Peter Buisseret - Pandora’s Ballot Box: Electoral Politics of Direct Democracy
We study how office-seeking parties use direct democracy to shape elections. A party with a strong electoral base seeks to resolve issues that divide its partisan supporters. When policymakers cannot commit to implementing direct democratic mandates, however, an electorally disadvantaged party can exploit referendums and initiatives on issues that divide its stronger opponent's core supporters. We unearth broad contexts in which direct democracy weakens congruence between policy outcomes and voters' preferences not only on the issue subject to direct democracy, but also on issues that are ostensibly beyond direct democracy's reach.
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Harvard University.
I was previously an Assistant Professor at the Harris School, at the University of Chicago. Before that, I was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick. I received my PhD from Princeton University.
I work in the fields of political economy, and formal theory.