Created by the people for the people, the American political system is instead "a private industry dominated by a textbook duopoly—the Democrats and the Republicans—and plagued and perverted by unhealthy competition between players," according to a new book published today.
The tragic result, write the authors, is a polarized government unable to compromise to solve the nation's greatest problems or realize its highest aspirations.
The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy is written with a unique business perspective by Katherine M. Gehl, founder of Institute for Political Innovation, and Harvard Business School strategy expert Michael E. Porter.
Among the reforms put forward by Gehl and Porter is a nonpartisan congressional legislative system that rises from a new federal electoral process. Today's congressional election march, they say, favors "ideology over solutions and gridlock over action. Partisanship pays, compromise costs."
The solution? The Final-Five Voting System for congressional candidates. Consisting of two parts, final-five voting begins with open, single ballot, nonpartisan primaries in which the top five candidates qualify for the general election.
Part two is ranked-choice voting (RCV) in the general election, where voters rank the candidates in order of preference. If no candidate wins a majority of first-place votes, the candidate with the lowest number of first-place votes is eliminated. Voters who backed that candidate as their top choice have their second choice picks redistributed among the remaining candidates until one receives 50 percent of the vote in the recount, and a winner is declared.
"RCV," the authors write, "ensures that the winner will always have support from the broadest possible portion of the electorate. Most importantly, RCV eliminates the enormous barrier to entry that plurality voting creates. Combined with nonpartisan top-five primaries to create Final-Five Voting, it's transformational."
An excerpt from the book follows.
Book Excerpt## The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy
By Katherine M. Gehl and Michael E. Porter
Beginning America Over Again
In a slim pamphlet titled Common Sense and published in Philadelphia in 1776, Thomas Paine captured the spirit of his era: “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” Were it not for the chord his proposals struck with the people of the colonies and the action that followed, Paine’s bold ideas might have been remembered as little else but aspirational—if they were to be remembered at all.
Almost 250 years later, the spirit of American revolution still reverberates for many of us, and the successes of initiatives in states such as Maine and California reinvigorate the democratic renegade in our marrow. But skepticism is bound to creep in. You might be asking, If Final-Five Voting were really so powerful, wouldn’t we have long ago figured that out and accomplished it? Or wouldn’t I have at least heard of it? But that’s not how innovation works, in politics or in any industry. There is a moment when the idea germinates, but often a great deal of time passes before something takes root. At some point early on, the startup that becomes Apple or Google first consisted of a few people in a garage or dorm. And in the case of political innovation, there is an entrenched political-industrial complex engineered to quash any new ideas before they spread.
Think back to the Progressive Era. Innovations eventually spread quickly, but only after achieving some momentum. Success was built on the sustained efforts of dedicated citizens who formed groups, disseminated information, pushed through initiatives, and lobbied politicians.
Ideas alone aren’t enough. We need to get to work.
We must now spread the ideas of Final-Five Voting, scaling a few early innovators into a coast-to-coast campaign of universal adoption and action. Thanks to the upstart laboratories of democracy that have shown us the way (in victory and defeat), we know that action is getting results. And it will continue to be difficult, especially in the face of an entrenched duopoly. The transformation requires smart decisions and sustained effort from multiple actors across multiple states, each with its own unique history, political climate, party loyalties, and democratic rules. But transformational political innovation can be achieved whether a state is big or small, red or blue. There are fifty states in this union, and many are still waiting for the political innovation spark to be lit.
Will you do it?
Lighting that spark requires shaking away learned helplessness about politics, and trading skepticism for leadership. We are not powerless in our democracy. We are not bystanders. We are the makers. Former Wisconsin Senator Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette put it best: “America is not made but is in the making. There is an unending struggle to make and keep government representative. Mere passive citizenship is not enough. Men must be aggressive for what is right if government is to be saved from those who are aggressive for what is wrong.”
We the people had the audacity to reject taxation without representation from across the pond and to create a new nation founded on the radical idea that all are created equal. Whether they were a single voice in a town hall or a chanting chorus on the National Mall, citizens have rallied to make America anew, time and again. The product of our making is—in the stirring words of John McCain—this “big, boisterous, brawling, intemperate, striving, daring, beautiful, bountiful, brave, magnificent country.”
Today, we are called on to remake American democracy once more. The energy for the movement is out there, vibrating in a citizenry fed up with the status quo. Today, we often see scattered, impulsive reactions to problems rather than a unified movement with a targeted strategy. This approach must change. We must direct this energy toward addressing the root cause of the problem—a political system festering with unhealthy competition. The first priority is Final-Five Voting—to change how we vote and thus alter the nature of competition.
It’s often said that we do not have an American government by the majority but have government by the majority who participate. Traditionally, most of us have thought we should participate by voting. Some of us have gone a step further by contributing to candidates. And a still smaller fraction became vocal advocates of particular candidates or policies. But it turns out that none of that is enough. We must also participate in the design of the rules of the game itself.
Today, our shared challenge is to reform our political system to restore healthy competition in the public interest. We cannot retreat into our partisan corners or exit the political arena altogether. We must fight for our democracy. As we have seen, this fight requires concerted effort across multiple constituencies.
Time to invest.
Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Adapted from The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy by Katherine M. Gehl and Michael E. Porter. Copyright 2020 Katherine M. Gehl and Michael E. Porter. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Sean Silverthorne is editor-in-chief of Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.