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There seems to be a consensus emerging<\/a> that California’s initiative process is broken.\u00a0\u00a0 Access to the ballot is too easy (you need the signatures of 5% of the voters in the last gubernatorial election to get on the ballot).\u00a0 The initiative process is vulnerable to unreflective emotional appeals (initiatives dealing with children do particularly well).\u00a0 Many people blame the initiative process for initiating an era of ballot box budgeting<\/em> where citizens appropriate public funds to specific policy areas through the initiative process.\u00a0 Proposition 98<\/a>, passed in 1988, calls for 40% o the state’s budget to go towards education.<\/p>\n At the same time, California voters passed Proposition 13<\/a> in 1978 which reduces property taxes and significantly raises the bar on the legislature’s ability to raise new revenue.\u00a0 As a result of Proposition 13, the legislature requires 2\/3ds of the California voters to agree on most tax increases.\u00a0 The result, some would argue, is a state that has no restrictions on spending, but serious limits on the ability to raise revenue.<\/p>\n It’s easy to fault an “ignorant” electorate who doesn’t understand the broader implications of increasing spending but lowering taxes.\u00a0 But recently I’ve been interested in the ideas of deliberation scholars like Diana Mutz <\/a>and Cass Sunstien<\/a> who argue the need for cross-cutting social networks in Democratic societies.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cross-cutting networks allow people to engage in discussions where they are able to vet ideas and develop a broader sense of the possible unintended consequences of their policy positions.\u00a0 The more we retreat to homogeneous ideological networks, the less likely we are to get this necessary check on our world view.<\/p>\n Sunstien argues<\/a> that the Internet, particularly blogs and social networks, reinforce homogeneous groups that reinforce their pre-existing world view.\u00a0 As we move our public conversations to what Anthony Downs refers to as “sought for” mediums of information like political blogs, listserves, and Facebook groups, we get less of our information from:<\/p>\n \u201cunchosen serendipitous, sometimes disliked encounters with diverse ideas and topics,\u201d as well as \u201cshared communications experiences that unify people across differences.\u201d Public spaces such as city parks and sidewalks provide the \u201carchitecture of serendipity\u201d that fosters chance encounters with a \u201cteeming diversity\u201d of ideas.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So let me throw out a preliminary discussion question: functioning deliberative democratic systems are more likely to occur in places with a vibrant “architecture of serendipity.” In other words, the key to a vibrant functioning California is more places where people of different political orientations can have “accidental” conversations about politics. \u00a0 Is our problem that the Interned allows up to retreat to our “warm corners of rectitude” where the correctness of our views can be mutually reinforced? If this is true, how to we encourage more “serendipitous” conversations about politics? Or should we just sit back and enjoy the polarization?\u00a0 How do we encourage “serendipity” online?\u00a0 StumbleUpon<\/a> for everyone!<\/p>\n Discuss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There seems to be a consensus emerging that California’s initiative process is broken.\u00a0\u00a0 Access to the ballot is too easy (you need the signatures of 5% of the voters in the last gubernatorial election to get on the ballot).\u00a0 The initiative process is vulnerable to unreflective emotional appeals (initiatives dealing with children do particularly well).\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1225,1222,1224,1223,634],"class_list":["post-756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cross-cutting-networks","tag-direct-democracy","tag-mutz","tag-polarization","tag-sunstien"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1164,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756\/revisions\/1164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}