How Will California Survive the End of America’s Empire?
A Trip to Rome Offers Old Lessons, Young City Officials, and Inspiration for How to Rebuild Democracy on Imperial Ruins
How will California survive the end of the American empire?
The question might seem hypothetical, but I found it inescapable last week in Rome, where I was running a global forum on the future of direct democracy. Our forum’s mission, on its face, was hopeful: Hundreds of participants, from 80 countries, discussed how to make the world’s democracies more participatory through initiatives, referenda, and other tools.
But each morning, as I left my budget hotel, I found myself picking through the less-hopeful remains of the fallen empires that lay directly in …
