A strategy for reinvigorating our democracy

1 Katherine M. Gehl and Michael E. PorterA strategy for reinvigorating our democracySEPTEMBER 2017 WHY COMPETITION IN THE POLITICS INDUSTRYIS FAILING AMERICAABOUT THE AUTHORSK atherine M. Gehl, a business leader and former CEO with experience in government, began, in the last decade, to participate actively in politics first in traditional partisan politics. As she deepened her understanding of how politics actually worked and didn t work for the public interest, she realized that even the best candidates and elected officials were severely limited by a dysfunctional system, and that the political system was the single greatest challenge facing our country.

2 She turned her focus to political system reform and innovation and has made this her E. Porter, an expert on competition and strategy in industries and nations, encountered politics in trying to advise governments and advocate sensible and proven reforms. As co-chair of the multiyear, non-partisan Competitiveness Project at Harvard business School over the past five years, it became clear to him that the political system was actually the major constraint in america s inability to restore economic prosperity and address many of the other problems our nation faces.

3 Working with Katherine to understand the root causes of the failure of political competition, and what to do about it, has become an views expressed in the paper are the sole responsibility of the authors and are not meant to represent views of Harvard business School or Harvard work was funded by Harvard business School, including the Institute for strategy and Competitiveness and the Division of Research and Faculty Development. No external funding was and Michael are both involved in supporting the work they advocate in this report. For purposes of full disclosure:Katherine is on the Board of The Centrist Project, and a donor and fundraiser for a variety of political reform and innovation organizations.

4 She has donated to and raised funds for the Campaign Legal Center (for its lawsuit against partisan redistricting in Wisconsin). She is also a donor to No Labels; the Fix the Debt campaign; FairVote s campaign for ranked choice voting in Maine; and Govern for California (which supports selected candidates in California). Before shifting focus to non-partisan political innovation, Katherine was a fundraiser and a member of the National Finance Committee for the 2008 Obama campaign, and a significant donor in 2012. She donates to political is a donor to and hosted a fundraiser for The Centrist Project.

5 He has advised, contributed to publications, and spoken at No Labels events. He donates to political Americans are disgusted and concerned about the dysfunction and abysmal results from Washington, , and so are we. However, this paper is not about adding to the depressing national dialog about politics, but about how to change the system by taking action that will many people including many pundits, political scientists, and politicians themselves are laboring under a misimpression that our political problems are inevitable, or the result of a weakening of the parties, or due to the parties ideological incoherence, or because of an increasingly polarized American public.

6 Those who focus on these reasons are looking in the wrong places. The result is that despite all the commentary and attention on politics in recent years, there is still no accepted strategy to reform the system and things keep getting need a new approach. Our political problems are not due to a single cause, but rather to a failure of the nature of the political competition that has been created. This is a systems are not political scientists, political insiders, or political experts. Instead, we bring a new analytical lens to understanding the performance of our political system: the lens of industry competition.

7 This type of analysis has been used for decades to understand competition in other industries, and sheds new light on the failure of politics because politics in america has become, over the last several decades, a major industry that works like other use this lens to put forth an investment thesis for political reform and innovation. What would be required to actually change the political outcomes we are experiencing? What would it take to better align the political system with the public interest and make progress on the nation s problems? And, which of the many political reform and innovation ideas that have been proposed would actually alter the trajectory of the system?

8 Politics in america is not a hopeless problem, though it is easy to feel this way given what we experience and read about every day. There are promising reforms already gaining traction including important elements of the strategy we propose. It is up to us as citizens to recapture our democracy it will not be self-correcting. We invite you to personally engage by investing both your time and resources and by mobilizing those around you in what we believe is the greatest challenge facing america is often said that We in america do not have government by the majority.

9 We have government by the majority who participate. 1 Today the challenge for Americans is to participate not only as voters, but also to participate in the reform of the political system itself. This is our democracy , and the need is report is about politics, but it is not political. The problem is not Democrats or Republicans or the existence of parties per se. The problem is not individual politicians; most who seek and hold public office are genuinely seeking to make a positive contribution. The real problem is the nature of competition in the politics M.

10 Gehl & Michael E. Porter4 TABLE OF CONTENTSEXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1 PART I: SETTING THE STAGE 8 PART II: A PRIVATE INDUSTRY THAT SETS ITS OWN RULES 12 PART III: THE POLITICAL OUTCOMES CITIZENS WANT AND NEED 18 PART IV: HOW THE STRUCTURE OF THE POLITICS INDUSTRY UNDERMINES COMPETITION 20 PART V: WHY HAS THE SYSTEM GOTTEN WORSE? 34 PART VI: reinvigorating OUR democracy 37 APPENDICES 46 BIBLIOGRAPHY AND RECOMMENDED READING 70 WHY COMPETITION IN THE POLITICS INDUSTRY IS FAILING AMERICA1 Harvard business School (HBS)