Over the last 20 years, the study of direct democracy (i.e., referendums) has grown dramatically. On balance, the evidence clearly suggests that mechanisms of direct democracy, when well designed for the right kinds of political systems, can be a desirable and effective way of doing democracy (better). John G. Matsusaka does not buck this trend. His book assembles a vast swathe of evidence from political science and political history, occasionally adding his own new data in useful places, to produce an elegant and richly informed set of arguments for the adoption of direct democracy at the national level in the United States. The book is written in an accessible style for a wide audience. Those unfamiliar with debates on direct democracy will enjoy an eye-opening account, while the initiated will find novel insights and much to admire.
The hook that quickly sucks in the reader is Matsusaka’s promise to take the populist claim seriously: that the people have been disempowered by a largely unaccountable elite of legislators, bureaucrats, and judges. According to Matsusaka, the standard explanations for the rise of populism—that it is the result of economic shocks or a rise in nativist sentiment produced by the politicization of migration—miss the fact that populists are giving voice to a long-standing and deeply felt democratic malaise (as suggested by 60 years of longitudinal evidence from the American National Election Studies opinion survey; pp. 2–4).
The first part of the book provides wide-ranging evidence in support of the democratic critique behind the populist challenge, documenting the (largely necessary) rise of the administrative or regulatory state (chapter 1); the (largely unnecessary) empowerment of the Supreme Court as a de facto lawmaker (chapter 2), and the substantial lack of congruence between voters preferences in congressional districts and their representatives’ voting behavior (chapters 3 and 4).
Matsusaka raises valid doubts about the likely efficacy of standard proposals for reforming representative politics to address the democratic disconnect, such as more competitive congressional districts (chapter 3). In doing so, he clears the way for developing his core claim that direct democracy at the national level is the most promising solution to the democratic disconnect and, thus, could go some way toward addressing what is true in the populist challenge.
His first step in making this case is a broad account of the use and development of referendums in American states, Europe, and other parts of the world (Part II). Matsusaka demonstrates that direct democracy is very much part of the American story, with 27 states successfully carrying out some form of direct democracy, whereas it is an outlier among industrialized countries in having failed to provide for national referendums.
Part III starts off with six possible proposals for what a national referendum in the United States would look like. Matsusaka believes that the most achievable proposal in the short term is an act of Congress that gives it the right to call for advisory national referendums. More radical proposals would be to allow citizens to call referendums by petition or to make the referendums binding in law (chapter 11).
We are spared a thought experiment concerning how each proposal could play out. Instead, the remaining chapters of Part III provide an account of the benefits and risks of direct democracy in general. Some of the benefits include allowing citizens to choose the policy they want, producing more citizen trust and engagement in politics, and helping settle disputes, including highly salient and emotive issues, like abortion (chapter 13).
In chapter 12, Matsusaka makes a courageous move. He provides a detailed case analysis of two of the most notorious referendums that have stoked the ire of those critical of referendums: California’s 1978 Proposition 13 to place limits on state government property-tax–raising powers and the UK Brexit referendum on withdrawing from the EU. By diving into the nuances of the political background and impact of these votes, Matsusaka provides compelling reasons for believing that many of the benefits he associates with referendums did in fact accrue to these cases in some way. Although aspects of his assessments may be challenged, his accounts are sufficiently persuasive to open the reader’s mind to what direct democracy might be at its best (if Proposition 13 and Brexit are commonly viewed as modern examples of what it might be at its worst).
The remainder of Part III assesses some common critiques of direct democracy, including the ideas that voters lack competence to engage in direct democracy and that it leads to bad outcomes for minority groups. Matsusaka is convincing in dousing, albeit not eliminating, the force of these standard critiques. The most impressive and definitive chapter in this part of the book is his analysis of large datasets on California referendums, legislative votes, and campaign contributions (chapter 15). The author makes a real addition to the scholarly literature in supplementing and refining existing findings that special interests are decidedly disadvantaged in advancing their interests when it comes to direct democratic votes, whereas they are comparatively successful at doing so in the legislative arena. Part IV concludes with useful frameworks for deciding what issues are best suited to referendums and what are some of the key best practices for designing direct democratic institutions.
Although Let the People Rule succeeds in making a powerful case for introducing a national scheme of direct democracy in the United States, it is less successful in its secondary aim of connecting this proposal with the present “populist challenge.” Despite the heavy focus on populism as a hook in the introduction, populism scarcely features in the book again. The exception is chapter 10, where the populism of Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic Republican Party is presented as the beginning of a long populist tradition in American politics that has served as the catalyst for many of the most far-reaching democratic reforms. In other words, populism is rendered as an agent for positive democratic change in the United States. There thus appears to be an unbridged gap between Matsusaka’s historical account and the present reality of populism. If direct democracy is supposed to “meet the populist challenge” (as the book’s subtitle suggests), then who are to be the agents of Matsusaka’s reforms? Is it the populists themselves as in previous generations? Although it is common for populist parties to include manifesto promises for more direct democracy in Europe and South America, the most prominent populist leaders in the United States (i.e., Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders) have not proven themselves champions of direct democracy or of like reforms in America (a minor exception is Tom Steyer, a short-lasting candidate for the Democratic presidential primaries in 2019). If not the populists themselves, then might some other agent(s) buck the historical trend and become a vector for Matsusaka-style reforms? The content of the book invites the question, and the reader is left wondering about the answer as populism scarcely raises its head again in the narrative.
Two omissions also detract from the power of Matsusaka’s arguments for adopting national direct democracy in the United States. First, he pays scant attention to the reality of the extremes of polarization defining US national politics. The reader would need more convincing that the same kinds of benefits that are seen to accrue to the use of direct democracy in other contexts (including at the local and state levels in the United States) would similarly emerge in the US national context. Second, Matsusaka does not attempt to engage in a critical exchange with other nonelectoral proposals for improving on the democratic disconnect. Examples of proposals one would expect to see considered are modest ones like integrating citizens assemblies into the policy-making process, or more radical ones for fully or partially rotating legislatures selected by lottery. A single chapter engaging with such well-developed ideas, explaining the strengths of direct democracy relative to these, would have made for an even richer and potentially more persuasive book.
