The Political Economy of Decline in California

Abstract

THE CALIFORNIA Journal of Politics & Policy Commentary The Political Economy of Decline in California Volume 3, Issue 1, 2011 Is California a “failing state”? When political scientists refer to states they generally do not mean, for instance, Maryland, Hawaii, or Alaska, but rather the state as the collection of political institutions that govern and admin- ister a given geographic territory—institutions such as the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the police, and the legislature. To assess whether these “state institutions” are in decline, our academic field investigates whether such institutions can provide public services and solve collective problems, and whether their performance is improving, stable, or worsening over time. Typically, scholars of state weakness, decline, and fail- ure almost exclusively study countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and it is counterintuitive to group Califor- nia together with developing countries, given that our state is a global leader in technology, cultural production, agri- culture, and tourism. However, we believe that California is beginning to show features of political and administra- tive incoherence usually found in developing countries. True, public administration in California is fairly resil- ient in the face of the current crisis, and it continues to ful- fill basic functions despite the seemingly permanent fiscal chaos in Sacramento: the highways are patrolled, judges render verdicts, children go to school, public health and public order are maintained, and the state university sys- tems still graduate tens of thousands of students each year. Yet, while our state institutions are not failing in the strict- www.bepress.com/cjpp *Nicole and George Willcoxon are doctoral candidates in political science at University of California, Berkeley. Nicole Willcoxon and George Willcoxon*