Private Power and Democracy's Decline

Why unfettered free-market capitalism endangers democracy-and what to do about it.
The global Democracy Index score has hit an historic low, with the U.S. downgraded to a "flawed democracy." In Private Power and Democracy's Decline, Mordecai Kurz explains how two forces of economic policy and technology have combined to cause democracy's retreat-and how a policy to moderate these destructive forces can restore its legitimacy. At the root of the problem, Kurz identifies the economic policy begun in the 1980s based on unregulated free market capitalism-as distinct from "capitalism" per se. Coupled with the information technology revolution that began around the same time, free market capitalism has created a techno-winner-takes-all economy-and a second Gilded Age of unsustainable inequality and extreme political polarization.
Beginning with a clear explanation of how technological innovations and free markets interact to shape the economy and its political system, Kurz describes the way this interaction alters the distribution of economic and political power in society-and in the last 50 years created an economy that "boomed" while leaving behind the majority of America's workers. He concludes with a realistic, integrated policy proposal aimed at several goals: lowering exclusionary market power; promoting innovations that support workers rather than replacing them; fostering a more equitable sharing of the benefits of economic growth; and, above all, saving democracy.

Mordecai Kurz is Joan Kenney Professor of Economics-Emeritus at Stanford University. His books include, most recently, The Market Power of Technology.