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Maintaining a Resilient Democracy
While many in this election year are focused on issues that divide the United States and the damage this discord may be doing to democracy, historian David Moss offers a perspective rooted in American democracy’s resilient past.
“There have been many times when people have thought the American republic was failing,” says Moss, the Paul Whiton Cherington Professor of Business Administration. Moss is the author of the acclaimed 2017 book Democracy: A Case Study, which grew out of a popular Harvard course he created on the history of American democracy that was subsequently adapted for nationwide high school use.“Sometimes—as in the lead-up to the Civil War—they were right. But more often, times of heightened conflict and concern were when we fought the hardest to revitalize democracy by engaging together in the process of change.” Moss hopes this current period of political conflict will result in such a revitalized democracy, rather than its demise.
Senator Mike Braun (MBA 1978), Photo credit: Caroline Brehman/Congressional Quarterly via ZUMA Press
Two HBS alumni in Washington are currently immersed in that change process. Political affiliations aside, Senator Mike Braun (MBA 1978), a Republican from Indiana, and Representative Josh Harder (MBA/MPP 2014), a Democrat serving California’s 10th Congressional district, have much in common. Both ran for office in 2018, motivated by a sense that, as Braun observes, “When it comes to serving the electorate, Washington hasn’t exactly been knocking it out of the park for some time.” Harder, a former student of Moss’s, puts it this way: “I felt like Washington was a house on fire, and too many arsonists were being elected.”
Representative Josh Harder (MBA/MPP 2014), Photo credit: Courtesy of Josh Harder
The two legislators are deeply committed to making government more responsive and are drawing on insights from their prior careers—Braun as a former state legislator and the founder and CEO of Indiana-based Meyer Distributing, and Harder as a former vice president at Bessemer Venture Partners—to make that happen.
A central point Braun and Harder agree on is that democracy on the federal level has become too partisan and unresponsive to what a majority of the electorate wants. Both acknowledge that hyperpartisanship in Washington holds up legislative progress. While they agree on the problem, they differ in their solutions. Braun believes term limits would make lawmakers more accountable to constituents by diluting the outsized influence of lobbyists, money, and special interest groups in Washington. Harder suggests the way to give “the people” a louder voice is to bring more of them into the electorate and to revise rules that make it possible today for rogue legislators to hold up bills that an overwhelming majority of citizens want.
Term limits are Braun’s number one recommendation for constructive systemic change. Leading by example, he set a two-term cap on his own service, which affords him “more freedom to listen and weigh in with real honesty and experience than those planning lifelong Washington careers.” Braun, whose legislative priorities include job creation, defense spending, and debt reduction, serves on several Senate committees, among them the powerful Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, which has a reputation for bipartisan cooperation.
Harder’s suggestions to revitalize the system, on the other hand, include “revising arcane procedural rules that give obstructionists too much power to shelve proposals most Americans favor” and measures to make voting accessible to a broader electorate.
Selected as a 2018 “new leader to watch” by the Leadership Now Project, cofounded by Daniella Ballou-Aares (MBA 2001, MPA 2002), Harder sees Washington’s hyperpartisanship as a roadblock to legislative progress. In his 10th Congressional District, a politically purple region where health care, better paying jobs, and access to water are key concerns, Harder says, “I regularly work with Republicans and Democrats on issues that matter to everyone. But in Washington, the most amplified voices are those wanting to tear things down, not the ones trying to build consensus.”
The specifics of proposals such as Braun’s or Harder’s are important, but Moss says what matters most “is that our leaders continue to believe deeply enough in our democracy to always work within it—to respect the democratic process without fail, even when doing so doesn’t seem to favor their party or policy preference at a given moment in time.” He sees strengthening our “culture of democracy” as the pivotal issue in US governance today.
Moss points to the results of a survey, cited in a 2017 Journal of Democracy article, which asked respondents around the world to rate the importance of living in a democratically governed country. “On a scale of 1 to 10, only about 30 percent of US respondents born since 1980 ranked it at 10,” he shares. “That concerns me.
“Ours isn’t the first contentious chapter in US history,” Moss elaborates. “But when we’ve put the principles of our republic first—above our immediate policy interests, above our partisan interests—political conflict has often proved highly productive, and a great deal has been achieved. Today, we need to look hard at ourselves and our own political parties and make sure a strong and resilient democracy remains our first priority.”
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