Direct Democracy and the Significance of the Framing of Proposals

什么属性使一项法律更有可能或更不可能激发被统治者的同意？选民可能会权衡拟议立法的成本和收益，但为了让选民对成本形成深思熟虑的判断，他们必须能够正确地感知成本，将其归因于负责任的政策制定者，并从道德价值观的角度对其进行评估。许多民意调查和实验室研究记录了日常认知偏差，使这些任务变得困难，即使在成本明确的税法领域也是如此。行为公共财政的最新理论告诉我们，法律本身可能旨在使明智的决策变得更容易，例如，通过调整实施时间或明确说明负担和好处，以便选民能够更清楚地感知、归属和评估这些成本和好处。行为金融学的见解尚未很好地融入对民主过程的分析。这项研究测试了政策设计特征是否可以帮助选民评估拟议的法律。通过将行为金融学的见解引入直接民主的过程，这个项目将扩大我们对两者的理解。这项研究将有助于我们了解使一个可持续的公共财政系统成为可能的法律条件。作为测试这一框架的一部分，该项目将在分析站点收集和数字化与公共财政有关的所有投票措施，保留重要的民主记录，并将其在线提供给研究人员和公众。将这些记录数字化还可以对哪些政策特点影响选民对公共政策成本的看法和反应进行统计分析。该项目还将培训新的民主和公共财政分析学者，有助于加深公民的理解。

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.