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Demanding Choices: Opinion, Voting, and Direct Democracy. By Shaun Bowler and Todd Donovan. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. 198p. $42.50.
Interest in the instruments of direct democracy (e.g., referendums and initiatives) has increased considerably over the last few years. Their more frequent use at the state level and cross-nationally, as well as the introduction of provisions for initiative and referendum in several new constitutions, largely explains this interest. Debates about the advantages and disadvantages of these instruments of popular decision making often focus on whether citizens are competent enough to make important and often complex policy choices. Shaun Bowler and Todd Donovan address this central issue and provide a fresh, systematic, and theoretically guided look at this core topic.
As Bowler and Donovan correctly argue (p. 9), most of the debate on citizen competence in direct democracy gets quickly sidetracked into normative quarrels about whether particular outcomes of popular votes were "good" or "bad." The authors of Demanding Choices attempt to avoid this normative pitfall by focusing exclusively on "how voters manage the demands imposed on them by the process [of direct democracy]" (p. xiii). Using as a starting point the notion of the "reasoning voter," Bowler and Donovan derive a theoretical framework applicable to voting in direct democracy. Relying on the notions of heuristics and decision cues, they focus on three elements they deem central in the voter's decision: "avoiding uncertainty by voting no, using instrumental evaluations of propositions, and taking cues from political elites"...