Civic Power: Reclaiming Democracy’s Radicalism

Hollie Russon Gilman's new book Civic Power: Rebuilding American Democracy in an Era of Crisis was excerpted in The Forge.

Just as building power requires a deeper approach to civic engagement, it also requires shifting our conventional approaches to governing, policymaking, and institutional design. To shift power, we need to invest not just in organizing capacity but also in governance capacity, remaking our policymaking institutions to more directly center, empower, and engage frontline communities. If democracy is rule by “we the people,” then the actual day to day business of democratic policymaking must be more driven by the most affected constituencies. This in turn means taking a radically different approach to how we structure and operate administrative agencies and the policymaking bureaucracy. 

Bureaucracies are in many ways at the heart of everything that is flawed about conventional democracy. Democracy reform tends to give elections, voting, and the federal legislature pride of place. And no doubt these institutions are critical for democracy to exist. But democracy and equitable power require more than well-functioning elections and legislatures. Administrative agencies—like the Environmental Protection Agency or municipal zoning boards or state labor commissions—are the actual frontline institutions of governance, where many of the most consequential decisions and policies are decided and actually implemented. 

The centrality of governance institutions is not just procedural; these institutions are key in addressing substantive questions of inequality and exclusion. Without powerful civil rights enforcement agencies and offices, racial and gender discrimination and exclusion cannot be undone. Without an administrative regime to protect workers, or to provide universal access to public goods and the safety net, inequality increases. Given the importance of governance institutions in addressing the substantive, chronic, and structural dimensions of inequality and exclusion, it should be unsurprising that the dismantling of these institutions has been central to the political and policy strategy of the kinds of business interests and exclusionary politics.