Direct Democracy and Public Employees

摘要

The main message of this paper is that municipal employment policies are different when voters can override elected officials via initiatives, and the differences are consistent with a theory in which initiatives counteract political economy problems stemming from patronage and interest groups. When collective bargaining is unavailable, the initiative mainly cuts employment, consistent with a model in which elected officials tend to pad the public payroll with patronage workers. When collective bargaining is available, the initiative mainly cuts wages, consistent with a model in which voters use the initiative to undo supra-market wages that emerge from collective bargaining (although this finding should be treated with more caution because it is less robust than the employment finding).