K. Sabeel Rahman at the Brooklyn Public Library

Rebuilding American Democracy: The Path to a Functioning Government

According to legal scholar and former White House official K. Sabeel Rahman, American democracy faces a crisis that goes beyond elections, polarization, and partisan division. In his urgent new book, Remaking the State: A New Blueprint for American Democracy, Rahman argues that the health of our democracy depends on rebuilding the institutions of government themselves.

Taking aim at both the top-down model of the traditional administrative state, as well as efforts to dismantle government altogether, Rahman centers his consideration on what it takes to make government genuinely responsive to the public it serves. Drawing on his experience as one of the Biden administration’s top regulatory officials, he asks us to reconsider not simply how much government we want, but what we want government to be.

Join the Brooklyn Public Library for a timely discussion about government power and capacity, inequality, public trust, and what rebuilding the machinery of American democracy might look like. New York Times economics reporter Talmon Joseph Smith leads the conversation.

Center for Brooklyn History
128 Pierrepont Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201

Beyond elections, polarization, or money in politics lies a quieter, more dangerous failure: The state itself has stopped working. Policies are promised, passed, and praised—and then stall, unravel, or never arrive.

Remaking the State argues that American democracy will survive only if government can once again deliver. Against both technocratic nostalgia and anti-government reaction, Rahman offers a bold new blueprint: Rebuild public institutions around democratic freedom, with stronger protections, broader public provision, deeper participation, and firmer checks on autocratic power. Urgent and clarifying, this is a bracing case for remaking the state before democracy is remade against us.

Learn more about Remaking the State