What is it, exactly, that commentators mean when they say that the state of California is “ungovernable?”

The characterization tends to pop up when times are tough and the state government budget seems out-of-control.

Is California deemed ungovernable because its politicians are inept? Is state government so hooked on tax-and-spend that “governing,” in terms of fiscal restraint, is impossible?

Well, all of that may be a factor – even if it starts to sound a bit Massachusetts-like.

Those without a political axe to grind suggest that California is a bit tough to govern because of the very nature of “California:” The wine country up north; the gay neighborhoods of San Francisco; the San Francisco-San Jose-Palo Alto high-tech cluster; the sprawling metropolis that is Los Angeles; the struggling urban core that is Fresno – and on and on. The question may be, what exactly is “California?” Is it a “state” (after all, Rhode Island and Vermont and New Hampshire are states, sort of), or is California too much like a nation-state to be governed by the relatively simple tools available to states, to guarantee that the roads get paved and the bad guys go to jail?

The philosophical challenge for most states of complex size and sophistication is how to generate in the citizenry a loyalty and collective interest in their state – as if it were a country in need of a “Pledge of Allegiance” and an army to fight off the enemies.

Do the residents of Massachusetts pace their living rooms at night, fretting over the sorry state of education in Holyoke and Fall River? Or is it more likely that we sigh about the fate of “those people” and hope that the upscale Boston-Cambridge suburbs crank out enough smart people to prop up our collective egos?

City Life?

In truth, the old regional-planning mantra that it “takes a healthy city to have a healthy region” is demonstrably untrue in many locations – and doubtful in others.

When the latest Census data indicated that residents of Detroit were fleeing at an ever-increasing rate, the New York Times headline writer termed it “a Grim Pattern of Flight.” But, grim to whom, exactly? For many residents of Michigan, the response might well be, “Good for you; get out of that terrible place and make a fresh start; Michigan will be better off for it.”

What is a state such as Massachusetts to make of the 10-year population decline on the Cape and in the Berkshires? Is that truly a barometer of the economic vitality of “Massachusetts,” or is it a reflection of declining second-home markets and Tanglewood ticket sales to vacationing New Yorkers? The Boston-Cambridge colossus, “real Massachusetts,” is doing just fine; even Springfield and Lowell showed a small increase in population.

As a matter of law and “good government,” Massachusetts must fret over distant places with the same enthusiasm as we devote to growing a new science park in Cambridge. But, from the point of view of rousing the state’s population for such stuff, we might well teeter on the edge of being “ungovernable.”

Connecticut does a political cha-cha almost daily, as it aims tax-increase grenades at the wealthy, investment banker-types in its New York City suburbs – a population of folks who couldn’t find Hartford without a map, nor do they particularly embrace the notion that they are residents of “Connecticut,” let alone New England.

States are complicated vehicles to manage in large part because their prosperity often mirrors national and international trends, far more than what is going on in the neighborhood, or the town next door, or even the county hundreds of miles away.

What is New York State to make of the fact that the population of Buffalo has dropped more than 50 percent since 1960? Various folks point fingers at the state’s tax and regulatory environment, but others suggest that national trends make clear that factory towns aren’t going to have many factories any more. New York City’s population grew by about 2 percent over the decade. To many, that is “New York.”

The next time that you hear about a problem in “Massachusetts,” what exactly pops into your head? One, big, happy, cohesive commonwealth? Or the town in which you live?