Direct democracy devices: A computer-simulation analysis

This paper places direct democracy devices in a long tradition of efforts to expand citizen participation. A computer simulation model, DEMOCRACY, is developed to compare the impact of direct democracy devices with the impact of representative democracy on the proportion of legislation initiated and approved. Citizens' initiative results in the approval of substantially more legislation than legislative structure. The referendum results in slightly less legislation being approved than under legislative structure. Legislation is more likely to be approved when citizen intensities and policy preferences are distributed in a concentrated manner so that districts are homogeneous, than when they are uniformly distributed, so that districts are heterogeneous. The proportion of legislation approved is sensitive to both government structure and to the distribution of citizen preferences and intensities. The impact of government structure exceeds the impact of citizen preferences. The democratic devices and rules used matter.