The Great Democracy

by Ganesh Sitaraman

  Portions of the book have appeared, in many cases in substantially altered form, as “Countering Nationalist Oligarchy,” Democracy: A Journal of Ideas (Winter 2019); “Regulating Tech Platforms: A Blueprint for Reform,” Great Democracy Initiative (May 2018); “Taking Antitrust Away from the Courts,” Great Democracy Initiative (Sept. 2018); “A Blueprint for a New American Trade Policy,” Great Democracy Initiative (Dec. 2018) (with Tim Meyer); “The Case for Glass-Steagall, the Depression Era Law We Need Today,” Guardian (June 16, 2018); and “A Simple Plan for Saving the Supreme Court,” Vox (Sept. 6, 2018) (with Daniel Epps). I thank the editors of these publications for improving those essays and for allowing me to reprint parts of them here.

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  CREDIT: VANDERBILT

  Ganesh Sitaraman is chancellor faculty fellow, professor of law, and director of the Program in Law and Government at Vanderbilt Law School. Author of The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution, a 2017 New York Times Notable Book, he lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

  ALSO BY GANESH SITARAMAN

  The Public Option: How to Expand Freedom, Increase Opportunity, and Promote Equality (with Anne L. Alstott)

  The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic

  The Counterinsurgent’s Constitution: Law in the Age of Small Wars

  Invisible Citizens: Youth Politics after September 11 (ed., with Previn Warren)

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION: THE EDGE OF A NEW ERA

  1. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1918); Henry Adams, The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma (1919); Arthur Schlesinger Jr., The Cycles of American History (1986); Arthur M. Schlesinger, Paths to the Present (1949).

  2. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942); Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962).

  3. Richard Reeves, President Nixon: Alone in the White House 295 (2001).

  4. Jefferson Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (2010).

  5. For an overview of the debate over the Heritage Foundation’s involvement in developing the idea for health care exchanges, see Timothy Noah, “Author, Author,” Slate.com, Apr. 19, 2010.

  6. My account of these eras is heavily influenced by Stephen Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton (1993), though I focus more on ideas than Skowronek does. For an application of Skowronek’s theory to the present, see Jack Balkin, “Obama Hoped to Be a Transformational President. He Failed,” Vox, Jan. 19, 2017.

  7. Matthew Arnold, “Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse,” in Dover Beach and Other Poems (Dover Thrift Editions, 1994).

  8. Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (2018); Madeleine Albright, Fascism: A Warning (2018); Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny (2017).

  9. Theodore Roosevelt, The New Nationalism 43 (1910).

  CHAPTER 1: THE ORIGINS AND MEANING OF NEOLIBERALISM

  1. The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, “Election Fallout: The Parties,” Nov. 5, 1980, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip_507-w37kp7vk13. An account of this program also opens Randall Rothenberg’s book The Neoliberals (1984). I have organized the commentators’ thoughts by person rather than chronologically in the program.

  2. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism 2 (2005) (“Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices.”). David Grewal and Jedediah Purdy describe neoliberalism as the “revival of the doctrines of classical economic liberalism, also called laissez-faire, in politics, ideas, and law,” and they note that the key component is “the assertion and defense of particular market imperatives and unequal economic power against political intervention.” See David Singh Grewal & Jedediah Purdy, “Law and Neoliberalism,” 77 Law and Contemporary Problems 1 (Nov. 4, 2014).

  3. On the use of the term neoliberalism, see Charles E. Merriam, “Review: The Good Society,” 53, no. 1 Political Science Quarterly 129 (Mar. 1938); Pierre Dardot & Christian Laval, The New Way of the World: On Neo-Liberal Society 52 (trans. Gregory Elliott, 2013); Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets Since the Depression 72 (2012). For more on Colloque Lippmann, see Burgin, Great Persuasion, 55–56. This account of economic goals is from Dieter Plehwe, “Introduction,” in Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe, The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective 14 (2009). On the Chicago School, see Rob van Horn & Philip Mirowski, “The Rise of the Chicago School of Economics and the Birth of Neoliberalism,” in Mirowski & Plehwe, Road from Mont Pèlerin.

  4. Burgin, Great Persuasion, at 88–89, 93.

  5. Burgin, Great Persuasion, at 169, 174, 154.

  6. Burgin, Great Persuasion, at 174, 181–183; Milton Friedman, “Neo-Liberalism and Its Prospects,” Farmand, Feb. 17, 1951.

  7. See generally Thomas Ferguson & Joel Rogers, Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of Politics 78–79 (1986); Thomas Borstelmann, The 1970s 54–56 (2002). On savings and debt, see Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies 135–136 (2001); Jacob S. Hacker, The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream (rev. ed. 2008). On foreign competition and crisis, see Charles Maier, “‘Malaise’: The Crisis of Capitalism in the 1970s,” in The Shock of the Global 45 (Niall Ferguson et al. eds., 2010). Bortelsmann, The 1970s, 134, discusses manufacturing.

  8. Richard Roberts, When Britain Went Bust: The 1976 IMF Crisis (2016); Andrew Marr, A History of Modern Britain 366–369, 376 (2007); Simon Jenkins, Thatcher & Sons 37 (2006).

  9. Nancy MacLean, Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace 242–243 (2006).

  10. Jefferson Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class 293–294, 231 (2010).

  11. Burgin, Great Persuasion, at 155; Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1981; William A. Niskanen, Reaganomics, The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/Reaganomics.html; see also Ronald Reagan, Address before a Joint Session of Congress on the Program for Economic Recovery, Feb. 18, 1981, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=43425.

  12. On the global context, see Manfred B. Steger & Ravi K. Roy, Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction 21, 83 (2010). I owe the DLPA framework to Steger & Roy, Neoliberalism, at 14, who frame neoliberal policy as focused on deregulation, liberalization, and privatization—to which I have added the austerity component to better capture the fiscal and monetary elements of the neoliberal approach.

  13. Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan: A History 1974–2000 140 (2009); Abner J. Mikva, “Deregulating through the Back Door: The Hard Way to Fight a Revolution,” 57 University of Chicago Law Review 521, 521 (1990); Niskanen, “Reaganomics.”

  14. For a discussion, see Wilentz, Age of Reagan, at 196–199. On the cost, see Timothy Curry & Lynn Shibut, “The Cost of the Savings and Loan Crisis: Truth and Consequences,” 13:2 FDIC Banking Review 26–35 (2000).

  15. Ferguson & Rogers, Right Turn, at 131–132.

  16. Jenkins, Thatcher & Sons, at 94–96; Marr, History of Modern Britain, at 411–416, 391.

  17. James T. Patterson, Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore 157–158 (2005); H. W. Brands, Reagan 309–313 (2005); Harvey, Brief History, at 25.

  18. Jenkins, Thatcher & Sons, at 214–215, 225–226; Marr, History of Modern Britain, at 511.

  19. John Gerard Ruggie, “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order,” 36 International O
rganization 379, 393 (1982); Jeff D. Colgan & Robert O. Keohane, “The Liberal Order Is Rigged,” Foreign Affairs (May/June 2017).

  20. For an interesting reflection on globalization, see Paul Krugman, “Globalization: What Did We Miss?” 4, Mar. 2018, https://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/LISCenter/pkrugman/PK_globalization.pdf.

  21. Timothy Meyer & Ganesh Sitaraman, “Trade and the Separation of Powers,” 107 California Law Review (Apr. 2019).

  22. Steger & Roy, Neoliberalism, at 19–20; Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents 13, 53, 47–48 (2002).

  23. Jenkins, Thatcher & Sons, at 100; Charles Grant & Henry Porter, “Is Tony Blair the Right Man to Be President of Europe?,” The Observer, Oct. 25, 2009, http://www.cer.eu/in-the-press/tony-blair-right-man-be-president-europe.

  24. Marr, History of Modern Britain, at 429–431; Jenkins, Thatcher & Sons, at 79, 87, 126–128.

  25. Michal Laurie Tingle, “Privatization and the Reagan Administration: Ideology and Application,” 6 Yale Law & Policy Review 229, 230, n. 4 (1988); William E. Schmidt, “West Upset by Reagan Plan to Sell Some Federal Lands,” New York Times, Apr. 17, 1982; Diane Henry, “Vouchers: Will They Help the Poor?,” New York Times, Feb. 21, 1982; Ronald Reagan, Statement on the President’s Commission on Privatization, Sept. 3, 1987.

  26. Rothenberg, The Neoliberals, at 125–126.

  27. Donald Cohen, “The History of Privatization,” TPM Features, http://talkingpointsmemo.com/features/privatization/one/; Robert Poole, “Ronald Reagan and the Privatization Revolution,” Reason, June 8, 2004, https://reason.org/commentary/ronald-reagan-and-the-privatiz/.

  28. Jenkins, Thatcher & Sons, at 259–260, 263.

  29. Jenkins, Thatcher & Sons, at 62, 65; Robert Blake, The Conservative Party from Peel to Major 339–340 (rev. ed. 1997).

  30. Brands, Reagan, at 270–273; Ronald Reagan, Address before a Joint Session of Congress on the Program for Economic Recovery, Feb. 18, 1981, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=43425.

  31. Wilentz, Age of Reagan, at 121; Brands, Reagan, at 260.

  32. Wilentz, Age of Reagan, at 121; William Grieder, “The Education of David Stockman,” The Atlantic, Dec. 1981, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/12/the-education-of-david-stockman/305760/; Brands, Reagan, at 308, 263–264.

  CHAPTER 2: THE NEOLIBERAL IDEOLOGY

  1. Manfred B. Steger & Ravi K. Roy, Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction 38–39 (2010); David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism 3 (2005); Pierre Dardot & Christian Laval, The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society 3 (trans. Gregory Elliott, 2013); Ronald Butt, “Mrs Thatcher: The First Two Years,” Sunday Times, May 3, 1981, https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104475.

  2. “What Isn’t for Sale,” The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/04/what-isnt-for-sale/308902/.

  3. Shushannah Walshe, “Romney Camp Continues ‘You Didn’t Build That’ Attacks with Swing State Events,” ABC News, July 25, 2012, https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/07/romney-camp-continues-you-didnt-build-that-attacks-with-swing-state-events/; Interview with Woman’s Own, Sept. 23, 1987, https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106689.

  4. Paul Verhaeghe, “Neoliberalism Has Brought Out the Worst in Us,” Guardian, Sept. 29, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/29/neoliberalism-economic-system-ethics-personality-psychopathicsthic.

  5. Renae Merle, “Wells Fargo’s Scandal Damaged Their Credit Scores. What Does the Bank Owe Them?” Washington Post, Aug. 18, 2017. For a broad historical and philosophical discussion, see Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government (2017).

  6. “Sens. Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz Debate Over U.S. Health Care System,” CNN, Feb. 7, 2017, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1702/07/se.01.html.

  7. K. Sabeel Rahman, Democracy against Domination 84 (2016).

  8. Andrew Gamble, The Free Economy and the Strong State: The Politics of Thatcherism 35, 32–33 (1988); Simon Jenkins, Thatcher & Sons, at 126–128 (2006).

  9. Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism 2 (2018).

  10. Slobodian, Globalists, at 149 (Röpke), 172–178 (Hutt), and 179–180 (Hayek). The phrase is Slobodian’s.

  11. Karin Fischer, “The Influence of Neoliberals in Chile before, during, and after Pinochet,” in Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe, The Road from Mont Pèlerin 325, 328 (2009).

  12. Ed Kilgore, “Progressives and Liberals,” Democratic Strategist, Jan. 2, 2007, http://thedemocraticstrategist.org/2007/01/progressives_and_liberals/; Jonathan Chait, “How ‘Neoliberalism’ Became the Left’s Favorite Insult of Liberals,” New York Magazine, July 16, 2017, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/how-neoliberalism-became-the-lefts-favorite-insult.html; Charles Peters, “A Neo-Liberal’s Manifesto,” Washington Post, Sept. 5, 1982, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1982/09/05/a-neo-liberals-manifesto/21cf41ca-e60e-404e-9a66-124592c9f70d/?utm_term=.b377226a9605.

  13. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., “The Democratic Party after Ted Kennedy,” Wall Street Journal, Dec. 7, 1982; Randall Rothenberg, The Neoliberals 21 (1984); Robert M. Kaus, “Reaganism with a Human Face,” New Republic, Nov. 24, 1981.

  14. Thomas B. Edsall, “Coelho Mixes Democratic Fund-Raising; Political Matchmaking,” Washington Post, Dec. 1, 1985; Kenneth S. Baer, Reinventing Democrats: The Politics of Liberalism from Reagan to Clinton 179–180 (2000).

  15. Al From, The New Democrats and the Return to Power 211–212, 215, 216 (2013); Baer, Reinventing Democrats, at 222–223. Baer also notes that Will Marshall thought “a dearth of centrist Democrats on the White House staff… contributed to the leftward drift” and noted that “Clinton, like us, is outnumbered in his own administration.”

  16. Robert B. Reich, The Next American Frontier (1983); Robert B. Reich, The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism (1991). See generally Rothenberg, The Neoliberals.

  17. John Greenwald, “Greenspan’s Rates of Wrath,” Time, Nov. 28, 1994; Robert B. Reich, Locked in the Cabinet 306 (1997); see also Nelson Lichtenstein, “A Fabulous Failure: Clinton’s 1990s and the Origins of Our Times,” American Prospect, Jan. 29, 2018.

  18. Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Matto Mildenberger & Leah C. Stokes, “Legislative Staff and Representation in Congress,” 113 American Political Science Review 1 (2019); Lee Drutman, The Business of America Is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate (2015).

  19. John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment 55 (2d. ed. 2005).

  20. James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet 62–64, 89–90 (2004).

  21. Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (2010); Samuel Moyn, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (2018); Samuel Moyn, “Human Rights Are Not Enough,” Nation, Apr. 9, 2018.

  22. Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, at 203, 210.

  23. Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, at xiv.

  24. Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, at 214. For one discussion on Kosovo and Iraq, see Richard Falk, “The Iraq War and the Future of International Law,” 98 American Society of International Law Proceedings 263 (2004).

  25. Seth Mandel, “The Cautionary Tale of Samantha Power,” Commentary, Jan. 2017; Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, C-SPAN Book TV, Feb. 5, 2003, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrRC77QtYcY.

  26. Juliet Eilperin, “Hillary Clinton Criticizes President Obama’s Foreign Policy in Interview with the Atlantic,” Washington Post, Aug. 11, 2014; Maureen Dowd, “Fight of the Valkyries,” New York Times, Mar. 22, 2011.

  CHAPTER 3: THE LAST DAYS OF NEOLIBERALISM

  1. Manfred B. Steger & Ravi K. Roy, Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction 156 (2010); Edmund L. Andrews, “Greenspan Concedes Error on Regulation,” New York Times, Oct. 23, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/business/economy/24panel.html.

  2. Data from Emmanuel Saez, Table A3, col. P99–100, http://eml.berkeley.edu/∼saez/TabFig2014prel.xls; T
homas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century 316 (2014); Economic Policy Institute, “The State of Working America,” http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/who-gains/#/start_1979&end-2008.

  3. Valerie Wilson & William M. Rodgers III, “Black-White Wage Gaps Expand with Rising Wage Inequality,” Economic Policy Institute, Sept. 20, 2016; Laurie Goodman, Jun Zhu & Rolf Pendall, “Are Gains in Black Homeownership History?,” Urban Institute, Feb. 14, 2017.

  4. FDIC, “Failures and Assistance Transactions of All Institutions by Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for the United States and Other Areas, 1934–2016,” https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BKIFDCA641N; FDIC, “Failure and Assistance Transactions of all Institutions for the United States and Other Areas, 1934–2019,” https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BNKTTLA641N.

  5. Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents 89, 133–165 (2002).

  6. “Too Much of a Good Thing,” Economist, Mar. 26, 2016, https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21695385-profits-are-too-high-america-needs-giant-dose-competition-too-much-good-thing; William A. Galston & Clara Hendrickson, “A Policy at Peace with Itself: Antitrust Remedies for Our Concentrated, Uncompetitive Economy,” Brookings, Jan. 5, 2018, https://www.brookings.edu/research/a-policy-at-peace-with-itself-antitrust-remedies-for-our-concentrated-uncompetitive-economy/.