Changes in rules governing how legislators seek office, such as term limits, open primary laws, and regulations on campaign contributions, might not always find majority support in a state legislature. Direct democracy provides groups advocating such policies with an extra method for shaping the public agenda, a method that is absent in noninitiative states. This may lead initiative states to implement different electoral laws than noninitiative states. We test if direct democracy is associated with the regulations a state places on contributions to legislative candidates. We find that states with frequent initiative use placed more restrictions on contributors between 1984 and 1998 and that initiative states were more likely than noninitiative states to increase regulations on contributions from political parties and political action committees.
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