A  lengthy exposé in The Economist takes a detailed look at the history of  California’s voter initiative process as it has evolved over the last  century, and argues that the proposition system lies at the heart of the  state’s political dysfunction.

Published in the April issue of The Economist, Andreas Kluth’s special report “Democracy in California: The people’s will”  provides a broad overview of California’s ballot proposition system  from its inception in 1911 to the pivotal political battle over  Proposition 13 in 1978, and finally to the dysfunction that has come to  define the state’s government today.

It  was in the special election of 1911, called by progressive Governor  Hiram Johnson to counter the corruption engendered by the control of the  Democratic and Republican parties and the Southern Pacific railroad,  that California voters enthusiastically approved the adoption of voter  referendums, recalls and initiatives.  Thus, unlike the Swiss system on  which it was based, California’s initiative process was not oriented  toward compromise and consensus, but confrontation.

“Initiatives,”  writes Kluth, “had the most potential to turn politics upside down.  They turn voters into legislators, since a successful initiative becomes  statute . . . initiatives can even turn voters into founding fathers  who amend the state constitution.”

In  the first half of the twentieth century, voter initiatives were rarely  found on the ballot.  Beginning in the 1970’s, however, the number of  propositions increased by leaps and bounds.  In the 1960’s, just 9  initiatives qualified for the ballot. In the 1970’s there were 22.  In  the following decade, the number of initiatives more than doubled once  again: 46 ballot propositions were decided upon in the 1980’s.  In the  90’s, there were 61, and over the course of the last decade there were  74.

As  Kluth points out, California’s ballot propositions are also becoming  ever more complex and difficult to comprehend.

“In the 1980s each  typically contained between 1,000 and 3,000 words, which seems more than  long enough. But nowadays they often exceed 10,000 words apiece. Two  measures on the 2006 ballot weighed in at more than 17,000 words . . .  And one ballot can contain a dozen of these,” The Economist reports.

Thus, voters rely on media  reports and television attack ads to form their judgments on a given  measure.  Needless to say, these are not always the most reliable  sources.

Kluth  contrasts California’s experiment in direct democracy with the system  of checks and balances championed in The Federalist Papers.  Since the  initiative process relies upon majority support of voters and can  easily be hijacked by well-funded special interests, it is at odds with  the republican form of government envisioned by the founders, he argues.

“It  has no safeguards against Madison’s tyranny of the majority . . . Above  all, it is not a system intended to contain minority factions . . .  Madison and Hamilton would have been horrified,” writes Kluth.

Kluth  concludes his investigation with a number of ideas for reform.  Among  other things, he suggests that referendums should be encouraged and  initiatives discouraged, that initiatives should be simpler and only  enact statutes rather than amend the state’s constitution, and that  sunset provisions should be included in all initiatives so that they  must be reauthorized by a later proposition or by an act of the  legislature.

Ironically,  though he makes a strong case against the initiative process, Kluth  voices support for reform by means of further voter initiatives such as  those which recently created the state’s top two open primary system and  Independent redistricting commission.  On this score, however, it is  noteworthy that both of these reforms were aimed at reining in the  excesses of the ruling parties, and both major parties have already begun implementing strategies to circumvent at least one of them, as Chris Guzman reported here last week.

Significantly,  one term that does not appear in The Economist’s special report is  ‘party system’.  Despite his many invocations of the founding fathers,  Kluth manages to avoid any discussion of the two-party system by  directly equating Madison’s idea of ‘faction’ with our contemporary  notion of ‘special interests’.  In this way, he minimizes the role  played by the major parties themselves in fomenting the political  dysfunction that serves as the starting point of his investigation.

Had  he rather begun by equating Madison’s notion of faction with the idea  of party, a very different report would have resulted.  As George  Washington famously stated in his farewell address:

“The alternate  domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of  revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and  countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a  frightful despotism.”