California Is a ‘Vetocracy’

Ezra Klein: “I grew up in Orange County and now live in San Francisco, and the recall reflects a deeper pathology afflicting the state I love: California is littered with well-meaning ideas to increase democratic participation that have decayed into avenues that organized interests use to foil the public will.”

“We have become what Francis Fukuyama, the Stanford political scientist, calls a ‘vetocracy’ — a system defined by how easy it is, and how many ways there are, to block action.”