Too much of a good thing?

When was the last time something good came out of the California initiative process?

Proposition 2, the chicken-cage initiative? Meh. Prop. 215? It’s been good business for alternative weeklies, but I wouldn’t call medical marijuana an unqualified success for California.

And more often that not, the initiative has been used an implement of civic destruction. Prop. 8 (Prop Hate if you prefer) and Prop. 13 (the Who Needs Teachers, Librarians and Cops Act) come to mind.

It’s tough because, you know, I sort of like democracy. “All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy” and all that, right?

Wrong, according to the magazine The Economist, which gives over much of its last issue to “a special report on California’s dysfunctional democracy.”

The main lesson: The initiative process is destroying California, in large part because Californians are too dumb to use it properly.

There’s something a little annoying about having a London-based magazine lecture me about the “perils of extreme democracy” on the same week I’m being bombarded with royal wedding news. And anybody who is a little bit interested in California politics has read a thousand Hiram Johnson-would-be-rolling-in-his-grave stories by this point; they are an election season staple.

Sadly, I think The Economist is not wrong. And along with a comprehensive history of our experiment in direct democracy, the package also collects together some worthwhile ideas for reform—just wish the editors hadn’t jammed all of these together in the last sidebar.

For example, I was stoked to see the authors push the idea of a larger state Legislature (a favorite idea that I mentioned again in Bites last week). Other parts left me scratching my head. “One option is to encourage referendums and discourage initiatives,” the author writes. Well, yes, let’s discourage the special interests from abusing the system. That always works. Hey, Chamber of Commerce; hey, Valero; hey, bigots; hey, Sierra Club and California Nurses Association; we really need you to chill with the ballot initiatives. OK? Pretty please?

But my original question is not really a rhetorical one. What ballot measures have actually made better the lives of most Californians? Could the state Legislature have done whatever it is more cleanly and competently, with fewer lasting unintended consequences? On balance, are we better off because of the initiative process? I hope so, all of my small-d democrat DNA hopes so. But I’m not so sure.

Compiled from Snog.