Is devolving or centralizing power better? This is a central question at the heart of Marc Dunkelman’s book, Why Nothing Works. Dunkelman worries that those people in the US who believe in the power of government to make the world better, basically the center and left, have set the rules to prevent themselves from achieving anything. Thus, while people may worry about the political opposition it is often their own side that scuppers the plans of the center and left in the US. Government action often doesn’t work because the rules set up to stop abuses of power stop all action. Not much happens whether it would have been an abuse or power or not. Often it isn’t those who attack government who cause the failures, but instead failures are caused by the rules put in by people who believe in government.
Hamiltonian And Jeffersonian Ideas
When looking at US politics and governance, Dunkelman divides progressive impulses into two broad classes.
The Hamiltonian thinking is that central government needs power to achieve good things for the public. Power is needed to build roads, to keep people safe, to ensure that local racist policies don’t hold people back, and to drive a quick transition to cleaner energy.
The Jeffersonian idea is that individuals get abused by central power. Checks on power, therefore, stop arbitrary abuses of power, they stop the disempowered being mistreated to help the majority, they stop nature being willfully destroyed, they stop communities being destroyed because the influential want to build something in the place the poor live etc… Stop is the appropriate word.
Is Devolving Or Centralizing Power Always Bad?
Are either of these ideas bad? No, of course not. It makes sense that progressives would want both of these ideas in some combination. Clearly, allowing decision-makers free reign to ignore local needs is a problem, but so is giving everyone a veto if you want to achieve anything.
Talking of those with a Jeffersonian (decentralizing) bias Dunkelman says:
The movement discounts whatever good government might do in service of ensuring it won’t do bad.
Dunkelman, 2025, page 15
Put simply if we want to use clean wind power we need power lines to take the power from where the wind is to where the power is needed. If you can’t build the power lines you can’t have the full benefits from the clean energy. If every single person who might be in any way tangentially impacted, and their dog, has a veto you will never get the needed action.
Is Devolving Or Centralizing Power Better?
Ultimately, Dunkelman thinks that progressives have gone too far in embracing their Jeffersonian inclinations. They have reigned in the ability of government to abuse power so effectively that it can’t do even the good stuff. He thinks that there is a better way which does not allow for abuses of individuals’ rights but still allows stuff to get done. People should be given the right to have their say and objections should be properly considered but ultimately someone has to be empowered to make decisions. The right to a say is not the same as the right to a veto.
Progressives need not make a Manichaean choice between coercion and paralysis.
Dunkleman, 2025, page 328
Should we devolve power to individuals more, or should we centralize more? I guess it depends on where you are starting from. Dunkelman suggests the center and left of politics embracing a bit more centralized power wouldn’t hurt given where we are in the US nowadays.
For more on the similar book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson see It Isn’t Good Enough To Be Just Against Things and It Isn’t Good Enough To Be Just Against Things
Read: Marc J. Dunkelman (2025) Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress—and How to Bring It Back
