I start with what I refer to as the crisis of legitimacy of the state and the growing disaffection and mistrust that populations have with their governments and how nation-states are governed worldwide. It’s not just a European phenomenon. It’s happening everywhere.

We have a state of disaffection and mistrust, without all the answers about what an alternative would be. We need a new form of governance and a new form of state to deal with this problem. What I propose is this idea of the Partner State.

The only way government or a state can establish trust with the citizenry is if the citizenry believes that the state or the government actually reflects and represents their interests, priorities, and values. If we do not have a fundamental reidentification with a state with a new set of values and priorities, the problem does not disappear.

We need a regime change: the Partner State is a different form of governance, democratizing the state and formally aligning state power with an empowered civil society. The Partner State reflects the values of cooperation, mutualism, common welfare, and the ability of individuals and democratic civil organizations to be directly involved in the economy.

In countries like the U.S. or France, where there is capitalist liberal democracy, a new government or regime could perform changes in the legislation to limit the size of corporations — this has already happened in the past. In the 1920s–1930s, the U.S. government passed antitrust laws that limited the size of corporations. It is the same reason why you would consider a similar legislation today. In fact, some of the bills have been drafted today in the United States, for example, to control the size and the power of social media corporations like Facebook or Google. Legislative change is a fairly conventional way of dealing with the monopoly power in the markets in capitalist economies. Therefore, the problem is not concerning what the solution might look like but is rather a political issue — an issue of political will.

In other words, there isn’t enough political power either in government or in civil society to compel the government to pass this kind of legislation. We need political constellations in place that provide the impetus to pass legislation limiting the size of corporations; ensuring that corporations operate within a social mandate or a social contract; directing them to provide a living wage to their workers; allowing collective bargaining; ensuring transparent policies that address the issues of climate change and environmental responsibility. All these tools are available to us, but how do we mobilize the political power to implement these ideas?

We need a different framework than the free market model, where the market and capitalists determine who gets what. Neither is it the state centrally planning the economy. The Partner State is this new ideological foundation for a healthier economy and society. Within the economic democracy framework, the Partner State promotes social values and provides needed services to people, embodying cooperation, reciprocity, and mutuality.

In the U.S., the rise of authoritarianism triggered a return of traditional socialist visions, which will hardly get vast popular support. The task is to reinterpret socialism and the state’s role in ways that address inequalities and empower civil society.

The Partner State represents economic democracy, transcending the conventional dualism between private capitalism and state — both result from the absence of economic democracy. The partner state cannot exist within the current capitalist framework where there is an overwhelming power and wealth concentration in the hands of mega-corporations and the elites. Contemporary capitalism is, in essence, anti-democratic.

The Partner State is a different form of socialism — it is a form of distributed civil socialism in which the institutions held by civil society have a much more assertive role in managing the economy and politics with the support of the state. I am not advocating that everything should be collectively owned with no more private companies. Economic democracy is pluralistic, encompassing different kinds of enterprises (e.g. cooperatives, private enterprises, public enterprises, employee-owned businesses). I advocate embedding democratic principles in the economy and empowering citizens to undertake a more predominant role in how the economy and society are organized.

In failing states and democracies, the instability provokes radicalization within society. That radicalization can take progressive and democratic forms or reactionary and fascistic forms — both of those forms appear today side-by-side in popular discontent against governments around the world.

What kind of leadership and civil organization will determine the direction of the regime that will succeed? It could be reactionary and far-right, as often happens in times of instability. Between the First and the Second World Wars, the rise of fascism directly responded to this kind of instability and the inability of more progressive movements to provide leadership — we’re in a very similar situation today.

A socio-political movement must articulate policies and mechanisms by which alternative values can be institutionalized in a new form of regime and a new government. New values and ideas lead to a new kind of political movement that wins the allegiance of broad sectors of civil society and determines what the revolution will look like — if it happens.