People Power! What Is Democracy, and How Does It Work in California?

The following article is excerpted from the upcoming book, HOW CALIFORNIA WORKS, to be published by California Local.

The homelessness crisis. Climate change. Gun violence. Economic inequality. Are all of these things, and so many other problems we face today, the inevitable results of forces beyond our control? Or are they policy choices? To be more precise, are they the result of years, even decades of policy choices—priorities set by political leaders and voters?

Democracy is embedded in the American system. But there’s a certain cynicism about democracy going around in the United States in the early 21st century, especially among Americans of the youngest voting age.

To a large extent, they are. Public policies and government institutions affect all of our lives every single day, for better and worse, in ways that we often don’t even realize. But these policies don’t come out of nowhere. Nor do the government institutions that implement and enforce them. 

They are all created by the process we call democracy, the concept that forms the basis for the American system of government. 

Democracy is even more important in California than in many other states, because the state since 1911 has also allowed for a great deal of “direct democracy,” which circumvents government institutions altogether and allows ordinary voters to create, or cancel, public policies. California is one of 26 states with some form of direct democracy—allowing citizens to place proposed new laws, or proposals to repeal existing laws, on the ballot.

Keeping the Faith in Democracy

Democracy is embedded in the American system. But there’s a certain cynicism about democracy going around in the United States in the early 21st century, especially among Americans of the youngest voting age.

Democracy has evolved into various species. Two major versions are liberal democracy—which places priority on individual freedoms and free market economics—and social democracy, where the emphasis is on economic equality.

A 2023 poll by Penn State’s McCourtney Institute for Democracy found that 74 percent of all Americans agree that democracy is “the best system of government.” However, when it comes to voters 18 to 25 years old, only 59 percent agree. Shockingly, 28 percent in that demographic said that whether they live in a democracy or a dictatorship “makes no difference.”

If democracy is the foundation of the American system, of the American way of life, why are so many young Americans turning against it?

To understand the answer to that question, we have to try to answer another one. What is this system—or more accurately, this idea—that we call democracy?

What Is This Thing Called Democracy?

The system of government known as “democracy” started, to the best of historians’ knowledge, in the Greek city-state of Athens, sometime between 500 and 600 BCE. But the Athenian system would have looked quite strange from our perspective more than 2,500 years later. Athens had approximately 50,000 citizens, and all were required to serve in the government at some point.

For a country that prides itself on its history of democracy, one would think that the simple word “democracy” would at least earn a mention in America’s founding documents. But it doesn’t.

Every year 500 citizens were picked to serve on what was appropriately called the “Council of 500.” That group debated proposed laws, which if approved by the 500 were sent on to the Ecclesia (i.e. Assembly), which made the final decision on whether the proposal was approved or rejected. Every single “citizen” was eligible to attend the Ecclesia; typically, about 6,000 actually made it to meetings. Of course, the shameful fact is that only adult men were eligible to be citizens of Athens.

As unfamiliar and poorly applied as it sometimes seems today, the underlying principle of Athenian democracy was the same as in any democracy now—that people have the power to govern themselves. The Greek word “demos” means “people,” and “kratos” means “power.” So “democracy” is literally “people power.”

Democracy has evolved into various species and strains. Two major versions are liberal democracy—which places priority on individual, personal freedoms and free market economics—and social democracy, where the emphasis is on economic equality. Social democracy places more regulations on markets and on personal conduct in an effort to make sure everyone gets a fair shake.

Defining democracy really gets confusing when we look a little closer to see that most democracies are, actually, messy mash-ups of the liberal and social versions. That includes the United States, where the never-ending attempt to balance personal freedoms with equal opportunity is often the source of political conflict.

One thing that can be said with some certainty is that no country has yet achieved a perfect democracy.

The Undemocratic Origins of American Democracy

For a country that prides itself on its history of democracy, one would think that the simple word “democracy” would at least earn a mention in America’s founding documents. But it doesn’t. Neither the U.S. Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution includes the word. America’s founders were Enlightenment thinkers—that is, their political beliefs were heavily guided by the European intellectual movement that started in the late 17th century and rose to prominence in the 18th.

America’s founders believed that by relying on reason and logic, all people were capable of governing themselves without kings or emperors. The problem was that not all people relied on reason and logic, and the founders knew it.

The idea that rationality should be the guiding force behind human affairs was pretty much the essence of the Enlightenment. Religious dogma and faith were dangerous superstitions, according to Enlightenment thinkers. More broadly, Enlightenment philosophers rejected any kind of tyranny or authoritarianism. In their time, authority derived from a monarchy, with the monarch generally believed to have been divinely ordained. The Enlightenment, and America’s founders, rejected all that.

They believed that by relying on reason and logic, all people were capable of governing themselves without kings or emperors. The problem was that not all people relied on reason and logic, and the U.S. founders knew it. Even as they carefully structured the government of their new country to prevent the tyranny of a king or emperor, they were just as worried about the tyranny of the mob—the mass of presumably unenlightened people who are guided by their passions, not their rationality.

So they created a limited type of democracy—so limited that they didn’t use the word. But they did set up a system in which people elected their governmental representatives by voting.

Though the founders were cautious not to include the word “democracy” in the Constitution or Declaration of Independence, in their own writings and correspondence, they did. Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. president, discussed “representative democracy” in 1815, as did his predecessor John Adams in 1794. In the Federalist Papers, James Madison—U.S. president number four—discussed democracy at length, ultimately concluding that it was an inferior form of government when compared to a “republic.”

How California Democracy Works

When it comes to expanding “people power,” California is near the head of the pack among U.S. states. In 2021, following former President Donald Trump’s false claims that widespread voter fraud caused his defeat in the 2020 election, 19 states passed laws making it harder to vote, in the name of combating the imaginary “fraud.”

But California and 23 other states went in the pro-democracy direction, passing laws to expand voter access—including California’s AB 37, which made mail-in voting universal, guaranteeing that any voter who could not make it to a polling place on election day, or just didn't want to, was still able to cast a ballot.

In 2001, California passed its own Voting Rights Act, aimed at ending the diluted value of votes by Black and other minority voters caused by at-large voting systems. California democracy extends its long arm into seemingly every aspect of how the state is governed—from setting speed limits on the roads to drawing boundary lines around cities and counties, to the prices of housing and health care. All of those issues have been affected, influenced or decided either by the people’s elected representatives or, in some cases, the people themselves through the direct democracy system.

 The results are not always perfect, sometimes far from it. An ongoing experiment in ever-growing democracy—that is how California works.