California Politics

Governing the country is an extremely responsible process that comprises not only numerous rights and privileges, but also a broad spectrum of obligations. The need to balance between these two edges and to meet all the expectations of the population at the same time is one of the most complicated tasks that governors encounter. Relishing their high position, they often forget about primary purpose for which people elect them, which often serves as the ground for the majority of political crises in the world as it provokes distrust and, thus, the desire to control the government and influence the decisions making process. The discordance of thoughts and interests results in the government’s inability of assessing the situation objectively and reacting the significant challenges appropriately. The paper aims at analyzing the crisis of California politics from the point of both modern aspects and the historical legacy that are crucial precursors for the current situation.

Five Elements of the California Politics Crisis

The phrase “California Dream” becomes the symbol of the state and implies the prosperity and happiness. However, there are a lot of significant problems in California despite the evident progress regarding certain number of issues. The legislative paradoxes are the biggest challenge the state’s government dealth with in the latest years. Thus, one can underline the five elements of California’s crisis: two-thirds requirement for changing the taxes, safe-seat reapportionment, terms limits, the absence of the unanimity on significant issues, and an easy way for passing the initiatives (Anagnoson et.al. 4).

Legislative paradox related to budget and level of taxes is the most crucial issue in both political and economic concerns. In order to make the passing of the budget easier voters replaced the requirement of two-third votes on fifty percents and one. However, the previous two-third requirement remains actual for changing the level of taxes. Taking into account that the budget is inextricably connected with the taxes, nobody can balance it without appropriate correlation of the tax rate. The governors could solve this problem rather easily and quickly, if they reached consensus and avoided not use these legislative differences as the instrument for speculating on interests of separate groups. This second element of crisis is the main barrier for making progress because individual interests often ignore the common needs or even harm them, thus obstructing progressive changes.

It should be mentioned that the process of lobbying the group ideas is rarely aimed at general prosperity but has rather opposite results. Progressive movement implemented the simplified process of both passing the initiatives as the democracy measure and increasing the level of public involvement in the country’s affairs. However, this initially good intention frequently transforms into substantial ground for abuses and realizing selfish ambitions.

Term limits set for preventing the governors’ abuses with their positions became another precursor for the crisis. The limitation of the severest terms did not reduce the governors’ raising the funds for next campaign but, vice verse, strengthened it. Appart from that , the level of government’s competence decreased because of the new less experienced members, which obviously had the influence on the quality of the legislative decision. That is why the voters trustfully changed this norm in 2012.

The Safe-seat reapportionment is the fifth element of the California crisis that also does not allow the state to move towards the progressive changes. This legislative norm creates an opportunity for representatives who failed to meet voters’ expectations to stay in the government again and again only winning the 10 percent margin. There were the attempts to change this situation in 2008, but, they had poor effect.

A few more ideas were proposed in order to deal with the five most significant issues. Besides the above mentioned realized measures, the following suggestions were made: the lowering of the required majority for changing tax rates, the restriction of the process of passing the initiatives and amending the constitution, instituting the public financing and decentralizing (Anagnoson et.al. 7). However, they also raise a lot of controversies concerning their enacting.

The Progressive Movement

California politics history is characterized by the long period of citizens’ distrust of the government that continued to become deeper each year. In order to reduce the social tension, the urgent need for changes appeared in society. At that time, the leaders of the Progressive movement created the set of reforms that became a turning points in the history of California.

There were a lot of social, economic and political precursors for the situation which led to the transformations initiated by The Progressive movement. Thus, the roots of the movement are hidden in the need to resist the business’ influence on the politics and prosecute the corrupted politicians. These issues has always existed in California and became even acuter after the Civil War due to rapid industrialization. Funds concentrated in the hands of corporations provided them with the wealthy and new ways of influencing the government based on the monopoly. Hence, coping with these social and political phenomena and making the government more responsive to the social needs were the primary goals of the Progressive Movement.

The set of reforms consisted of nonpartisanship, primary elections, block office ballot and direct democracy norms (Anagnoson et.al. 22). According to them the label of the party was not affixed to the name of candidates in the election’s ballot. The party chose its representatives for the further election on the primary one. The “block” ballot that California uses today was also one of the norms The Progressive had passed.

However, the last set of norms, known as direct democracy, had the biggest impact on the ways in which California politics are operating today. Thus, the opportunity of passing the initiatives and instruments of direct actions for voters, such as referendum and recall were the most decisive measures that had the long-term effect on the political and economic life of California.