Has America lost its mojo? In this episode of the Vital Center podcast, we speak with the Niskanen Center's vice president Brink Lindsey about how the American government no longer seems capable of accomplishing significant, important undertakings — and how that failure is endangering liberal democracy both at home and abroad.

Brink describes his personal journey as a "recovering libertarian," from a vice president at the Cato Institute to an advocate for robust social insurance and strong, capable government as a necessary complement to free-market capitalism. In particular, he offers an in-depth explanation of the thinking behind his recent manifesto for Niskanen's new State Capacity Project. He describes how suspicion of centralized state power — shared, ironically, by both the political left and right — led to a degradation in the American government's ability to carry out ambitious undertakings and even to fulfill its basic responsibilities toward its citizens. The result was what he calls "the often-hapless Leviathan we behold today: an American state whose vaulting ambitions are all too frequently mocked by its faltering follow-through."

The failure of government institutions during the Covid-19 pandemic was a paradigmatic example of the consequences of declining state capacity. This failure, combined with other recent crises such as the 2007-08 financial crisis, is shaking public trust in liberal democracies around the globe. In this interview, Brink lays out a way to strengthen liberal democracy by bolstering state capacity and laying down the intellectual preconditions for constructive problem-solving. Whether this approach can succeed politically in overcoming the forces of populist reaction and what he calls "civilizational rot" remains to be seen.

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