CBH Talk | Rebuilding American Democracy: The Path to a Functioning Government

According to legal scholar and former White House official K. Sabeel Rahman, American democracy faces a crisis that goes beyond elections, polarization, and partisan division. In his urgent new book, Remaking the State: A New Blueprint for American Democracy , Rahman argues that the health of our democracy depends on rebuilding the institutions of government themselves. Taking aim at both the top-down model of the traditional administrative state, as well as efforts to dismantle government altogether, Rahman centers his consideration on what it takes to make government genuinely responsive to the public it serves. Drawing on his experience as one of the Biden administration’s top regulatory officials, he asks us to reconsider not simply how much government we want, but what we want government to be. Join us for a timely discussion about government power and capacity, inequality, public trust, and what rebuilding the machinery of American democracy might look like. New York Times economics reporter Talmon Joseph Smith leads the conversation. Participants K. Sabeel Rahman is a Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. His academic research focuses on issues of democracy, governance, economic power, political economy paradigms, racial equity, and inequality. He works extensively with a range of think tanks, advocacy organizations, and foundations to develop novel approaches to addressing these issues in practice. From 2021-2023, he served in the Biden-Harris Administration where he led the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). At OIRA, he oversaw the policy review and approval of all significant federal regulations and played a lead role in the Administration’s efforts on equity, data and information policy, and reforming regulatory analysis. From 2018-2021, he served as President of Demos, a national racial justice think tank and advocacy organization that played a key role in combating voter suppression and developing and mainstreaming major policy ideas from climate justice to student debt relief to energy democracy. He also co-founded the Law and Political Economy Project. He is the author Democracy Against Domination , Civic Power (with Hollie Russon Gillman), and Remaking the State: A Blueprint for American Democracy . His popular writings have appeared in The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Boston Review, Dissent , and The Washington Post. Talmon Joseph Smith is an economics reporter for the Business section of The New York Times , based in New York. He covers nationwide macroeconomic developments, labor markets and the intersection of financial markets with pocketbook issues.