Cahn Matthew Alan - Rethinking California: politics and policy in the golden state

Contents

CHAPTER 1
THE THREE STATES OF CALIFORNIA: AN INTRODUCTION

FEATURED READING: by Joan Didion

CHAPTER 2
CALIFORNIAS POLITICAL HISTORY

FEATURED READING: by Ruben Martinez

CHAPTER 3
POLITICAL CULTURE AND POLITICS IN POSTWAR CALIFORNIA

FEATURED READING: A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg

CHAPTER 4
PEOPLE, DIVERSITY, AND CULTURE

FEATURED READING: A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki

CHAPTER 5
CALIFORNIAS POLITICAL ECONOMY

FEATURED READING: by Jocelyn Lippert

CHAPTER 6
CALIFORNIAS CONSTITUTION AND CONSTITUTIONAL OFFICERS

FEATURED READING: by Daniel Weintraub

CHAPTER 7
CALIFORNIAS LEGISLATURE

CHAPTER 8
CALIFORNIA JUSTICE

FEATURED READING: by Lori Cox Han

CHAPTER 9
INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS

FEATURED READING: by Gar Alperovitz

CHAPTER 10
THE POLICY GAME

FEATURED READING: by Gary Delsohn and Margaret Talev

CHAPTER 11
NON-INSTITUTIONAL PLAYERS: THE MEDIA, POLITICAL PARTIES, AND INTEREST GROUPS

FEATURED READING: by Jordan Rau

CHAPTER 12
THE ELECTORATE AS PLAYERS: ELECTIONS AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

CHAPTER 13
EDUCATION POLICY

FEATURED READING: by Susan E. Brown

CHAPTER 14
ENVIRONMENTAL AND ENERGY POLICY

FEATURED READING: by Barry Commoner

CHAPTER 15
IMMIGRATION POLICY

FEATURED READING: by George W. Bush

CHAPTER 16
CIVIL RIGHTS POLICY

by Tom Brokaw

CHAPTER 17
RETHINKING CALIFORNIA

FEATURED READING: by Philip K. Dick

APPENDIX A
CALIFORNIAS COUNTIES

APPENDIX B
CALIFORNIA RESOURCES ON THE WEB

Early in 2009, hundreds of citizens gathered in a hotel ballroom in Sacramento and calmly discussed a radical idea: a complete overhaul of Californias constitution. The meeting came on the heels of a protracted budget crisis that left the state without cash for its payroll. Several state offices, including the Department of Motor Vehicles, were shut down temporarily to conserve funds, and employees were forced to take furloughs. The budget dispute eventually ended when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state legislature struck a deal to cut spending and raise some taxes and fees, but that solution did not satisfy the group of business and labor leaders, teachers, public interest group members, and concerned citizens that had gathered in Sacramento.

The group called for nothing less than a constitutional convention, to be initiated at the ballot box unless the legislature acted first. This had become necessary, they argued, because the states executive leadership, bureaucracy, and ideologically polarized legislature had been unable to solve a host of simmering problems. Besides the budget fiasco, there were underfunded schools, overcrowded prisons, and an infrastructure in tatters. Californias government was broken, they declared, and the only solution was to throw out the 130-year-old document and begin anew.

The forum was a sign of the growing frustration over the failure of government institutions to meet the challenges of the largest and most diverse state, the largest agricultural producer and home to the largest urban population, a state with extreme concentrations of wealth and poverty, the worlds eighth-largest economy. The once-utopian Golden State was facing serious problems.

Much has happened since the first edition of this book appeared. The recall election of Governor Gray Davis was the kind of spectacle that could happen only in California. Using the instrument of direct democracy, a well-funded group forced a special election to remove an unpopular governor less than one year into his second term, replacing him with a Venice Beach bodybuilder-turned-movie star. The record $43 billion deficit that Schwarzenegger faced at the end of 2008 was even larger than the gap in the states finances that sparked the recall of his predecessor.

The second edition of Rethinking California features a number of additions, including a discussion of the politics and the mechanics of the recall. A new chapter on direct democracy includes an expanded discussion of the initiative, the referendum, and the recall, and it considers why they figure so prominently in California politics. Finally, this new edition features supplemental readings from a variety of sources. These selections from literature, essays, and political biographies in each chapter add lively contemporary and historical voices to our treatment of the subjects.

This book is dedicated to our families: Ann, Tara, Diane, Arlo, Tobin, Jonah, and Steven.

Matthew Alan Cahn
H. Eric Schockman
David M. Shafie

No book is the work of its authors alone. We would like to thank several people for their insights into the California experience. They include Tim Hodson at the Center for California Studies (CSU Sacramento), Jaime Regalado at the Pat Brown Institute (Cal State, Los Angeles), Fernando Guerra at the Center for the Study of Los Angeles (Loyola, Marymount), and Tom Hogen-Esch, Martin Saiz, and Larry Becker in the Department of Political Science at Cal State Northridge. We would also like to thank the reviewers who provided their scholarly analysis of this new edition: Damon Conklin (Golden Gate University) and Sean Q. Kelly (California State UniversityChannel Islands).