In light of these realitiesand of the manner in which political institutions have become transformed into organs of progressive liberalism in the modern administrative statethe obvious problems of direct democracy need to be weighed against the extent to which it might be used prudentially as a means of restoring limited, republican government. [33] For details on the development of commission government in the cities of Texas and Iowa, see Bradley Robert Rice, Progressive Cities: The Commission Government Movement in America, 19011920 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977), pp. [17] For a further discussion of the tension in Progressivism between democratization and the empowerment of administration, see Ronald J. Pestritto, Roosevelt, Wilson, and the Democratic Theory of National Progressivism, Social Philosophy and Policy, Vol. 63, in Carey and McClellan, eds., The Federalist, p. 327. It can be argued that, as a consequence of the waves of Progressivism that have come ashore over the course of the 20th and now the 21st centuries, American political institutions have ceased to serve as filters for un-republican ideas and have instead become the bulwark of the modern administrative state. In the United States, which is a representative democracy, many state and local governments allow for direct democracy in the form of ballot initiatives, compulsory referendums and recall elections. If, for instance, legislators were too beholden to unelected party leaders and thus unresponsive to public opinion, mechanisms like the direct primary could be employed to reduce the power of political parties and tie political candidates more closely to rank-and-file voters. Under this measure, proponents of certain state and local initiative, referendum, and recall petitions could opt to use the new electronic means of signature gathering described above. As with state government, the changes ushered in by Progressives in local government have had a lasting effect. A common characteristic of states attempts to reorganize their executive branches was the consolidation of administrative authority into a smaller number of executive departments whose heads would be appointed by the governor in order to provide some measure of political accountability. In Washington and other states, the new direct democracy devices were not used nearly as frequently as they were in Oregon. True As Smith and Tolbert conclude, Although Progressive Era advocates of direct democracy had hoped to use the initiative to eliminate interest groups clout, we find that many political organizations have adapted to the presence of the initiative, educating themselves to use the process to advance their agendas.[41] If it had been a Progressive goal to reduce the influence of money in politics, that certainly has not happened through the initiative process, as the sums spent on initiatives in recent decades have come to dwarf spending on races for state political office. The use of the device gained momentum with the emergence of groups concerned with specific issues such as civil rights, abortion, capital punishment, nuclear power, tax policies, handgun control, and the environment.
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