The nature of American politics 41builder and star of the ‘Terminator’ film series, who was elected Governor of
California in 2003. It is expected that future elections for the governorship
of the state will be contested by film stars. This development is perhaps not
surprising in an era when television is so important in elections, but it has
to be said that another profession still remains more important in providing
recruits for elective office – lawyers.
Politics in California
The local sub-divisions of the states – the cities, counties, towns and myriad
different elective bodies at local level – also exercise varying degrees of po-
litical power. The decentralisation of American political power can best be
seen by examining the autonomy and the political role of a state such as
California and the relationship between towns and counties and the state
government that is their legal master. It becomes clear immediately that lo-
cal government has significance in America that it has long lost in Europe. To
understand the politics of the presidency, or the workings of the Congress of
the United States, it is necessary to start by looking at the roots of Ameri-
can politics, at the characteristics of the electorate, at regional variations in
political style and behaviour, at the way in which politics is conducted at the
state and local level. Only then can we understand the nature of the presi-
dency, its strengths and its weaknesses; only then can we understand the con-
tradictions of a Congress that can be at one and the same time a parochial
assembly and a body of national legislators. The study of American politics
must build up from its local components in a way that is no longer so true of
the study of most European countries, for the diversity that remains at the
base of American life prohibits either the easy generalisation or the simple
explanation of political behaviour. It is this pattern that we shall follow, con-
structing a picture of the American scene that will help to make explicable
what happens at the more glamorous level of President and Congress, and
without which the events that make the headlines in the newspapers of the
world are often quite incomprehensible. Let us look, therefore, at the politics
of an important state, California.
California, the ‘Golden State’, was admitted to the Union in 1850, as the
thirty-first state. The indigenous home of a large number of Native American
tribes, it was settled by Spain in the eighteenth century, becoming part of
newly independent Mexico in 1821. American settlers started to arrive in
the 1840s and began to agitate for independence from Mexico. In 1846 the
United States declared war on Mexico and in 1848, following the end of the
Mexican War, Mexico ceded California to the United States. Gold was dis-
covered in the same year and the resulting gold rush brought many different
nationalities to California to find their fortune.
California is often presented as a microcosm of the United States, but
also as an extreme version of American society. It is a very diverse state in
many ways. From the Mexican border, the southern desert changes to agri-