Joe Mathews

About

I'm a scholar, author, and journalist who writes about fhow local communities govern themselves, in California and around the world. I'm the founder-publisher-columnist of Democracy Local (democracylocal.com), a new planetary publication devoted to stories, ideas, data, scholarship and events about everyday people governing themselves.. For Democracy Local, I've reported from five continents in just the last year. To further this work, I am currently a fellow in the Renovating Democracy program at the Berggruen Institute. I served 15 years as co-president of the Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy, and was a founding member of the board of Democracy International, based in Cologne, Germany. For 12 years, I've been the syndicated California columnist at Zocalo Public Square, a media nonprofit based in Los Angeles and affiliated with Arizona State University (I'm also a senior director of the university). My weekly syndicated column runs in more than 30 newspapers; it's known for its originality, its mix of topics, and its humor. Previously, I was a full-time senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a think tank, for five years, and spent 14 years as a newspaper reporter, working for the Baltimore Sun, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times. I'm a frequent public speaker and guest on public radio and podcasts. I wrote a book about Gov. Schwarzenegger's rise to political power, The People's Machine (2006, PublicAffairs) and co-authored a book called The California Crackup, about the failures of reform in the Golden State (2010, UC Press). In 2023, I wrote a third book, "The California Recall: Its First 20 Years." I've lived in China and studied in Argentina, but make my home in a Los Angeles suburb, where I coach youth baseball.