The question has to do with where the push for political, economic, or social reforms arises. The push for reform primarily originates within civil society — from the ideas and principles that society advocates. It is civil society that ultimately propels regime change. Even though other alliances exist within government and other institutions that support or provide leadership for this kind of civil movement, the legitimacy of a movement for authentic reform takes root in civil society. Once radical reform begins to take shape, a new form of dialogue emerges between organized civil society and the state. This dialectical process happens back and forth as a joint process to realign powers, responsibilities, and collective goals. I do not believe this is possible solely within the confines of the informal power networks of civil society nor within the formal institutions of government alone. Social alchemy happens between a willing partner (institutional state) and a highly organized, mobilized, and motivated civil society. The confluence of those two creates a new form of governance and a more empowered form of civil society.

Many people feel that the state is obsolete or inherently destructive and even needs to be abolished. Some extreme forms of stateless democracy feature a sovereign civil society organized through collective governance at the local level. I chose the term Partner State because I believe the state still has a role to play — but it has to be a transformed role. We need governing institutions whose primary function is to mobilize, enable, and empower civil society to maximize its role in politics and economics. The governing institutions need to be distinct from civil society itself. If we were to conceptualize a form of political economy where the state is entirely absent, everything would happen within civil society.

The problem is that, eventually, this will result in the emergence of informal hierarchies, abuse of power, and invisible forms of control and manipulation. I worry that those impulses towards hierarchy from some portions of society to exploit other portions of society — as always happens — become embedded within the structure of civil society itself and corrupt the system as a whole. Therefore, it is essential to distinguish formal institutions of governance from informal civil institutions, recognizing both as absolutely necessary.

We need formal and visible institutions of political power that can be held accountable. Within the concept of a Partner State, we interplay and balance formal institutional power and informal institutional power through civil society. I borrowed the idea of Partner State because the state can advocate for and enable the mobilization of civil society, maximizing its values towards a social economy, creating the basis for a new form of political ideology and political economy. And so it is a partnership.

A possible way to respond to the declining legitimacy of the state is by advocating a form of state organization that attempts to resolve and address this issue — not only regarding the decline of legitimacy itself, but behind that, the question of inequality, the absence of state accountability, and the fact that people no longer see themselves represented in the interests of the state.

The emergence of a new formation of Partner State is rooted in the extension of the democratic principle, including citizenship and collective social power, beyond the fossilized form of parliaments and representative government we have been stuck with for centuries in their liberal forms. The state has not engaged citizens substantively in their day-to-day lives. The Partner State can break the line dividing politics and economy in order to extend the democratic principle into the economy and towards a system of economic democracy. The idea is to reclaim politics and reintroduce politics as a daily concern to citizens instead of reducing them to mere spectators.

Absolutely! People spend most of their lives outside a democratic environment in their workplaces. People have no control or say in the activities they are involved in, whether they are white-collar workers or work in a factory: they usually take orders. There is a process of alienation that is deeply corrupting and corrosive of the democratic principle.

The question, once again, is: How do we embody and extend the idea of democracy in the modern era? In the context of mega-corporations and state surveillance, we need to reimagine and resurrect the concept of democracy. Even before the pandemic hit, uprisings were happening worldwide, with people marching in the streets demanding economic and political reform. The heart of those community movements across the globe was the demand for more voice and representation, social justice, and democracy. When we take these issues seriously, embracing cooperation and social justice in the current environment, we must imagine what they mean when applying them to the role of the state and that of civil society.

When I was writing Civilizing the State, I kept asking myself why our political leadership in this era is so bad. While we face these massive social, economic, and climate crises, why is our political leadership so lacking? The next book will bring a different take on politics centered around the role of toxic individuals like Putin, Trump, and Bolsonaro, that rise to the top, gain power, and destroy their societies. The working title is “The Worst of Us.” How do we cope with this as a society — collectively?

I mentioned the term “social predation” in Civilizing the State, which happens in every community, where you have individuals with no concern for the social welfare acting solely for their own personal benefit. How does politics deal with this problem of social psychopathy? It is incredible to see how people like Bolsonaro or Trump have huge followings and how they corrupt and distort the behaviors of vast sections of society. And why is that? How does that happen? How can societies immunize themselves from these individuals?

In Civilizing the State, I comment that even though we discuss different political ideologies and different political regimes, ultimately, it’s always individuals who are in power and make decisions about how they will behave in power and use their power. It matters who these individuals are, how they end up in those positions, and how society can minimize the opportunity for these kinds of individuals to gain control. We must expand democratic control and dilute political power away from centralized elites into the wider society in order to mitigate or neutralize the possibility of pathological individuals gaining power.

During my entire career and adult life, I have been involved with social justice work. I started working as a community organizer when I was 18. In one form or another, I have always been involved in organizing work, social change, community organizing, advocacy, popular education, etc. It is a thread that continues, getting richer and multicolored as I go along. In the mid-90s, I was hired as a manager for the Co-operative Association of Ontario. At the time, I was generally skeptical of economics. I never paid much attention to it before. But when I started working within the cooperative movement, I began to see a whole repressed history of economics and democratic economics and how vital it is for social change. Working with cooperatives, I understood the hidden history of progressive economics and progressive ways of thinking about economic life. I continued learning more about cooperatives, their history, their uses, and their presence in today’s world. It is a continual process for me.