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Institutions and Policy Representation in the States

Can government institutions strengthen the influence of public opinion on policy-making? While institutions often limit representation, I identify two institutional features of state lawmaking that may enhance democratic control, but in somewhat different way. I hypothesize the one institution external to the state legislature—the ballot initiative—improves representation on specific issues, while one institution internal to the legislature—the committee discharge procedure—enhances responsiveness to mass preferences generally. This difference emerges because legislators engage in repeated interactions and logrolling across a wide range of issues while advocates of ballot initiatives do not. My analyses largely, although not entirely, support these hypotheses, with the initiative making abortion policy more responsive and committee discharge making policy generally more respnsive. These results suggest a domain-specific influence of institutions that were previously thought to have similar effects on policy representation.