Civic Power

Hollie Russon Gilman was interviewed for the Center on National Security Vital Interests forum about the state of U.S. local democracy.

VI: Part of the Trump allure was his identity with a growing American populism - a notion for many people that their voices were not being heard but also a troubling belief that their core American values were not supported by the government. How do your ideas of civic power take into account populist feelings?

Hollie Gilman: It's a great question, and it's a complex one. I often think about what a progressive version of responding to those populist feelings might look like: where we could really reimagine what the role of the public sector can be, and how to have a public sector that puts equity, puts justice front and center, and can think big. We could think of the public sector as a place of bold experimentation, to think of the government as the innovator, and the true facilitator of societal progress. You see the government act in this role like creating the internet, in supporting new technological systems that underpin everything we do. In the past the public sector underwrote electrification, telecommunication, and transport and other critical infrastructure that society depends on. 

There was a moment in May of 2020, where trust in government shot up in the United States because there was a sense that the government could really come together and effectively confront the pandemic crisis. Then, not surprisingly, trust plummeted quickly thereafter. For me, the key question is how do we build a different vision of a public sector where government institutions look different - they're more adaptive and flexible and agile and participatory. That to me feels like the opportunity that presents itself today to restore a level of public sector trust. Ultimately, not the panacea, but this could be a tool in a toolkit as an antidote to the Trumpian brand of populism, which has an authoritarian, really anti-small “d” democratic tendencies.

For me, I think there's the opportunity to build civic power that really is identified with small “d” democracy- that thinks about how you tap into the power of people on the local level. That traditional idea of the demos, of the agora, where you try to create opportunities for governance that is the right scale for people in their communities. Then think about how you federate and scale that up to really tackle broader, more complex issues.