California Democracy in Context and Practice: Beacon of Hope and Cautionary Tale

The state of California looms large in the global imagination, perhaps more than any other subnational unit in the world. It is a polity of nearly 40 million people with one of the world’s top-five economies.¹ It is the birthplace of technologies that have transformed public life, from the first personal computers to the current explosion of generative artificial intelligence (AI). And it has been a leader in policy and cross-national partnerships in areas from climate change to LGBTQ rights. The state, though, is much more than Silicon Valley and Hollywood. A deeper understanding both of its political demographics and its governing systems calls into question its superficial image as a politically progressive—or “blue”—state and, especially, as a place primarily of power and privilege.

So, let’s reconsider: When adjusted for the cost of living, California has the highest rate of poverty in the United States.² It is home to nearly half of the country’s homeless population. Politically, it has more registered Republicans than all but four other states. It is also a structurally “conservative” state in terms of having more control at the local level than many of its peers on issues from land use to the provision of social services to the utilization of the local initiative.³ There are large swaths of California that—both geographically and demographically—better resemble the Great Plains or the sprawling exurban southwest than the conventional pictures that the state’s name draws to mind, like the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hollywood sign. Much of what people assume about California may, in fact, be wrong in ways that are both interesting and important.

This is true of the state of democracy in California as well. Many residents of the state think of themselves as “defenders of democracy,” especially in the United States’ current political context.⁴ But California’s form of democracy is unconventional. It has not hosted meaningful partisan competition in decades, and its systems of statewide and local representative and direct democracy are often in conflict with and undermine each other.⁵

Recognizing both California’s strength as a symbol and the complexity of its democracy and politics in practice, this series will offer a deep evaluation of the state of democracy in California and contrast it with countries around the world. It will also look at instances in which the state can learn from other jurisdictions and practices in the United States and from the international community, including subnational peers and other nations with which it shares enormous economic power and cultural influence.

The series will include four pieces focused, in turn, upon:

• The state of Californian democracy: California’s democracy is robust in some ways, anemic in others. There has not been meaningful political competition between the two major parties in two decades and no apparent resurrection of its Republican Party appears to be on the horizon. What are sometimes called “one-party factional” democracies tend to be less transparent to their citizenry and more controlled by organized interests.⁶ This is true in California, where the politics of labor and business are often more determinative than publicly transparent partisan competition. From another vantage point, California could be seen as having too much democracy. Its local and statewide democratic systems are often at loggerheads, and its system of direct democracy is very poorly integrated with its representative democracy. What does this say for the health of public participation in the political process in the state? What can California learn from polities around the world with long periods of one-party “democratic” dominance? And although there is currently no statewide competition, what can it learn from places around the world that have experienced the severe polarization that California hosts on an interregional basis?⁷
• California’s success in addressing public priorities: It is crucial to move beyond abstract concepts and institutional comparisons in the analysis of the quality of any political system. Understanding the state of democracy in California also requires a knowledgeable and clear-eyed examination of the practicalities of translating the political will of the majority into policy outcomes in the state. To do this, it is necessary to look deeper even than major state investments—such as a recent $6 billion investment in public broadband⁸—and into the implementation of these initiatives. Has this broadband infrastructure investment resulted in more pervasive and affordable internet access that residents of the state required even more acutely during the COVID-19 pandemic?⁹ Have new policies around forest management significantly decreased fire risk, an existential issue for the state that frequently tops lists of public concern?¹⁰ What does it say about the strength of democracy in California that, after decades as a stated political priority, its twin housing and homelessness crises have continued to worsen?¹¹ Does California, through its challenges in policy implementation, run the risk of the failure to deliver that has been hypothesized as a key reason for democratic backsliding worldwide?¹²
• California’s global relevance as a subnational unit: California has been a global leader across a series of crucial policy areas from climate change to human rights. In spite of the fact that it doesn’t have its own foreign policy, properly understood, it is the locus of economic, technological, and cultural activity that has an outsized influence on the world. Governors of California, from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Jerry Brown to Gavin Newsom, have built and maintained foreign relationships—especially with leaders of countries around the Pacific Rim—that are often distinct from those of national leaders.¹³ And this action has support from the state’s residents, as nearly four in five believe such international engagement is important to American security and prosperity according to the 2023 Carnegie California Global Affairs Survey. This piece will discuss the state’s global influence and how its interaction with the international community has shaped its development. It will examine the likely implications for California if Donald Trump is reelected president by examining other periods in time when California’s state policies, around things like climate and voter participation, were similarly distinct from those of the nation.
• The legacy of California’s democratic innovations: California has been a proving ground for innovative electoral reforms—from the implementation of its unique initiative process during the progressive era of Hiram Johnson and his contemporaries in the early twentieth century, to the implementation of a so-called top-two primary in recent years, to the proliferation of ranked-choice voting. What is the legacy and impact of these reforms? How can they provide insight in terms of improving democracy worldwide? And how must California learn from the experience and mistakes of other states and countries to improve its own governing system? One particular focus of this piece will be on a novel tool for deliberative democratic engagement that the state is developing. Deliberative democracy is a more established modality in other countries but is just now getting a foothold in the United States. As a long-time innovator of democratic reforms, California is ideally positioned to push this form of democratic participation forward.

People tend to have very passionate but sometimes narrow-minded opinions about California both within the United States and throughout the world. Framing it just as a beacon of hope or as a cautionary tale, however, does violence to its fascinating complexity. The world has much to learn from California, both good and bad. And California has a great deal to learn from others countries around the globe.

Notes

¹Aidin Vaziri, “California Retains Standing as the World’s 5th Largest Economy,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 16, 2024.

² Sarah Bohn et al., “Poverty in California,” Public Policy Institute of California, 2023.

³ Nestor M. Davidson and Richard C. Schragger, “Do Local Governments Really Have Too Much Power?,” 100 N.C. L. Rev. 1385 (2022); Deborah Kelch, “Locally Sourced: The Crucial Role Counties Play in the Health of Californians,” California HealthCare Foundation, 2017; Tracy Gordon, “The Local Initiative in California,” Public Policy Institute of California, 2004.

⁴ Edward Lempinen, “California Voters Are Deeply Worried About Political Disinformation, IGS Poll Finds,” Berkeley News, November 16, 2023, https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/11/16/california-voters-are-deeply-worried-about-political-disinformation-igs-poll-finds/.

⁵ Joe Mathews and Mark Paul, California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010).

⁶See, for example, V. O. Key, Southern Politics in State and Nation (New York: Vintage Books, 1962).

⁷ Thomas Carothers and Andrew O’Donohue, eds., Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarization (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2019).

⁸ “Governor Newsom Signs Historic Broadband Legislation to Help Bridge Digital Divide,” Governor Gavin Newsom’s website, July 20, 2021, https://www.gov.ca.gov/2021/07/20/governor-newsom-signs-historic-broadband-legislation-to-help-bridge-digital-divide/.

⁹ Darriya Starr, Joseph Hayes, and Niu Gao, “The Digital Divide in Education,” Public Policy Institute of California, June 2022, https://www.ppic.org/publication/the-digital-divide-in-education/.

¹⁰ Mark Baldassare and Lynette Ubois, “Californians Are Worried about Wildfires,” Public Policy Institute of California, August 2023, https://www.ppic.org/blog/californians-are-worried-about-wildfires/.

¹¹ Associated Press, “California’s Homeless Population Rose 5.8% in 2023, While U.S. Rate Surged 12%,” San Francisco Standard, December 17, 2023, https://sfstandard.com/2023/12/17/californias-homeless-population-rose-5-8-in-2023-while-u-s-rate-surged-12/.

¹² Sean Illing and Yascha Mounk, “Why So Many Westerners Feel Like Democracy Has Failed Them,” Vox, March 5, 2018, https://www.vox.com/2018/3/5/17035848/democracy-populism-trump-europe.

¹³ David Freeman Engstrom and Jeremy M. Weinstein, “What If California Had a Foreign Policy? The New Frontier of States’ Rights,” Washington Monthly, Spring 2018.