direct Legislation (1999, Princeton University Press), argues that wealthy interest groups, while not always able to “buy” elections, have been very successful in using direct legislation to exert pressure on politicians and to block initiatives that others are proposing. In contrast, the study found that citizen interest groups with broad-based support and substantial organizational resources have been much more effective in using the initiative process to pass new laws.

Gerber’s findings are based on extensive surveys of the activities and motivations of interest groups and on campaign finance records from 168 direct legislation campaigns in eight states. In the study, Gerber found that economic interests are less successful than citizen groups in getting initiatives passed. An analysis of 57 ballot measures between 1988 and 1992 revealed that only 31 percent of initiatives backed primarily by economic groups passed, in contrast to a 50 percent success rate for citizen-supported initiatives.

Citizen groups, which often deal with social issues that possess strong emotional appeal and rely on diverse interests for support, are more effective in mobilizing people, making it easier for them to pass initiatives. Economic interests, on the other hand, which vastly outspend citizen groups, devote the bulk of their resources – about 68 percent – to defeating initiatives rather than supporting them. Both groups, however, are moderately effective in blocking initiatives.

“The effects of direct initiatives extend far beyond simply passing and blocking initiatives,” argues Gerber. “Interest groups may be able to use the threat of initiatives to pressure state legislators. Legislatures in initiative states, including California, pass different laws than legislatures in non-initiative states. These differences arise in policy areas such as taxation, transportation, health care, crime, and the environment. The threat of initiatives, however, seems to be a tool of both wealthy economic groups and broad-based citizen groups, since legislation in initiative states sometimes more closely reflects the interests of economic groups, and sometimes more closely reflects the interests of citizen groups.”

The study’s conclusions are especially significant in light of the concerns voiced by political observers about the ability of wealthy interest groups to wield excessive influence on ballot initiatives, at the expense of the broader public interest. Although a total of 27 states in the U.S. allow for some form of direct legislation, the frequency with which it is used varies greatly from state to state. In California, Oregon, and North Dakota, for example, nearly every ballot includes multiple propositions covering a wide range of issues. In California, moreover, the most important political issues of the last decade -- term limits, immigration, affirmative action, and bilingual education -- have been decided through the initiative process.

Although there are in fact four types of direct legislation – the direct initiative, the indirect initiative, the popular referendum, and the submitted referendum – it is the direct initiative that has drawn the most attention from the news media, citizen groups, and political observers.

“The direct initiative -- in which an interest group drafts a proposition and qualifies it for the ballot by collecting the required number of signatures – is the purest form of direct democracy in the sense that citizens and interest groups are solely responsible for making policy without the intervention of elected representatives. Thus, the direct initiative contains the greatest potential for interest group influence. Many of the most widely publicized and exorbitantly financed direct legislation propositions are initiatives,” observed Gerber.

Gerber, who is nearing completion with UCSD colleagues on a major study for the Public Policy Institute of California on how the legislature implements voter initiatives, is an authority on the impacts of election laws and processes. She is also currently working on a major study of primary election laws in the U.S. Her work has been published in numerous academic journals, including the American Political Science Review and American Journal of Political Science.

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