250 Years In, How Should We Talk About Democracy?

Political philosopher John Dewey famously held that democracy, properly understood, was not only a political system but “a way of life” in which each individual exercises and cultivates his unique capacities in a way which contributes to the flourishing of the whole society. Today though, most of democracy’s defenders in American politics tend to represent it merely as a set of procedures and institutions—an understanding of democracy far less rich and full than Dewey’s. And as Americans have appeared unmoved by calls to save democracy in recent years, many pundits and consultants have argued that democracy itself is not as relevant to the public as other policy issues, like the economy and immigration. Yet, surveys show that overwhelming shares of the American public still consider themselves committed to the concept of democracy as they understand it—that it is a good system of government, and that they believe it to be important to American identity.

America is commemorating its 250th anniversary amid extraordinary levels of popular distrust and discontent with our government and institutions. Abandoning efforts to defend democracy is exactly the wrong lesson for our moment. But Americans think of democracy in broader terms than elected leaders often seem to. Studies show that “freedom” is the concept most associated with democracy, while institutional processes—things like voting and representation—come second. What’s more, and contrary to the conventional wisdom of most pundits, most Americans connect the concept of democracy to economic matters. In fact, a majority of Americans seem to consider redistributive taxation and the provision of basic necessities like food and shelter features of democracy, rather than separate issues.

America is commemorating its 250th anniversary amid extraordinary levels of popular distrust and discontent with our government and institutions. Abandoning efforts to defend democracy is exactly the wrong lesson for our moment.

This is why delivering on material concerns can itself be a route to democratic renewal. Americans strongly support policies only government can provide and believe it is obligated to provide them. Yet they have little confidence that it will do so: Trust in government, a core measure of democratic health, has in recent decades eroded. But as recent polling by Impact Research and the Roosevelt Institute show, when Americans are presented with an agenda focused on lowering costs, raising incomes, expanding access to good jobs, and freeing up their time, support climbs sharply, even among those most disillusioned with government.

Talking about democracy in ways that resonate with more Americans requires connecting policies that affect their material well-being to substantive democratic principles—restoring a more capacious, ambitious, and robust understanding of democracy to progressive discourse and connecting it to the daily lives and lived experiences of the American people.

A New Framing of Democracy

Any reorientation of how we understand democracy should begin from its basic principles. At its simplest, democracy is an ideal of self-governance—democratic systems are systems in which those who are governed are the ones doing the governing. They are, to borrow Abraham Lincoln’s construction, systems of governance “of, by, and for the people.” This ideal of self-governance is further rooted in certain principles many have come to hold dear and have resonance in facets of life that extend or even precede their political worldviews. These include the notion of agency, the ideal of human equality, and the concept of human flourishing. Many theorists find democratic governance desirable because it conceptually allows all who participate a measure of control over the conditions that shape their lives, and empowers them to fulfil their own destinies, whatever they may be.

This may be among the reasons why so many Americans extend the concept of democracy to domains well beyond political norms and institutions.

Applying the Democracy Frame

That framework, as basic as it is, can help us apply the concept of democracy to a variety of policy issues and material concerns in novel and compelling ways. The three topics to be explored here in particular—healthcare, abortion rights, and artificial intelligence—illustrate how to use the concept of democracy to connect policy ideas to broadly embraced political ideals.

Example 1: Healthcare

America spends the most per capita on healthcare of any country in the world. Nonetheless, health outcomes in the US across multiple metrics are roughly the same or worse than outcomes in peer countries that spend significantly less. Healthcare reforms like the creation of Medicare and Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act have meaningfully expanded access to healthcare for many Americans. But the burden of stubbornly high costs—along with the many frustrations and inefficiencies of navigating insurance—show the work of improving the system remains far from finished.

Efforts to radically expand healthcare access have faced many challenges over the years, from the organized opposition of the healthcare industry to reform efforts, to structural inequities with American government institutions that have made passing and enacting major legislation of any kind difficult. Nevertheless, it is true that many Americans are troubled by the state of the American healthcare system overall. Polling shows that Americans’ concern is not linked simply to their own material experience of the healthcare system. According to Gallup, 65 percent of Americans describe their personal healthcare coverage as excellent or good, yet 82 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with American healthcare costs, and only 24 percent of Americans rate coverage in the country as a whole excellent or good. Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe, per Gallup, that it’s the government’s responsibility to ensure all Americans have healthcare coverage—a figure that’s returned to roughly where it was more than 20 years ago, after years of churn and intensive policy debate.

A majority of Americans already intuitively believe that democratic governments have an obligation to ensure healthcare access. Yet attempts to pass legislation to make this true have instead emphasized healthcare costs, human rights, and the greed of Big Pharma and the healthcare industry. They have not mobilized a democratic frame, and they have not sufficiently mobilized the American people around the issue.

A democratic frame would instead emphasize how healthcare is essential to democratic freedom and agency. The denial of healthcare doesn’t just prevent people from accessing a good they might be entitled to as a matter of distributive justice. A person denied access to necessary medication or care is also, of course, less able to exercise full control over their lives, which may well be cut short by that lack of agency. Because of our employer-based health insurance system, many may feel as though they are unable to change jobs—an obvious feature of even the most conservative notions of agency—for fear of losing healthcare benefits. And even those who can afford good healthcare still have less security here in America than they would elsewhere, where government plays a greater role in providing insurance and regulating healthcare costs—healthcare is a contingency rather than a guarantee when costs and access are mostly up to health insurance companies and providers.

Example 2: Abortion Rights

The Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, forced abortion back to the center of American policy discourse. Despite the salience of the issue, public opinion on abortion in America has been in a state of relative stasis for some time—60 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases according to Pew, the very same share who believed so in 1995.

Making clear the importance of robust protections of the right to an abortion may require supplementing existing messaging on bodily autonomy, abortion rights as medical care, and the impact of abortion restrictions on low-income Americans and minorities with novel approaches that potentially resonate with even more Americans. A democratic framing of the issue might emphasize abortion rights as agency-enhancing even above and beyond questions of bodily autonomy—making the case that reproductive freedom must be protected if we are to live at our own direction, freely, as equals.

The National Women’s Law Center, for instance, ran polling in 2023 that found that a third of respondents were both “personally against abortion but also against government preventing someone from making their own decisions.” As the NWLC explained, these Americans “do not want politicians taking this decision away from individuals . . . They see politicians taking away the right to an abortion as an attack on freedom, liberty, and the ability to make one’s own decisions and control one’s own destiny.”

A country where abortion rights are under attack in this manner is a country that is less free and where the voices and opinions of the American people seem to matter very little.

The poll also queried current and retired union members specifically on abortion rights. The NWLC’s report on the findings innovatively suggested ways that abortion rights could be tethered to a respect for unions and the ways they enhance the agency of their members. “We all deserve the freedom and opportunity to control our own bodies and our life’s path,” they said. “Restricting abortion access is about who has power over you, who can make decisions for you, and who is going to control how your future turns out.” They also added that “the politicians that are trying to take away our right to unionize are the same ones that are trying to take away our right to access abortion care.”

That kind of framing can be broadened still further. The overturning of Roe ⁠happened at the hands of an unelected Supreme Court packed over time by conservatives and acting in contravention of American public opinion. As a consequence of the Dobbs decision and the restrictions of abortion rights that have ensued, millions of Americans across the country have lost a measure of the agency they need to live at their own direction. A country where abortion rights are under attack in this manner is a country that is less free and where the voices and opinions of the American people seem to matter very little. Conversely, restoring, protecting, and expanding abortion rights can be framed as a goal in keeping with the project of restoring, protecting, and expanding the democratic agency of the American people more broadly speaking—at the ballot box, at work, and in our own lives.

Example 3: Artificial Intelligence

As early in the development of AI systems as we are, the American people have already grown seriously concerned about its impact on the economy and our lives. According to a June Reuters/Ipsos poll, more than 70 percent of Americans are worried that AI use is increasing and that the technology will eliminate jobs in some fields. The survey also found that a 53 percent majority of Americans are personally concerned that AI will put someone in their own household out of work. Alongside worries about job displacement, polls also show that Americans are troubled by AI’s role in raising energy costs and a broad array of social and cultural externalities—from the proliferation of deepfakes and misinformation to adverse effects on literacy and education. As many rightly fear, the mass, unregulated use of AI could diminish our capacity to think and do things for ourselves, rendering us more and more dependent on a handful of companies and the information and ideas they decide to provide to us.

 the American people deserve democratic agency over the deployment of AI technology—the right to guide AI development in keeping with the goal of creating a society where all human beings might flourish.

A democratic frame on the issue would unite this litany of concerns into a resonant and comprehensible critique. As more and more Americans know and fear, decisions that are already reshaping our lives—what work exists, what we remain capable of knowing and thinking for ourselves, how we perceive reality—are being made by a handful of AI companies. Rather than being active participants in some of the most consequential economic and social developments in human history, the vast majority of people—and those who will be the most negatively affected by AI’s growth—are being subordinated to choices made by a small and wealthy minority.

Instead, the American people deserve democratic agency over the deployment of AI technology—the right to guide AI development in keeping with the goal of creating a society where all human beings might flourish.

And while many of the AI policy debates in elite circles focus on technical and regulatory matters, Americans across the country are already approaching AI on these grounds—challenging the development of data centers, for instance, partially out of the principle that the people, not just a narrow class of executives and investors, ought to shape the direction and character of technological progress and decide what our tomorrows look like. As Tucson-based organizer Lee Ziesche has explained, this fight is “about whether we have a say over the future of Tucson. And we do not think that future is in data centers.”

Conclusion

Here, in our 250th year, the future of the democratic project in America remains uncertain. Facing assault from reactionary forces and timidity from centrists, it is incumbent upon those who want to defend democracy to continue actively fighting for a government of, by, and for the people. But this cannot be accomplished by emphasizing the procedural or technical dimensions of a democratic government alone, important as they may be. The American public has made clear that it understands democracy in far richer terms, and that appeals to democracy must be grounded in the principles and aspirations underpinning the democratic ideal—respecting human equality, enhancing human agency, and enabling human flourishing.

The material issues that impact us most directly are areas where, with the right framing, the democratic ideal might tangibly come to life and be brought to lived practice for millions. As such, we should be communicating about the issues above—healthcare, the right to an abortion, a say in the development of artificial intelligence—and others in ways that emphasize that democratic principles and the democratic way of life are at stake.