ABSTRACT

In a referendum on May 29, 2005, voters in France soundly rejected the European Constitution, dealing a severe blow to the progress of European integration and to President Jacques Chirac (Sciolino, 2005). Three days later, Dutch voters rejected the constitution with even more gusto, and although the referendum in the Netherlands was technically a nonbinding consultation with voters, with turnout at 62.8 percent and a “no” vote of 61.6 percent, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said he would respect the preference of the overwhelming majority (BBC News Online, 2005). The French and Dutch referendums were only the latest in the decades-old progression of

European integration, but voters’ sound rejections of a treaty generally supported by their elected officials demonstrated clearly the powerful role that ordinary Europeans will play in determining the future of their continent (Hobolt, 2007). Voters’ direct power over policy in the

modern world is not limited to momentous occasions of international integration. In 1978, voters in California enacted Proposition 13, a citizen-initiated amendment to the state constitution, which permanently capped property taxes at a maximum of 1 percent of the property’s value. The impact Proposition 13 has had on politics and governance in California-and, later, in many other

states-would be difficult to overstate. It has deeply reshaped California’s tax structure, and severely constrained local officials’ options for raising money for public projects, especially in education (Staples, 2003). It also has centralized political power in the state as the proposition targeted the property taxes relied on by local governments (Qvortrup, 2002). Further, Proposition 13 demonstrates that American direct democracy is not a backwater or localized political process: after its passage in California, the “tax revolt” spread to other states (Gerber, 1999), and taxes remain one of the most popular targets of American initiative campaigns. These examples illustrate the major

impact decisions made by direct democracy-processes in which questions of policy are decided directly by votershave had and continue to have in contemporary politics. Ballot initiatives and referendums are used to decide policies controlling billions of dollars and affecting millions of citizens, and are being used by more and more states and countries around the world (Matsusaka, 2004). Surprisingly, despite several solid research

programs investigating the practices and characteristics of direct democracy (for a review of the literature on American ballot initiatives, see Lupia and Matsusaka, 2004; for a review on the European context, see Hobolt, 2006), and the wealth of interest on the political and social consequences of internet use to which this volume attests, the use of the internet in direct democratic situations has remained unexplored. This gap is unfortunate, and this chapter will make the case that research on internet use in direct democratic situations is an important and potentially fruitful area for research. In addition to the growing importance

of direct democracy on the world stage, another argument for studying the internet in this context is that the information flows of ballot initiative and referendum

campaigns are significantly different from those of candidate elections (Hobolt, 2007; de Vreese and Semetko, 2004b), which have so far received the attention of internet research on political campaigns (e.g., Bimber and Davis, 2003). They are thus unique environments in which to observe political internet use, and in which our assumptions about how voters use information may not apply. This chapter will thus offer two arguments for the study of the internet in direct democracy. First, studying internet use in direct democracy may shed light generally on how people use the internet to gather, use, and distribute political information. Studies of voter decision-making in direct democracy have already contributed to our more general understanding of how voters process information (e.g., Lupia, 1994). Second, as the examples above illustrate, the increasing importance of direct democracy for policy-making combined with the increasing prevalence of internet use make direct democracy in itself an important area for internet research. For the foreseeable future, direct democracy will be an increasingly integral part of democratic government. Likewise, the internet’s role as a source of information, discussion, and citizen mobilization is only likely to grow. In this chapter, we explore ways of

thinking about the internet’s possible impacts on voters in direct democratic contests. Does it increase access to information and thus voter knowledge? Is it used as a forum for deliberation and can it therefore improve voter opinion quality? Does it take the place of other political news sources, which may or may not provide substantial coverage of ballot initiatives and referendums? There is good reason to think that the

answers to these questions in ballot initiative and referendum campaigns may be different from their answers in candidate elections, because of the ways in

which the two types of campaigns differ. Voters in direct democracy do not have the luxury of easily voting by party preference (Hobolt, 2007; Lupia, 1994), since, unlike candidates, ballot measures rarely appear with built-in party labels. Direct democracy also poses extremely complex questions of policy to voters, rather than simply offering a choice of candidates. Further, direct democratic contests may vary widely from candidate elections in terms of the amount of media coverage they receive and in their perceived importance to citizens. These differences suggest that internet

use in direct democracy might be different from internet use in candidate elections. The lack of explicit partisan cues attached to ballot measures may encourage voters to use the internet to learn how favored elites stand on the measures, or they may take the opportunity to assess the views of non-partisan interest groups, such as environmental, labor, or religious organizations. The complexity of propositions may push voters away from candidates’ sites and conventional news sites and toward issue-specific sites, or government sites that present factual information. The low level of media coverage that some ballot measures receive may encourage voters to turn to the internet for information. Use of the internet may consequently boost knowledge of ballot measures more than knowledge of candidate races because some measure-related information is only available online. The perceived importance of a ballot measure may be more influential than voters’ impressions of candidate races, since those are so fully defined by level of government. More generally, citizens online may have much more opportunity to define the meaning and terms of a direct democratic campaign, especially a citizen initiative. The aim of this chapter is not to develop

a detailed theory of the internet and direct democracy. It is intended instead as

a starting point for research in this area. The chapter begins with general observations about direct democracy-its origins, spread, and place in the world’s contemporary democracies. After considering the informational uniqueness of direct democracy, we present three recent case studies of internet use in direct democratic situations. We then contemplate the results of those case studies in the context of what is already known about related uses of the internet. We develop a research agenda in three domains:

& the informational impact of the internet-how it impacts the way voters seek and find information;

& the internet’s deliberative impactthe opportunities it offers citizens to deliberate in preparation for plebiscites;

& and the internet’s organizational impact-how it creates new opportunities for supporters and opponents of ballot measures to identify, contact, and organize supporters.