Democratic governance expert Archon Fung says that since 2016 we have entered a political dramatically different from the previous 35 years. He calls it a period of “wide aperture, low deference Democracy.” 

In simplest terms, it’s an era when a much wider range of ideas and potential policies are being debated and when traditional leaders in politics, media, academia, and culture are increasingly being questioned, pushed aside, and ignored by a distrustful public.

And he says the fate of those leaders and elites is significantly of their own making, because they have supported self-interested policies that have resulted in the largest levels of economic inequality since the Gilded Age and a government that is responsive to the wealthy but not to ordinary citizens. 

“The growing of the pie has not been even at all,” Professor Fung tells PolicyCast host Thoko Moyo. “And that causes some significant dissatisfaction in the institutions that are supposed to govern.”

Professor Fung says it’s too early to say whether this era marks our democracy’s demise in favor of authoritarianism, its rebirth as something better, or a state of purgatory where things stay in this “crazy, anxious state for a while.” Some first steps toward avoiding that fate and creating what he calls a “deeper democracy,” he says, include popular mobilization and steps to “create experts and leaders we can really believe in and find trustworthy.”

Professor Fung is based at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, and his research explores policies, practices, and institutions that help make democracy work better.

PolicyCast is produced by Ralph Ranalli and Susan Hughes