Europeans, says the New York Times, are “amused” at the “exacting moral yardsticks” applied to Americans seeking high public office (Markham, 1987). The American people, a Times-Mirror poll reports, are not amused but irritated—at what they regard as media overkill on candidate character (Rosenstiel, 1987). Influential Washington Post columnist David Broder deplores the tendency of political reporters to “swoop down” on presidential candidates with embarrassing questions about “the sin of the week,” and calls for guidelines to help reporters stay on course (Broder, 1987). Another Times-Mirror poll finds that only 14 percent of Americans give top priority to candidate character. Instead, a whopping 49 percent felt a candidate's “ability to accomplish things” was most important, while 33 percent gave the highest priority to “stand on issues” (Skelton, 1987).

These reactions, though skewed by media treatment of 1988 presidential candidates like Hart, Biden, and Robertson, nonetheless raise important questions about how Americans take the measure of would-be leaders. How reasonable, for example, are the priorities assigned by the Times-Mirror poll respondents to the various qualifications for office? Which among the evaluated categories (character, competence and issue position) affords the surest forecast of eventual presidential performance? Whatever its evaluative priority, what dimensions of character are relevant to the presidency and measurable in candidates? How can presidential competence be defined, and the extent of its presence in candidates assessed? When is the most appropriate time during the campaign to examine character, competence and issue position? Below are some answers offered as food for thought.

The separation of religion and state is a fundamental principle of American constitutional democracy, but agreement over the proper relationship between God and Caesar is a far from settled matter. The concern of the framers of the Constitution for religious freedom is reflected in the First Amendment, which prohibits Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion or restricting the free exercise of religious beliefs. The language employed is enigmatic, reflecting the delicate balance that the Constitution seeks to strike among the individual, the state and religion. The mosaic of religious groups in colonial America and the concern by the Founders to protect their religious freedom was “one of the forces that ultimately led to the adoption of a secular Constitution that included specific mention of free exercise and disestablishment” (Pfeffer, 1977: 13).

As the branch of government whose responsibility it is to decide the constitutionality of federal and state laws that challenge the relationship between religion and the state, the judiciary is faced with the unenviable task of adjudicating disputes that fall within the language of the First Amendment. Since the 1940s, when it first began applying the religion clauses to the states, the Court has ruled on the constitutionality of prayer and Bible reading in public schools, government assistance to parochial schools as well as general issues of what the state may legitimately demand from an individual without impinging on the free exercise of his or her religious beliefs. The aim of the Court has been to strike a balance between respect for the role of religion in American public life while prohibiting state preference for any religious faith. It is hardly surprising, then, that the fruits of its labors have been greeted with less than unanimous satisfaction from the competing interests of religious and non-religious groups. To expect anything more would be to discount the complex question of what limits the Constitution places on religion as a moral and educational component in our public and social order.

The last decade has seen a resurgence in interest in three direct democracy devices—the initiative, the popular referendum and the recall. These processes reflect the Progressive Era reformers' aim of enlarging the role of citizens and voters as well as restricting or checking the power of intermediary institutions such as state and local legislatures, political parties, and elected executives. The focus of this article is to examine the increased use of the initiative and popular referendum at the state level as well as how the process actually works. The related processes of the recall and teledemocracy are addressed in other articles in this symposium.

Statewide Provisions for Initiative, Popular Referendum and Recall

The initiative process permits petitioners to write and, if a sufficient number of valid signatures are gathered, place those proposals on the ballot. The initiative can be placed directly on the ballot (the direct initiative); or before the legislature. If the legislature does not enact the measure or otherwise satisfy the sponsors of the initiative, the sponsors can gather additional signatures and place their proposal on the ballot (the indirect initiative). Five times as many states have the direct initiative as the indirect and, in states that permit both, proponents typically prefer to go directly to the ballot.

“Miss Cooper: Loneliness is a terrible thing don't you agree?

Anne: Yes, I do agree. A terrible thing ….

Miss Meacham: She's not an ‘alone’ type.

Miss Cooper: Is any type an ‘alone’ type, Miss Meacham … ?”

(From Terence Rattigan's Separate Tables, (1955, 78, 92)

In Separate Tables, the hit of the 1955 New York theatrical season, the Irish playwright, Terence Rattigan, used the metaphor of solitary diners in a second-rate residential hotel in Cornwall to convey the loneliness of the human condition. It may be a bit far fetched to use this metaphor to describe the condition of political science in the 1980s. But in some sense the various schools and sects of political science now sit at separate tables, each with its own conception of proper political science, but each protecting some secret island of vulnerability.

It was not always so. If we recall the state of the profession a quarter of a century ago, let us say in the early 1960s, David Easton's (1953) and David Truman's (1955) scoldings of the profession for its backwardness among the social science disciplines, had been taken to heart by a substantial and productive cadre of young political scientists. In 1961 Robert Dahl wrote his Epitaph for a Monument to a Successful Protest reflecting the sure confidence of a successful movement, whose leaders were rapidly becoming the most visible figures in the profession. Neither Dahl nor Heinz Eulau, whose Behavioral Persuasion appeared in 1963 made exaggerated or exclusive claims for the new political science.

Americans generally support the idea of direct democracy yet they also, if not as much as most political scientists, appreciate the undesirable consequences of by-passing our representative processes. The populist impulse is alive and well, both at the state level and for the national government. Voters tell pollsters they are not afraid of direct democracy because they are not afraid of the people who elect our public officials.

Most Americans view direct democracy processes not as radical measures intended to subvert or alter the basic character of American government, but rather as modifying measures aimed at complementing representative institutions, and also as a means of guaranteeing that representative bodies actually remain representative and accountable. But the extensive use of direct democracy at the state and local levels in recent years has raised concerns about the integrity of the initiative, referendum and recall.

If Americans want more of a voice in state and national policymaking, many citizens also worry about the abuses of too direct an involvement. After a brief look at the historical context of this long-standing debate, I will report on several public opinion surveys that highlight Americans' ambivalence toward populist democracy devices.