Citizen participation in the decision‐making process and government's responsiveness to people's needs constitute the core of the democratic ethic. Three institutional arrangements are devised to make democracy more democratic: initiatives, referenda, and recall. This article deals specifically with the initiative process in the State of Montana. While citizen participation could be an end in itself, it is viewed here as a means to achieve specific ends. Three different initiatives are studied using four criteria to determine the efficacy of the proces