In an interview with the ECPS, Professor Richard H. Pildes, one of America’s leading constitutional scholars, warns that democracy’s survival depends not only on equality and participation but also on its capacity to deliver effective governance. “Democracy,” he says, “rests on two simple promises: equal voice and better lives. When governments fail in that second task, it profoundly undermines democracy itself.” Professor Pildes argues that excessive focus on participation, coupled with digital fragmentation and weakened political parties, have eroded governments’ ability to act decisively. The rise of “free-agent politicians,” algorithmic outrage, and social media-driven polarization, he cautions, threaten to make democracy less capable of solving problems. “Effective government,” Professor Pildes insists, “is the forgotten pillar of democracy.”
Interview by Selcuk Gultasli
In a wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Richard H. Pildes, the Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law and one of the foremost scholars of constitutional and democratic theory, reflects on one of the most neglected yet urgent dimensions of democratic life: the capacity to govern effectively.
Professor Pildes argues that modern democracies have grown dangerously unbalanced by emphasizing participation and representation—the “inputs” of democracy—while neglecting its “outputs,” namely the ability of governments to deliver results that improve citizens’ lives. As he puts it, “I often think of democracy, and what justifies it, as resting on two simple promises. First, democracy promises to treat citizens as equals—with equal standing, equal voice, and equal moral worth. Second, it promises to make their lives better.” When democratic governments fail at that second task, he warns, “it profoundly undermines the justification and purpose of democracy itself.”
Throughout the interview, Professor Pildes develops this theme of effective government as democracy’s forgotten pillar, linking it to rising polarization, social media dynamics, and the fragmentation of political authority. “Neglecting the value of effective government,” he observes, “is one of the greatest challenges of our time. Perhaps the fundamental challenge for contemporary democracies is to demonstrate that they can once again deliver for their citizens.”
Professor Pildes identifies digital fragmentation as one of the defining forces reshaping democratic governance. The communications revolution, he explains, has made it “incredibly easy to mobilize opposition to whatever government is doing,” eroding the stability of political institutions and making compromise more elusive. Social media and algorithmic amplification have “flattened political authority,” giving rise to spontaneous, leaderless movements but also fueling paralysis in democratic decision-making.
He also traces how the decline of strong political parties has weakened democracy’s capacity to build coalitions and sustain coherent governance. Whereas parties once mediated between citizens and the state, today’s hyper-pluralist media ecosystems and privatized campaign finance systems have encouraged the rise of “free-agent politicians”—performative figures who bypass party structures to cultivate online followings and raise funds directly from polarized small donors.
Looking ahead, Professor Pildes cautions that the structural fragmentation produced by digital media cannot be easily reversed: “The genie is out; you can’t really go back.” Yet, he insists that democracies must learn to manage these forces more effectively if they are to regain public trust and legitimacy. “Democracy,” he concludes, “must prove that it can still deliver—by governing effectively, addressing citizens’ needs, and meeting the great challenges of our time.”
Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Professor Richard H. Pildes, revised for clarity and flow.
Democracy Must Deliver
Professor Richard H. Pildes, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: In your recent work, you highlight the “neglected value of effective government” as central to democratic stability. How do disinformation and fragmented information ecosystems undermine the capacity of democratic institutions to deliver effective governance, and how should legal theory integrate these challenges?
Professor Richard H. Pildes: First of all, thank you very much for having me. Let me begin with the first part of your question, which concerns my writings on what I call the neglected value of effective government. The challenge many democracies across the West have been facing over the last 10 to 15 years is that a large portion of their citizens have become increasingly dissatisfied with what government is producing—with its ability to deliver on the major economic and cultural issues that people care most about.
When democratic systems fail to deliver over sustained periods of time on the issues their citizens value most, that creates a very dangerous situation. It breeds anger, alienation, frustration, and withdrawal. Worse still, it can lead people to yearn for strongman figures who promise to cut through paralysis and dysfunction and to deliver what democratic institutions appear incapable of achieving.
In my view, much of legal and political theory focuses on issues like political equality, deliberation, or participation, but pays too little attention to the outputs of democracy—to whether democracy is actually delivering for people. Neglecting the value of effective government is, in fact, one of the greatest challenges of our time. Perhaps the fundamental challenge for contemporary democracies is to demonstrate that they can once again deliver for their citizens.
I often think of democracy, and what justifies it, as resting on two simple promises. First, democracy promises to treat citizens as equals—with equal standing, equal voice, and equal moral worth. Second, it promises to make their lives better. When democratic governments are perceived by many of their citizens as failing in that second task, it profoundly undermines the justification and purpose of democracy itself.
That’s why I believe those of us who work on democratic and legal theory must focus more on how governments can become effective again—just as they were for many decades after World War II—at delivering meaningful results on the issues that matter most to their citizens.
Democracy’s Dilemma: Openness vs. Effectiveness
Your scholarship has long examined how democratic values can come into tension—such as openness versus effectiveness. In the digital era, how do these tensions manifest between free expression online and the state’s ability to govern effectively in an environment saturated with disinformation?
Professor Richard H. Pildes: As an initial matter, one of the points I try to make in emphasizing the importance of effective government as a democratic value is that it helps us recognize the trade-offs between various things we want democracy to achieve—between competing democratic values. For example, some of the reforms introduced over the past 20 or 30 years around political accountability or transparency are, of course, important democratic values. So are participation and voice for citizens. All of these are valuable goals.
But if we push too far along those dimensions, we can make it much harder for democratic governments to deliver. To make this concrete, consider the clean energy transition. There are many things governments need to do to enable a shift to cleaner forms of energy production. In the United States, for instance, we must build many more transmission lines to carry electricity from where there’s abundant sun or wind across multiple states. Yet, that’s extremely difficult because so many local communities and local governments have the ability to veto the passage of power lines through their territory.
What I mean to emphasize by highlighting the value of effective government is that democracy inevitably involves trade-offs. Not all democratic values can always be realized simultaneously. Sometimes, we must balance them, and we’ve given too little weight over the last few decades to the importance of effectiveness in government.
Turning to the second part of your question—how social media has made effective governance more difficult—one of the most striking developments of the last 10 or 15 years, particularly visible in Europe, is the increasing fragmentation of political systems. In many European countries, the traditionally dominant center-right and center-left parties have collapsed. They’ve lost voters in dramatic numbers to new parties—especially those of the far right—which have proliferated across the continent.
This reflects public dissatisfaction with democratic governments, a search for alternatives, and a growing willingness to consider more extreme options. But it also makes it much harder for parliamentary systems to deliver on core issues. Take France, for example. France has become almost ungovernable because its political system is so fragmented. With such a wide range of parties and interests represented in the National Assembly, it’s extremely difficult to form stable majorities to act on major issues.
So one of the perverse dynamics democracies face today is that ongoing dissatisfaction leads people to seek new, often more extreme, alternatives. That breaks down major parties and fragments parliaments, which, ironically, makes it even harder for governments to deliver what citizens demand.
Social media amplifies all of this. The communications and technology revolution—apart from issues like disinformation or hate speech—has made it incredibly easy to generate and sustain opposition to whatever the government is doing. Sometimes that opposition is legitimate; sometimes it’s not. But we now live in a world where groups can be mobilized instantly, new parties can be organized rapidly, and even individuals can wield enormous influence.
Some of that is positive—it encourages engagement and participation—but in a political environment where power can be constantly undermined and opposition endlessly mobilized, it becomes increasingly difficult for democratic governments to deliver on the economic and cultural issues people care most about.
Democracy’s Input-Output Imbalance
You have argued that modern democracies often focus excessively on input legitimacy (participation, representation) at the expense of output legitimacy (governing effectively). To what extent has the rise of social media deepened this imbalance by privileging participatory noise over institutional capacity?
Professor Richard H. Pildes: That’s a very good question. This goes back to our earlier discussion about how democratic theory and political theory tend to focus heavily on values associated with the process of democracy—what we might call its inputs—such as political equality, participation, and representation.
What often receives far less attention is whether democratic governments are actually able to deliver on the issues people care most intensely about, or that large segments of society care most deeply about. As I’ve said before, this imbalance poses a real risk for democracies, and we’re experiencing that risk now. When democratic systems are repeatedly perceived by citizens as unable to address the major challenges of the era—whether economic or cultural—that perception corrodes confidence in the system itself.
Social media, in many ways, has intensified this problem. In the United States, for instance, it has enabled what I call the rise of “free-agent politicians.” Lawmakers today can reach a national audience in a way that was unthinkable even a generation ago. Previously, new members of Congress were virtually invisible; they had to build expertise and move up gradually through the political hierarchy. Now, through social media, even first-year members can cultivate a national following almost instantly.
Because of this, and because campaigns in the US are privately financed, these politicians can raise significant sums of money online without relying on their political parties. The result is that many of them have become independent actors—no longer beholden to party discipline or structure. Unless political parties can assemble enough strength in the legislature to move legislation forward, you end up with hundreds of atomized individuals who are difficult to organize and coordinate.
This dynamic contributes to the paralysis and dysfunction we see in many legislatures today. As a result, more power shifts to chief executives—presidents or prime ministers—because the legislative or parliamentary process has become so gridlocked.
This is a major danger we need to confront. It requires serious reflection on how we can structure democratic processes and institutions in ways that make it more likely they can actually deliver the outcomes that large numbers of citizens are demanding.
The Leveling of Political Authority
Scholars like Fukuyama argue that digital technologies have fundamentally reshaped political fragmentation across Western democracies. How do you see algorithmic amplification and social media platforms interacting with existing institutional fragmentation to exacerbate polarization and weaken democratic mediation?
Professor Richard H. Pildes: Francis Fukuyama’s point is very nicely captured by a phrase Emmanuel Macron used a while back. Macron, who is more philosophically inclined than most political leaders, said—translated into English—that there has been a “leveling of political authority.” I think that description captures well what the technological revolution and social media have done.
In both good and bad ways, these changes have made it much harder for political authority to be legitimate, to be marshaled, and to be organized in a way that allows for effective governance. As I mentioned earlier, it is now incredibly easy to mobilize opposition to whatever government is doing. The mobilizations that social media enables are often composed of large groups that are not formally organized, and the demonstrations are frequently spontaneous.
If you look at recent examples—the Canadian Truckers Movement opposing COVID policies, the Yellow Vests in France, the Indignados in Spain, or the Occupy movement in the US—these movements have no clear leaders and are not hierarchically structured. This makes it very difficult for governments to know who to negotiate with, who to engage in dialogue with, or even what some of these movements specifically want.
There are both positive and negative aspects to this. On the positive side, more people are able to express themselves and make their voices heard. But the downside, as I’ve been emphasizing, is that it makes it increasingly difficult for governments to function effectively.
We have to pay close attention to this dynamic because when people begin to feel alienated from democracy itself—when they perceive it as failing to deliver for them—that becomes a very risky situation.
Moreover, in this era, we also have, looming in the background, the example of authoritarian China, which many people believe is delivering more—whether they are right or wrong about that. Things can be built faster in China; they have high-speed rail, massive infrastructure growth, and so forth. President Biden has spoken frequently about this, saying that his goal is to demonstrate that democracies can work again in the face of the challenges posed by China’s rise.
That’s why I keep emphasizing the need to focus not just on whether democracies can deliver, but on how we can structure—or, if necessary, restructure—their institutions and processes to make it more likely that democratic governments will actually be able to do so.
The Economics of Outrage
The rise of digital platforms has dramatically expanded the reach and speed of small-donor mobilization, often through emotionally charged and polarizing content. How do you see the interaction between algorithmic amplification and small-donor dynamics shaping candidate incentives, campaign rhetoric, and party polarization in the medium term?
Professor Richard H. Pildes: This is particularly an issue in the United States because we finance our elections through private funding. That means individual donors—or sometimes very large billionaires who now spend vast amounts of money in elections. It can also be small donors, whom the internet now enables campaigns to reach very cheaply, and who can make donations with almost no transaction costs—very easily.
We went through an era in which the internet was celebrated as the democratization of information—a wonderful new age. But we have since come to recognize the darker side of that transformation: social media rewards outrage. The algorithms, as you mentioned, amplify outrage. The content that gets the most attention is often the most extreme. We’ve learned that lesson well.
The same dynamic applies to political fundraising online, especially from small donors. How do you get attention as a politician—again, this is a particularly American problem—in the attention economy we now live in? The more extreme or outrageous you are, the more likely you are to attract attention. In the United States, that attention translates directly into small-donor contributions.
So, the rise of online fundraising mirrors what we’ve come to understand about the internet more generally: it rewards those who take more extreme positions. This dynamic fuels polarization in the United States. Donations flow in response to viral moments on social media—moments that often depend on outrage or confrontation.
One small example illustrates this point. A number of years ago, when President Obama was delivering his State of the Union address to Congress—which is supposed to be a very dignified, if partisan, occasion—a congressman shouted, “You lie!” It was an extraordinary breach of decorum, and he was rightly criticized by major newspapers and commentators. Yet, in the days that followed, he raised a tremendous amount of money from small donors online.
That episode shows how the amplification and cultivation of outrage can turn on the flow of money. The result is that we get politicians who are more performative—more focused on attracting attention than on governing—and who are encouraged by these dynamics to be more extreme. I do think this has significantly contributed to polarization in the United States.
The Collapse of Democratic Mediation: The Disappearance of Gatekeepers
In your broader work on political fragmentation and effective governance, you emphasize the importance of institutions that mediate between citizens and the state. To what extent do current campaign-finance reforms and unregulated social media ecosystems undermine these mediating structures, and what kinds of institutional or legal interventions might restore equilibrium without unduly restricting participation or speech?
Professor Richard H. Pildes: That’s a very hard question. I’ll give you an example of probably the most dramatic change we’ve made to the structures of American democracy in the last 50 years—one that most people in the United States have long forgotten.
For 170 years, presidential nominees for the major parties were chosen primarily by elected party figures from across the country during political conventions. In the 1970s, that system was abandoned in favor of the current one, in which voters, through presidential primaries, effectively decide who each party will nominate for the presidency.
So, for 170 years, we had this mediating device—call it the political convention—in which elected party figures from throughout the country would choose the nominee. These were often people with direct experience working with the potential candidates; they knew them much better than those without that experience. They sought to find candidates who would best represent the range of factions and interests within the party.
All of that was eliminated when we shifted to using primary elections to select presidential nominees. That was the removal of a mediating institution—the political convention—and of certain gatekeepers, namely, the elected political figures.
At the time we made this change, some political scientists warned that it would make it easier for demagogic figures—those able to gain popular attention by stirring up hatreds and divisions—to rise to prominence. They cautioned that the new system would reward such candidates. I’ll let people decide for themselves how true that prediction has turned out to be in the United States, but it certainly marked the dismantling of an important mediating structure.
As you know, many democracies in Europe still retain these mediating roles. For example, in the Conservative Party in the UK, members of Parliament first winnow down the possible party leaders to two candidates. Then, it’s those two individuals whom the party’s broader membership votes between to choose the leader. That’s a gatekeeping role—a mediating institution.
We eliminated mechanisms like that, which is why I believe we’ve seen more populist-type figures rise to the presidency in the years since we abandoned the political convention as a meaningful device.
And this is precisely what social media does as well. The main thing social media does is eliminate gatekeepers. It dismantles mediating institutions and bypasses the structures that have long been part of democracy—at least in the US—for more than 200 years. That’s what Macron is referring to when he says the technological revolution is creating a “leveling of authority.” Some of that is good, and some of it is very bad. But that’s the nature of the democracy we are living in today.
When Parties Lose Power, Democracies Lose Direction
In your analysis of political fragmentation, how do decentralized, hyper-pluralist media ecosystems affect coalition-building and compromise, which are traditionally central to democratic governance?
Professor Richard H. Pildes: These are very challenging questions. When you have strong political parties—parties that have real authority in the sense that they can develop policy agendas and communicate those clearly to voters—they can then implement those agendas once in office. If they have a majority, or if they form a governing coalition, they can steer that coalition in a coherent direction. All of that depends on having strong political parties.
A big part of what’s happened across many democracies is that political parties have become much weaker than they used to be. And that’s for a variety of reasons. The parties used to be anchored in institutions—like labor unions on the left or churches on the right—that themselves have lost power over time. As those institutions have weakened, so have the parties.
And although we love to complain about political parties—and we love to hate political parties—strong parties are actually essential to making democracy work effectively. They organize the legislative agenda, craft the messages to voters, structure what people campaign on, and, when they gain political power, they have the cohesion needed to push policies through.
When political parties are weak, it becomes much harder for them to perform all of these functions. That, in turn, makes it harder to build coalitions, harder to sustain compromise, and harder to form stable governing majorities in parliaments. I think this is very much part of the situation we face today.
The Genie Is Out: Social Media and the Future of Democracy
Given your emphasis on institutional design, do you view the structural fragmentation induced by online media as something that can be mitigated through legal or regulatory reform, or is it now a constitutive feature of contemporary democracies?
Professor Richard H. Pildes: The short answer is that it’s the latter. We’ve had a lot of discussion about social media’s effects on democracy that focus on issues like disinformation or misinformation, as we talked about earlier. But my view is that the challenges social media poses to democracy are much deeper than that.
Even if we could somehow fix those problems—through legal reforms, or if the platforms were to self-regulate—I still don’t think we would have addressed the major ways social media is transforming democracy. The real impact lies in how it contributes to the fragmentation of political power and authority more broadly: the greater ease of creating new political groups and parties, the greater ease of mobilizing opposition to what government is doing, and the greater ease of spreading—not necessarily disinformation—but very different interpretations of what to do with accurate information.
This is constitutive, to use the term you raised, of democracy today. There’s no way to put social media back in the bottle—the genie is out, and we can’t go back. The real question is whether democracies, political parties, and political leaders can learn to manage these forces in a way that still enables government to deliver effectively—so that democracy continues to do what it promises to do: respond to citizens’ needs and address the major challenges they face, as they understand them.
Defending Democracy in the Age of Global Disinformation
And finally, Professor Pildes, given the globalized nature of disinformation operations (e.g., Russia, China, Iran), how do existing US constitutional and regulatory frameworks—designed for domestic actors—struggle to address transnational information threats?
Professor Richard H. Pildes: This is a very big challenge. It’s not, of course, the first era in which foreign actors have tried to influence elections in other countries. The United States did this after World War II when it was trying to prevent countries like Italy or France from electing communist governments.
But in the social media age, all of this can now be done much more cheaply and at a far greater scale. One positive feature in the US is that we have a highly decentralized system for our national elections. That makes it more difficult for a hostile foreign actor to capture control of the election system because it is so dispersed across states and localities.
Still, when it comes to foreign influence and efforts to manipulate public opinion, this is a very difficult challenge. Legally speaking, even with our strong First Amendment, the US government does have significant authority—if Congress chooses to act—to address some of these issues. We already ban foreign contributions in our campaigns because of the fear of foreign influence.
So, I think there is legal authority to do more. The harder question is whether it’s possible, as a practical matter, to implement effective measures in the digital age. That remains a very open question.
