The Monterey County Herald
Monterey, CA (Sunday, September 14, 2003)
Guiding the great experiment
California's recall and America's democratic destiny
B y G L E N B R O W D E R
Guest Commentary
Californians understandably are pretty sensitive these days about their politics, their government, and their image. Interestingly, that last point seems to be the most common, aggravating aspect of their current gubernatorial recall situation. Golden Staters resent gawking outsiders scrutinizing them and their democracy with derisive terms like "circus," "farce," and "madness."
Californians shouldn’t fret unduly about this scrutiny.
In the first place, no amount of sensitivity or indignation will stop the frenzy; California simply is this year’s Florida for a thriving national industry of media and talk-show harangue.
More importantly, Californians should recognize that their recall election is a legitimate political and theoretical phenomenon of national interest and consequence. Amid all the gawking and jokery (and ample self-flagellation within the state), there’s a civics lesson in which both Californians and the American people can learn about themselves and their respective democratic experiments.
A couple weeks ago, I chaired a Washington panel on American democracy structured around the thesis of my recent book ("The Future of American Democracy: A Former Congressman’s Unconventional Analysis") that our country is changing in ways that are important and unsettling for the future of our "Great Experiment." We also focused on California as, perhaps, a vision of America’s democratic future.
Predictably, some reacted negatively to our discussion. One ruffled writer – Dan Walters of The Sacramento Bee – snipped in a column carried by The Monterey County Herald on Aug. 28 that the Washington panel did not know anything about California or what they were talking about. I don’t know whether Walters saw the full program (sponsored by the California Institute and televised by C-SPAN) or whether he just got up on the wrong side of the bed that day, but he plainly missed the theoretical main points and misrepresented an interesting and informative event.
In an effort to extend this discussion constructively, I would like to summarize here the lesson that Californians and Americans might learn from the Golden State’s current experience. More pointedly and practically, I suggest that whoever emerges as governor from the Oct. 7 recall election should consider reforming the state’s dysfunctioning mixture of direct democracy and representative government so that these dueling approaches can merge into a healthier process of public-policy making.
While California is not perfectly analogous to broader America, its trending society, politics, and government are worth noting as we assess similarly-developing pressures on our national democratic experiment. The essence of my California analysis is that this state (like America) is transforming culturally, politically, and governmentally.
Specifically, a very large, diverse, and dynamic California is experiencing, slightly ahead of the rest of us, increasing confrontation between popular forces (such as public recall, initiative, and referendum) and traditional governance (embodied in elected politicians and institutions such as the Governor and State Assembly).
Much of California’s contemporary problem – not just the recall movement – can be traced to raw conflict between direct democracy and representational governance. A representational republic is a time-proven apparatus, and direct popular mechanisms can provide useful adaptation; however, combined in confrontational and confounding manner, these dual, dueling approaches spell disaster for responsible governance. If a large, diverse society wants to augment historic republican government with self-governing plebiscites, then that process must be managed as cooperative deliberation rather than rogue democratic assaults on stubborn professional politicians. The latter situation tends toward dysfunctional democracy in which "we the people" inflict simplistic, contradictory constraints on resistant state politicians and government already wrestling with expanded demands, declined supports, and powerful special interests. California has demonstrated positive, progressive inclinations in the past, but continued encroachment of haphazard direct democracy upon old-style republican institutions guarantees systemic distemper and further malgovernance in the Golden State.
Accordingly, I recommend a straightforward transformational strategy whereby California might address its systemic challenges. Details of this proposal have been elaborated elsewhere, but, to make my point here simply and concisely, California perhaps should begin formalized statewide discussion about "what California means" culturally and "how California democracy should work" politically and governmentally. California’s leaders, parties, media, and citizens need to consider redesigning their democratic experiment to more effectively incorporate broad popular participation in the traditional policy process (with emphasis on cooperative deliberation rather than political gambitry.) Incidentally, much of the groundwork for such reform is already underway in California and other progressive environments.
The current recall exercise presents ready opportunity for California to debate a choice between two very different, evolving versions of its traditional experiment – contentious democratic feudalism or consensual democratic reconstruction – in the twenty-first century. As for the rest of us, California certainly merits close, non-gawking attention; and the central civics lesson thus far is that the historical experiment fares poorly when direct democracy raucously confronts and confounds representative government.
Perhaps California can aright itself during the current multi-crisis; and maybe, over the next few years, the West Coast vanguard will provide a transformational model for national society. In the meantime, the analogous dynamics of the contemporary California political system raise particularly tricky questions and provide some useful points of caution about important developments – the delicate, difficult, dangerous interplay among diversity, dissentience, and democracy – in future America.
Glen Browder, Ph.D., is Distinguished Visiting Professor
of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate
School and Jacksonville State University in Alabama.
He is a former member of Congress and represented
the Third Congressional District of Alabama from 1989
to 1997. He can be reached at 656-2733.