Not long ago, I was in a meeting to talk about a public-policy issue. It was complex, and as we considered the various angles I

To me, it was a thunderclap. Years ago, when I was in Congress, we were in the midst of a tense, contentious debate. Members had

Representative democracy is based on a simple premise. It’s that ordinary citizens can make satisfactory judgments on complex public policy and political issues — or

One of the not-so-small gifts of living in a representative democracy is that you can’t accomplish things alone. Whether you’re trying to get a stop

“I ask how and why this decision was reached,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R–Utah) said in the Senate recently. He was calling for an investigation into

I was talking with a friend the other day about immigration. It’s one of the most divisive issues of our time, and we, too, found

You’re probably chuckling already. Seriously? “The joy of politics”? That was pretty much the reaction I got the other day when, in the middle of

A wave of protests is roiling Moscow. Millions of people, young and old, have been crowding the streets in Hong Kong. In Britain, some members

Sometimes, you wonder if the world is doomed to descend into autocracy. Certainly, that’s what the coverage of the past few years suggests. We read

Democracy’s premise is that ordinary citizens can make solid decisions on complex issues. But this basic principle and the structure of laws and practices built