These are the times that try our souls, when fair-weather politicians put self-interest before country and brave patriots stand opposed to each other in mutual hostility. We’re waiting for something momentous to happen, everyone feels it, but no mere political party or president can embody the type of change we need. Something is happening beyond the purview of parties, partisan politics, and the myopia of their ideological presuppositions.
Everyone knows democracy is on the ballot this year in the United States and, arguably, to the greatest extent ever around the world; Google it and you see the headlines everywhere. Despite this, the meaning of our moment in history is still unclear.
While it is a cliché to say that democracy is for the people, the obviousness of the point causes us to overlook the self-evident nature of its implication: democracy is for the people—and so the people must take the responsibility for democracy upon themselves. In order to do that, “the people” must define who they are and what exactly they want. Defining those things then also gives us the baseline we need for government accountability and transparency (everyone wants accountability, but accountability to what is the problem).
In other words, if citizens genuinely want liberal democracy, they can no longer look to political parties or charismatic leaders to save them from the burden and responsibility of government. Good government requires more policy stability, national unity, and long-term planning than partisan politics can provide. Partisan politics are also wasting untold billions of dollars every election cycle, money that we need to use for the common good and for more investments in businesses and markets that serve the common good.
The fundamental choice on offer in the 2024 elections is between illiberal democracy and liberal democracy. Whereas illiberal democracy will tend to slide rapidly into autocracy and dictatorship, liberal democracies maintain a system of checks and balances, protect individual liberties and rights, and follow (somewhat) the rule of law.
Even if they don’t want illiberal democracy, voters in countries like Argentina, suffering under chronic inflation and severe poverty, feel forced to vote for radical candidates like Javier Milei because nothing else seems to work. Liberal democracy as we know it is clearly not working well enough.
Wickedly complex problems like economic development, pollution, climate change, and social disharmony require a type of democracy that harnesses the collective intelligence of citizens and experts alike toward defining consistent policy goals. Liberal democracies also need to develop a system that produces more trust and cooperation between citizens themselves. What we need, in fact, is a fourth branch of government, a civic branch of government for the people, a deliberative branch of government to complete the democratic dimensions of liberal democracy. Developing this civic branch of government is the obvious meaning and mission of “civic education” in all public education. (As I’ve said before, higher education has a dual, civic-economic mission. With that in mind, the left needs to stop fighting capitalism and instead embrace it fully in the educational context.)
Much of a fourth branch of government has already been developed and even tried out in various respects: one of the academic terms for the epistemological process or thought process of a fourth branch of government is “deliberative democracy;” the Wisconsin Idea, the guiding philosophy of the University of Wisconsin, comprises the gist of an operating system for a fourth branch of government; and, techniques of “power structure analysis” perfected by the late, fighting lioness of labor, Jane McAlevey, who died of cancer a week ago, enable us to see how power works in a given region or state. McAlevey taught us to diagram the power relationships of a state, how, with information obtained largely through networking and face-to-face interactions, to map out exactly who has power and what they do with it, who, in other words, pulls the strings in any given state’s capital. So, rest in peace, Jane—except for this:
A hallmark of McAlevey’s teaching was that labor unions need to organize whole communities, thus, “raising expectations” for a beloved community. The problem is that political parties and labor unions are machines of political partisanship and warfare respectively; their uses are limited and the needs of democracy are far greater. The participation of civil society in the level of self-governance necessary in liberal democracies needs to be organized through a fourth branch of government. Unions are only part of that fourth branch, along with NGOs, think tanks, news media, educational institutions, churches, and other civil society groups. McAlevey’s techniques of power structure analysis and organizing whole communities need to be incorporated, in other words, into the activity of a fourth branch of government.
What should organize the fourth branch of government itself will have to be the topic of a different essay. For now, however, just think about this: the existing three branches of government are both provisioned for and limited by the US Constitution. The Constitution organizes the three branches. We need something similar now to organize a deliberative fourth-branch, but the constitution of deliberative democracy must be more like an opensourced Wikipedia document than an unchanging, paper Constitution. The precise mission of “civic education” is to produce such an opensource constitution, thereby organizing and focusing democracy into a disciplined deliberative system.
With all of the above in mind, it is a misreading of our moment in history to think that the Democratic Party could find an ideal candidate to meet this moment. For one thing, the Dems don’t have a standout contender who could win with sheer charisma like Barack Obama or Bill Clinton did. For another thing, the people need to finally decide for themselves whether they will continue to expect strong leaders to solve their problems for them, or whether they will take the responsibility for self-government upon themselves. The latter approach is clearly the American way. So, it’s time for our “leaders” to remind us of that.
If the people are ready for serious self-government, then any Democratic presidential nominee who is qualified and capable will do. After all, it won’t be the candidate who stops Trump and the illiberal form of democracy he represents, but the people. In democracies the people ultimately decide. That’s as it should be.