Throughout this series, we have explored how California can ensure that essential goods and services reach the people who need them. Across housing, food, energy, education, and care, one question connects these challenges: How can we ensure the people most affected by public problems play a central role in shaping solutions?
Answering that question requires attention to how the government makes decisions, whose experiences inform those decisions, and whether residents have meaningful opportunities to participate.
Our research suggests that many Californians see considerable room for improvement. In a recent survey of 2,007 Californians, only 32% said they can trust the state government to do what is right most of the time, and more than half think the state of California is not responsive to people like them. Roughly 80% believe that everyday Californians should have more direct influence over the public policies that affect them.
Importantly, 75% think the governor should do more to increase civic engagement among California residents, and nearly 70% indicate that strengthening civic engagement should be a top priority for the next governor. In fact, more than 60% said they personally want more opportunities to engage directly with leaders in state government.
These findings point to a moment of significant opportunity for California’s next governor: to build a new civic infrastructure that enables government at all levels to work with communities to address public problems—and to strengthen trust in the process.
The UC Berkeley Possibility Lab’s Civic Engagement Agenda for California’s Next Governor offers a path forward. Drawing on five years of learning from tens of thousands of residents and consultation with hundreds of leaders across sectors, it presents 20 specific proposals for the next administration to advance in its first 100 days.
The proposals share a central premise: fostering meaningful civic engagement should be a core function of government.
Making participation part of how government works
Elections are essential to democracy. But the decisions that affect our lives continue between election cycles, as policymakers and practitioners design and deliver programs, implement and evaluate policies, and determine how public resources are used.
That’s why the Possibility Lab’s agenda focuses primarily on collaborative governance, or “co-governance,” in which a government works directly with residents, community organizations, and other local leaders to improve public programs and policies. Through co-governance processes, communities share power and have a meaningful role in the decisions that directly affect them.
California already has experience to build on. Our report describes partnerships with trusted community organizations, digital participation tools, and efforts to involve young people and tribal nations in public decision-making. Yet this work remains uneven and uncoordinated. State departments often duplicate outreach, communities still face barriers to participation, and promising efforts often lack consistent evaluation or sustained support.
Building a people-centered government requires the leadership, tools, relationships, and resources that make meaningful participation possible and sustainable over time. The Lab’s agenda organizes that work around four connected goals.
1. Establish leadership and capacity in government
The first goal is to make civic engagement a coordinated responsibility across state government.
The agenda calls for the new governor to issue a civic-engagement executive order and appoint a cabinet-level chief civic innovation officer to help align efforts across departments and agencies within his or her first 100 days. A proposed Future of Civic Health Commission would bring together government officials, community and youth leaders, tribal representatives, researchers, philanthropies, and businesses to develop California’s first Master Plan for Civic Engagement.
Individual agencies would also have responsibilities. Each department would identify specific engagement goals, assess its practices annually, and establish benchmarks for continuous improvement.
Together, these steps would connect statewide leadership and ensure accountability for how individual agencies involve and respond to residents.
2. Build infrastructure to learn what works
Inviting participation is only a beginning. California also needs ways to test engagement approaches, evaluate their results, and share what it learns.
At the center of the agenda is a proposed California Civic Health Institute. Modeled on the original National Institutes of Health, this new entity would bring multiple sectors together to support community-based research, pilot new approaches for engagement, monitor civic health across California, and make evidence-based findings available for practical use.
An annual Civic Innovation Challenge would fund and evaluate projects that connect communities with government partners to address policy problems based on the community’s own priorities and goals. A regular Civic Pulse survey would gather residents’ experiences and priorities to share with state government, while a digital knowledge commons would make research, tools, and training accessible to government and community organizations.
Finally, the government must increase its capacity to engage with broader communities and to act on what it hears. Building on the Possibility Lab’s existing State of Engagement Fellowship, we encourage the next governor to support ongoing training and professional development for emerging leaders within government who are involved in civic-engagement activities.
The aim is to create a system in which successful approaches for collaboration can spread, with evidence helping guide iterative improvement.
3. Make engagement informed and inclusive
Who participates in civic opportunities matters. So does the information available to them and the role their input plays in decisions.
The agenda proposes requiring that appointments to state boards and commissions reflect California’s diversity, including tribal representation, and that at least one person age 30 or younger serves on every state board or commission. It also calls for stronger civic education and expanded partnerships with trusted community organizations.
A proposed standing California Civic Assembly would meet annually to deliberate on prioritized issues and offer specific recommendations to state leaders. Its responsibilities would include responding to questions from the governor and legislature, and helping shape research and innovation priorities.
These proposals would give residents additional ways to contribute their knowledge and consider policy choices together. They reflect the agenda’s emphasis on informed discussion, shared problem-solving, and participation and community building that reaches beyond those already connected to government.
4. Invest in participation that lasts
Relationships, trust, and effective institutions take time to build. They need support that can persist through changes in leadership.
The agenda, therefore, recommends a five-year funding commitment for the California Civic Health Institute, alongside a pooled fund developed between government and private philanthropy. It also urges the next governor to reappoint a senior adviser on social innovation and to expand the state’s investment in nonpartisan journalism, including local and ethnic media.
These investments would support engagement work and access to the reliable information people need to meaningfully participate in civic life.
The principles of meaningful engagement
Across all four goals, how we bring people together matters. The agenda identifies six principles for effective engagement: inclusive, intentional, iterative, informed, innovative, and integrated. In practice, that means removing barriers to participation, clearly explaining how input will be used, following through on community requests, evaluating short- and long-term results, and coordinating efforts so communities are not repeatedly asked the same questions without seeing a direct response to their input.
The first 100 days of the next gubernatorial administration offer an opportunity to establish new priorities and processes to meet these goals. The longer-term task is to make collaboration with residents an enduring part of how California governs.
A people-centered agenda begins with institutionalizing processes that leverage the unique knowledge Californians hold about their own lives and communities. It advances when government creates reliable ways for that knowledge to inform decisions—and the capacity to act on what it learns.
Read the full civic-engagement agenda
Explore the agenda’s 20 proposals
Visit the UC Berkeley Possibility Lab’s Community Engagement site
The conversation continues in 2027 with the launch of a new iteration of Knowledge Hub. We are opening this space to a wider circle of researchers, ideas, and perspectives. The expanded hub will connect research with the everyday challenges facing Californians, making findings accessible and exploring what they could mean for public policy. Together, we’ll keep asking how evidence and community experience can help build a more responsive, people-centered California.
