K. Sabeel Rahman – författare

In 2008, the collapse of the US financial system plunged the economy into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. In its aftermath, the financial crisis pushed to the forefront fundamental moral and institutional questions about how we govern the modern economy. What are the values that economic policy ought to prioritize? What institutions do we trust to govern complex economic dynamics? Much of popular and academic debate revolves around two competing approaches to these fundamental questions: laissez-faire defenses of self-correcting and welfare-enhancing markets on the one hand, and managerialist turns to the role of insulated, expert regulation in mitigating risks and promoting growth on the other. In Democracy Against Domination, K. Sabeel Rahman offers an alternative vision for how we should govern the modern economy in a democratic society. Drawing on a rich tradition of economic reform rooted in the thought and reform politics of early twentieth century progressives like John Dewey and Louis Brandeis, Rahman argues that the fundamental moral challenge of economic governance today is two-fold: first, to counteract the threats of economic domination whether in the form of corporate power or inequitable markets; and second, to do so by expanding the capacity of citizens themselves to exercise real political power in economic policymaking. This normative framework in turn suggests a very different way of understanding and addressing major economic governance issues of the post-crisis era, from the challenge of too-big-to-fail financial firms, to the dangers of regulatory capture and regulatory reform. Synthesizing a range of insights from history to political theory to public policy, Democracy Against Domination offers an exciting reinterpretation of progressive economic thought; a fresh normative approach to democratic theory; and an urgent hope for realizing a more equitable and democratically accountable economy through practical reforms in our policies and regulatory institutions.

The 2008 collapse of the US financial system plunged the economy into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, raising deep moral and institutional questions about the problems of economic inequality and economic power on the one hand, and the tensions between democracy and bureaucratic policymaking on the other. In Democracy Against Domination , K. Sabeel Rahman draws on a rich tradition of political economy rooted in the thought and reform politics of early twentieth-century progressives like John Dewey and Louis Brandeis to argue that, first, we should reconceive economic governance as focused not just on growth or efficiency but rather on counteracting the threat of domination whether in the form of corporate power or inequitable markets; and second, that we must do so by expanding the capacity of citizens themselves to exercise real political power in economic policymaking. Synthesizing a range of insights from law, history, political theory, and public policy, Rahman combines a fresh normative approach to democratic theory and economic power with a concrete analysis of the institutions needed to realize urgent hopes for a more equitable and democratic economy.

American democracy is in trouble—but not only for the reasons we think.Beyond polarization, money in politics, or the distortions of electoral democ­racy lies a quieter, more dangerous failure: Government itself has stopped working. Even before the current attacks on government, the old adminis­trative state was built as a technocratic, expert-driven black box: distant, unaccountable, and ultimately unable to deliver. Policies stall, unravel, or never arrive. Others deepen the very inequalities they are meant to solve. American democracy will survive only if the government can function and serve genuinely democratic ends.K. Sabeel Rahman, who helped lead the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under President Joe Biden as one of the administra­tion’s top regulatory officials, offers a bold new blueprint: a moral vision of the administrative state as a vehicle for democratic freedom. Government, he argues, must protect against harm, secure basic needs, confront deeper structures of inequality, and build firmer checks on autocratic power.Urgent and clarifying, Remaking the State is a bracing case for transforming the American government before it is remade against us.