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It is easy to describe this moment as the collapse of democratic norms or the result of extreme polarization. But underneath these trends lies a deeper tension—between two dominant and insufficient visions of democracy. On one side stands technocratic governance: policy making by insulated bureaucracies and arm’s-length institutions, which prize stability, expertise, and control. On the other stands populist majoritarianism: the volatile, winner-takes-all politics that claims to speak for “the people” while concentrating power in the hands of those who win. These forces are locked in a mutually reinforcing cycle: technocratic detachment breeds backlash, and populist backlash fuels elite retrenchment. Neither trusts the public. One sees citizens as problems to manage; the other as instruments of its authority.

Both are symptoms of a deeper problem—the steady consolidation of power around market ideas, austerity policies, and top-down management. Over the past few decades, a wave of neoliberal reforms has hollowed out much of the democratic state. Participation hasn’t disappeared—it’s been pushed to the margins. And in many cases, the institutions that remain seem designed less to include people than to keep them out. These systems didn’t evolve by accident. They serve powerful interests—political, corporate, and bureaucratic—that benefit from keeping control concentrated and the public at a distance.

ONE OF THE CENTRAL assumptions of twentieth-century democracy building was that democratic institutions propagate democracy. Whether in post-colonial Africa, post-Soviet Eastern Europe, or post-conflict Iraq and Afghanistan, the prevailing model held that if you replicated the institutional forms of democracy—parliaments, courts, constitutions, electoral commissions, civil society organizations—democratic behaviour would follow. Build the scaffolding, and the spirit would fill it.

But history—and experience—suggest otherwise. Democratic institutions, without an active and capable public, tend to become hollow. Elections can entrench autocracy. Courts can be captured. Political parties can end up serving special interests instead of the public. In country after country, the institutions of democracy were established, while the substance—accountability, deliberation, civic trust—remained elusive. Institutions alone do not produce democracy. People do. And this is as true in established democracies as in fledgling ones.