Rebuilding Democracy Requires Rebalancing Power

Thoughtful policy experts on a range of issues are currently preparing plans to rebuild the federal government in the event that a pro-democracy president is elected in 2028. That planning is essential.

But it will also be wholly insufficient if it does not reckon with the need to rebalance political and economic power: to build the collective power of workers, consumers, tenants, students, and ordinary people, and to reduce the power of the interests that undermine democracy–unscrupulous economic actors seeking to cheat people, oligarchs exercising undue influence in our elections, or groups threatening political violence.

Over the past year, the three of us have been listening to and learning from former government officials, academics, and other policy experts. The lesson we are taking away is this: in a future rebuilding every major policy and institutional design choice should be evaluated not just on what it delivers, but on whose power it builds and whose power it diminishes.

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Decades of missed opportunities for power-shifting

This will require a shift in perspective. For many decades, smart progressive policy wonks have designed new policies and programs, thinking carefully about their economic costs and benefits. But–with a few telling exceptions–these discussions have focused far less on how policies foster collective people power, to the detriment of our democracy.

Take discussions over health care, an area in which we have arguably seen some of the most important domestic policy achievements of the past twenty years. In considering health care policies, advocates and lawmakers have largely focused their back-and-forth on the implications for health insurance coverage and costs. Left largely unaddressed is how changes to the system might foster new collective organizations, such as of patients and their families, that could durably represent those…