Direct Democracy and the Significance of the Framing of Proposals

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What attributes make a law more or less likely to inspire consent of the governed? Voters may weigh the costs and benefits of proposed legislation, but in order for voters to form a considered judgment of the costs, they must be able to correctly perceive them, attribute them to the responsible policy makers, and evaluate them in terms of their moral values. Many public opinion surveys and laboratory studies document the everyday cognitive biases that make these tasks difficult even in the area of tax law where costs are explicit. Recent theory in behavioral public finance tells us that law itself may be designed to make informed decision-making easier, for example, by adjusting the timing of implementation or explicitly stating burdens and benefits in such a way that voters can more clearly perceive, attribute, and evaluate those costs and benefits. Insights from behavioral finance have not yet been well integrated into analysis of democratic processes. The research tests whether policy design features may help voters evaluate proposed laws. By bringing insights from behavioral finance to the process of direct democracy, this project will extend our understanding of both. This study will contribute to our knowledge of the legal conditions that make possible a sustainable system of public finance.As one part of testing this framework, the project will collect and digitize the universe of ballot measures relevant to public finance in the analytical site, preserving an important record of democracy that will be made available on-line to researchers and the public. Digitizing these records will also permit a statistical analysis of which policy features affect how voters perceive and respond to the costs of public policy. The project will also train new scholars in the analytics of democracy and public finance, contributing to deepening citizens' understanding.