Direct Democracy by Lengthening Perspectives

In a representative democracy, such as the U.S., voters elect legislators who are charged with responsibility for establishing laws. But in many U.S. states and localities, another avenue to creating laws is direct democracy, where the electorate can vote to enact a law or policy via an initiative.
     Concerns about the direct democracy process include that many ballot proposals appear to cover complex issues and busy citizens have fewer resources for gathering information and analyzing ramifications than do staff of an elected legislator. The outcome of a direct democracy vote could end up being shortsighted by actually running counter to the voters’ policy preferences.
     A set of studies by a pair of political scientists at University of California Davis indicates that these concerns may be unnecessary. How a citizen votes on a direct democracy initiative tends to adhere well to that voter’s political ideology regarding the issue. This is especially true when voters are provided information about the Democratic and Republican parties’ official positions on the ballot proposition and an objective description of the proposition’s likely consequences. Citizens’ decisions about ballot propositions can be accurately predicted from their positions on a simple liberal-conservative dimension matching that of the lawmakers those citizens have elected.
     However, although the citizen’s vote may not be shortsighted because it misrepresents the voter’s ideology, the voter’s ideology itself could be shortsighted. When voters tend toward limited time horizons, they become less likely to tackle significant long-term public policy problems. Findings from a Princeton University study suggest that parenthood lengthens time horizons of voters. Since birthrates and intentions to have children appear to be decreasing worldwide, the shortsightedness of the electorate threatens to be a problem in many countries.
     Encouraging parenthood would help among young adults, but a more practical tactic that affects voters of all ages is to encourage in the population an attitude which likely explains why parenthood lengthens the time perspective in decision making—generativity, defined as a desire to create legacies by helping others.
     Psychologist Erik Erickson, who coined the term generativity, associated it with elderly adults. But a study at City University of New York and University of California-Irvine says the peak in generativity occurs at about age 56. The same study found that the peak for prosociality—the desire to take actions which will benefit others outside one’s family—occurs more than a decade earlier, at about age 45 years.

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