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If the legislature presents a good alternative, sponsors may withdraw their initiatives, and many do. This drawn-out vetting process prevents conflicting initiatives as the various committees iron out legal and logical wrinkles. Much as Madison envisioned, the various special interests in Switzerland must eventually find common ground in what Ms Casanova calls an “institutionalised search for compromise”.
This was not, however, what attracted America’s Progressives to the Swiss model. John Randolph Haynes, a Californian doctor, founded a “direct-legislation league” after a trip to Switzerland. Nicknamed “Recall John”, he brought city-wide direct democracy to Los Angeles in 1903. He then joined William Rappard, a Swiss academic and diplomat who was teaching at Harvard at the time, and others, including Hiram Johnson, to extend the system to the whole state.
Unlike the Swiss, these Californian reformers had in mind a specific enemy, against which direct democracy seemed the ideal weapon. California was no Switzerland: much of it was still empty, geographically isolated and an institutional vacuum. Into this vacuum had stepped a private power: the railroad.
Founded in 1861 as the Central Pacific and later renamed the Southern Pacific, it was soon known as “the Octopus” because its tentacles corrupted every part of the state. The Southern Pacific bribed and cajoled legislators, judges, journalists and mayors. At one point one of its founders, Leland Stanford, was governor. He appointed a co-founder’s brother, who was also the railroad’s chief counsel, to the state’s Supreme Court.

A. 어휘
alternative 代案(대안). withdraw 撤回(철회)하다.
drawn-out 기다랗게 잡아 늘인, 지루한. vetting process 審査(심사) 과정.
iron out 다림질하다, 주름을 펴다, 견해차를 해소하다.
legal 법적인. logical 논리적인. wrinkles 주름.
envision 예상하다, 상상하다. interests 이익집단.
institutionalised search 제도화된. Progressives 진보주의자.
academic 학자. reformers 개혁가. geographically 지리적으로.
isolated 고립된. institutional vacuum 제도적 공백.
Octopus 文魚(문어). tentacles 觸手(촉수). corrupt 부패시키다.
bribe 매수하다, 뇌물을 바치다. cajole 구워삶다, 甘言利說(감언이설)로 속이다.
legislator 지방의회 또는 국회의원. Supreme Court 대법원.