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Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress―and How to Bring It Back
A provocative exploration about the architecture of power, the forces that stifle us from getting things done, and how we can restore confidence in democratically elected government—“the best book to date on the biggest political issue that nobody is talking about” (Matthew Yglesias)
America was once a country that did big things—we built the world’s greatest rail network, a vast electrical grid, interstate highways, abundant housing, the Social Security system, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and more. But today, even while facing a host of pressing challenges—a housing shortage, a climate crisis, a dilapidated infrastructure—we feel stuck, unable to move the needle. Why?
America is today the victim of a vetocracy that allows nearly anyone to stifle progress. While conservatives deserve some blame, progressives have overlooked an unlikely culprit: their own fears of “The Establishment.” A half-century ago, progressivism’s designs on getting stuff done were eclipsed by a desire to box in government. Reformers put speaking truth to power ahead of exercising that power for good. The ensuing gridlock has pummeled faith in public institutions of all sorts, stifled the movement’s ability to deliver on its promises, and, most perversely, opened the door for MAGA-style populism.
A century ago, Americans were similarly frustrated—and progressivism pointed the way out. The same can happen again. Marc J. Dunkelman vividly illustrates what progressives must do if they are going to break through today’s paralysis and restore, once again, confidence in democratically elected government. To get there, reformers will need to acknowledge where they’ve gone wrong. Progressivism’s success moving forward hinges on the movement’s willingness to rediscover its roots.
America was once a country that did big things—we built the world’s greatest rail network, a vast electrical grid, interstate highways, abundant housing, the Social Security system, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and more. But today, even while facing a host of pressing challenges—a housing shortage, a climate crisis, a dilapidated infrastructure—we feel stuck, unable to move the needle. Why?
America is today the victim of a vetocracy that allows nearly anyone to stifle progress. While conservatives deserve some blame, progressives have overlooked an unlikely culprit: their own fears of “The Establishment.” A half-century ago, progressivism’s designs on getting stuff done were eclipsed by a desire to box in government. Reformers put speaking truth to power ahead of exercising that power for good. The ensuing gridlock has pummeled faith in public institutions of all sorts, stifled the movement’s ability to deliver on its promises, and, most perversely, opened the door for MAGA-style populism.
A century ago, Americans were similarly frustrated—and progressivism pointed the way out. The same can happen again. Marc J. Dunkelman vividly illustrates what progressives must do if they are going to break through today’s paralysis and restore, once again, confidence in democratically elected government. To get there, reformers will need to acknowledge where they’ve gone wrong. Progressivism’s success moving forward hinges on the movement’s willingness to rediscover its roots.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published February 18, 2025
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March 2, 2025
It took four years to build the Golden Gate Bridge in the 1930s but six years to install suicide prevention nets on it over the last decade. The same decade that saw the building of the Golden Gate Bridge also saw the relatively rapid completion of the Empire State Building (410 days!), the Hoover Dam, and much more. While California is still waiting for high speed rail that started in 2008 China has built 27,000 miles of high-speed rail. And when things actually do get done in the United States, like the Second Avenue Subway, they can cost astronomical sums—in this case $3 billion per mile, or ten to twenty times as much as in other countries.
I have been thinking, worrying and occassionally working on these issues for twenty years now but I still found Marc Dunkelman’s Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress—And How to Bring It Back revelatory. Dunkelman’s extraordinarily rich and thoughtful historical account of how this sorry state of affairs came about does not just provide detail, it provides a framework for thinking about the evolution of the problem and the contours of a solution that provided me with a whole new way of looking at the issue.
Dunkelman’s framework is debates and pendulum within the progressive movement between a “Hamiltonian” approach that vests more top-down power in experts and a “Jeffersonian” approach which values the bottom-up contributions of citizens and groups which all have their say. Broadly the story is about the rise of the Hamiltonian approach in President Wilson creating various commissions and then Roosevelt battling the Depression over the course of which “progressivism increasingly came to view oppressive democracy as a far graver danger than overbearing bureaucracy. As a result, by the eve of the Great Depression, the movement appeared ready to go big on big government.”
This movement culminated in powerful builders like Robert Moses followed by its downfall as a result of what seems like a bunch of separate and contingent events: legislative language about environmental reviews here, a district court decision about standing there, but ultimately can be understood as an interconnected movement in the 1960s and 1970s to limit the government’s power and return it to citizens. What makes Dunkelman’s book so revelatory is how it draws links between details about domains as disparate as welfare, transmission lines and post-Watergate limits on Presidential power.
Power for citizens would be fine—even good—if there were an effective way to aggregate their preferences. Every new building blocks someone’s view, every new electrical transmission may do that plus even require taking someone’s land, and many more equities can be implicated by high speed rail. The problem is these different views are aggregated into a “vetocracy” in which many given parties have the ability to block, or at least delay, the project. Given that almost every project has winners and losers this presents a high hurdle to building anything.
This is a “how to think about policy” book that is like giving you a powerful new instrument for looking at and understanding policy. It is not really a “how exactly to fix policy” book with a detailed set of bullet points. In some ways that makes sense because Dunkelman’s entire point is the correlated ways in which changes in many domains shifted from the Hamiltonian to the Jeffersonian and his plea for a shift back—not to ignore the voices of the people but to have someone that is empowered to listen and ultimately make a call about what is best for society as a whole: “You can’t coalesce the right-of-way to build a high-speed rail track or a high-voltage transmission line by pushing power down. Some centralized authority needs to clear the path”.
I have to say, I finished the book feeling like I had a better understanding of the deeper obstacles to building—but also feeling more daunted about the ability to overcome them. Sure there have been successes in the YIMBY movement (which Dunkelman discusses and classifies as a successful Jeffersonian approach, as opposed to the Hamiltonian folly of urban planning—a rare reversal of the narrative on other topics). Recent Presidents have made sporadic and sometimes successful efforts on these issues. But the obstacles in law, courts, mentalities—and ultimately in genuine losers and downsides to building more not just imaginary misunderstandings—are daunting.
Perhaps even more daunting is that as exciting and motivating as these issues have become to some progressives (and I expect Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson to add fuel to the growing fire), they still fundamentally go against what moves them the most, which is placing limits on government. As Dunkelman writes, “But I suspect that those same ‘progressives,’ if asked to list the issues that mean the most to them, would turn out to be less interested in expanding government authority than in boxing it in—that few pine for big government so much as they fear government coercion. They worry about the prying tentacles of abusive police officers, corrupt election officials, and conservative jurists much more than they dream of expanding access to health care… Policies separating immigrant children from their parents, banning abortion, and preventing Muslims from entering the United States turned out to be more salient than policies increasing the minimum wage, providing Medicare for all, or capping carbon emissions. The issues that resonated most powerfully painted government as a menace—as an institution poised to rip families apart, rob women of their bodily autonomy, and discriminate on the basis of religion.”
But maybe I’m too pessimistic and Dunkelman is right when he argues, “That’s not to invite a war within progressivism, if only because, as I argued above, nearly every progressive of every stripe harbors both progressive impulses [Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian] to one degree or another. If there’s any great reckoning to be had, it will be within each progressive heart—individuals will need to recognize that their underlying political impulses cut against each other and must be put into balance. To say it again, there’s nothing wrong with progressivism that can’t be fixed by what’s right with progressivism.“
I have been thinking, worrying and occassionally working on these issues for twenty years now but I still found Marc Dunkelman’s Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress—And How to Bring It Back revelatory. Dunkelman’s extraordinarily rich and thoughtful historical account of how this sorry state of affairs came about does not just provide detail, it provides a framework for thinking about the evolution of the problem and the contours of a solution that provided me with a whole new way of looking at the issue.
Dunkelman’s framework is debates and pendulum within the progressive movement between a “Hamiltonian” approach that vests more top-down power in experts and a “Jeffersonian” approach which values the bottom-up contributions of citizens and groups which all have their say. Broadly the story is about the rise of the Hamiltonian approach in President Wilson creating various commissions and then Roosevelt battling the Depression over the course of which “progressivism increasingly came to view oppressive democracy as a far graver danger than overbearing bureaucracy. As a result, by the eve of the Great Depression, the movement appeared ready to go big on big government.”
This movement culminated in powerful builders like Robert Moses followed by its downfall as a result of what seems like a bunch of separate and contingent events: legislative language about environmental reviews here, a district court decision about standing there, but ultimately can be understood as an interconnected movement in the 1960s and 1970s to limit the government’s power and return it to citizens. What makes Dunkelman’s book so revelatory is how it draws links between details about domains as disparate as welfare, transmission lines and post-Watergate limits on Presidential power.
Power for citizens would be fine—even good—if there were an effective way to aggregate their preferences. Every new building blocks someone’s view, every new electrical transmission may do that plus even require taking someone’s land, and many more equities can be implicated by high speed rail. The problem is these different views are aggregated into a “vetocracy” in which many given parties have the ability to block, or at least delay, the project. Given that almost every project has winners and losers this presents a high hurdle to building anything.
This is a “how to think about policy” book that is like giving you a powerful new instrument for looking at and understanding policy. It is not really a “how exactly to fix policy” book with a detailed set of bullet points. In some ways that makes sense because Dunkelman’s entire point is the correlated ways in which changes in many domains shifted from the Hamiltonian to the Jeffersonian and his plea for a shift back—not to ignore the voices of the people but to have someone that is empowered to listen and ultimately make a call about what is best for society as a whole: “You can’t coalesce the right-of-way to build a high-speed rail track or a high-voltage transmission line by pushing power down. Some centralized authority needs to clear the path”.
I have to say, I finished the book feeling like I had a better understanding of the deeper obstacles to building—but also feeling more daunted about the ability to overcome them. Sure there have been successes in the YIMBY movement (which Dunkelman discusses and classifies as a successful Jeffersonian approach, as opposed to the Hamiltonian folly of urban planning—a rare reversal of the narrative on other topics). Recent Presidents have made sporadic and sometimes successful efforts on these issues. But the obstacles in law, courts, mentalities—and ultimately in genuine losers and downsides to building more not just imaginary misunderstandings—are daunting.
Perhaps even more daunting is that as exciting and motivating as these issues have become to some progressives (and I expect Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson to add fuel to the growing fire), they still fundamentally go against what moves them the most, which is placing limits on government. As Dunkelman writes, “But I suspect that those same ‘progressives,’ if asked to list the issues that mean the most to them, would turn out to be less interested in expanding government authority than in boxing it in—that few pine for big government so much as they fear government coercion. They worry about the prying tentacles of abusive police officers, corrupt election officials, and conservative jurists much more than they dream of expanding access to health care… Policies separating immigrant children from their parents, banning abortion, and preventing Muslims from entering the United States turned out to be more salient than policies increasing the minimum wage, providing Medicare for all, or capping carbon emissions. The issues that resonated most powerfully painted government as a menace—as an institution poised to rip families apart, rob women of their bodily autonomy, and discriminate on the basis of religion.”
But maybe I’m too pessimistic and Dunkelman is right when he argues, “That’s not to invite a war within progressivism, if only because, as I argued above, nearly every progressive of every stripe harbors both progressive impulses [Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian] to one degree or another. If there’s any great reckoning to be had, it will be within each progressive heart—individuals will need to recognize that their underlying political impulses cut against each other and must be put into balance. To say it again, there’s nothing wrong with progressivism that can’t be fixed by what’s right with progressivism.“
May 22, 2025
This book is one of a suite of similar works: Abundance, One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger, Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity, Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It, The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream, Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century, etc. In various ways, these books are concerned with degrading state capacity, decreasing confidence in our governing institutions, deteriorating civil society, and narrowing opportunities for economic growth and mobility in America. Of late, most of these books emerge from left-liberal or progressive perspectives, but there are companion works from right-liberal and conservative perspectives, including Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse, Why Liberalism Failed, The Fractured Republic: Renewing America's Social Contract in the Age of Individualism, etc. Whether from the Left or Right, the diagnoses and the prognosis is often agreed upon, it is only with prescriptions that the books diverge. However, a closer look at these works does reveal some more serious disagreements about the deep causes of the identified malaise too. Unfortunately, the books by progressive types, like Dunkelman, have an unfounded faith in technocracy and their elite class' ability to solve the problems of today while exhibiting little interest in actual technology, culture, demography, and human nature (with the possible exception of Matt Yglesias' work).
Given that this is yet another example of leveraging popular recent history and political theory to do modern political analysis on salient issues that everyone is interested in, one should ask what is distinct about this work? As far as I can tell, Dunkelman's unique selling point is his choice to acknowledge the conflicting psychological tendencies inherent to American progressivism. He patriotically refers to each contrasting tendency as Jeffersonian or Hamiltonian. The Jeffersonian mindset hopes to push power down and out to the populace, while the Hamiltonian mindset hopes to concentrate and scale state power under an expert class. Rather than pitching these as irreconcilable enemies, Dunkelman, in the "everything bagel" style also typical of modern progressives, thinks these tendencies can be balanced in the same political coalition. His analysis, which is generally hostile to but avoidant of conservative thought and politicking, argues that the failures of progressive governance today is still mostly of their own making. They can solve the Jeffersonian-Hamiltonian paradox, govern more effectively, allay the sources of political discontent, and regain the political dispensation that the great FDR earned during the halcyon era of the 1930s-1970s.
The problem here is that Dunkelman is cheering mostly for a reinvigoration of the Hamiltonian tendency. He thinks Democrats have become a malignant version of Jane Jacobs and need to find a more angelic version of Robert Moses, a benevolent power broker, to chase her off for a bit. Despite Dunkelman's professed sympathies for the Jeffersonian tendency, which boils down to acknowledging the protected statuses of women and minorities and, to some extent, property rights, it is clear he sees Jeffersonian tendencies as too robust and too consistent with the political priorities of conservatives. To this end, he spends much of the book highlighting current and historical ways in which the Jeffersonian tendency built up veto points and regulatory hurdles until much of the great state capacity built under the New Deal Order was degraded to only a shadow of itself. However, he never provides a robust defense of the purported accomplishments of the Hamiltonian tendency other than simply expecting the reader to be in awe of FDR's accomplishments during the New Deal, LBJ's accomplishments with the "Great Society" programs, and Moses' ability to wield power even if for less than salutary ends.
As is probably clear, I think Dunkelman is doing a lot of magical thinking. He's isn't reflecting on what state capacity is supposed to be for and how effective we can expect it to be even if all the Jeffersonian constraints were removed. Sure, I agree, government could and should definitely become more efficient and less hobbled by legal challenges and bureaucratic sludge, but this is going to have minimal-to-marginal effects on the most critical problems facing Americans: cost of living (housing, case, & education), in situ economic opportunities, communal decay, and family formation. Government is hardly, if ever, an engine of economic growth, which is the real salve to most political problems, and it cannot function like a family or community to solve the root of social problems like anomie and broken families. If Dunkelman would like to help reduce legal barriers to in-demand private activity and help return America to a shared civic culture with strong social norms designed to compel upstanding personal and public behavior then I would see this as a more worthwhile project, but, as far as I can tell, Dunkelman wants to soup up the state so it can engage in his preferred social and civil engineering projects that will founder, eventually fail, and saddle us with future problems to solve just like the New Deal and the Great Society did for us today.
I'm generally favorably disposed to critiques of contemporary American progressivism, but this critique is neither clear-eyed nor trenchant enough about just how dysfunctional progressivism is. It overlooks just how committed modern progressives are to picayune identitarian concerns ("The Groups") or the current economic model (professional class urban elites), which undersells just how dominant the Jeffersonian tendency is and why it should be expected to remain dominant. It also utterly ignores what is fundamentally amiss in America, overlooking robust critiques of progressive thought, which likely offer it a better, humbler way forward.
Given that this is yet another example of leveraging popular recent history and political theory to do modern political analysis on salient issues that everyone is interested in, one should ask what is distinct about this work? As far as I can tell, Dunkelman's unique selling point is his choice to acknowledge the conflicting psychological tendencies inherent to American progressivism. He patriotically refers to each contrasting tendency as Jeffersonian or Hamiltonian. The Jeffersonian mindset hopes to push power down and out to the populace, while the Hamiltonian mindset hopes to concentrate and scale state power under an expert class. Rather than pitching these as irreconcilable enemies, Dunkelman, in the "everything bagel" style also typical of modern progressives, thinks these tendencies can be balanced in the same political coalition. His analysis, which is generally hostile to but avoidant of conservative thought and politicking, argues that the failures of progressive governance today is still mostly of their own making. They can solve the Jeffersonian-Hamiltonian paradox, govern more effectively, allay the sources of political discontent, and regain the political dispensation that the great FDR earned during the halcyon era of the 1930s-1970s.
The problem here is that Dunkelman is cheering mostly for a reinvigoration of the Hamiltonian tendency. He thinks Democrats have become a malignant version of Jane Jacobs and need to find a more angelic version of Robert Moses, a benevolent power broker, to chase her off for a bit. Despite Dunkelman's professed sympathies for the Jeffersonian tendency, which boils down to acknowledging the protected statuses of women and minorities and, to some extent, property rights, it is clear he sees Jeffersonian tendencies as too robust and too consistent with the political priorities of conservatives. To this end, he spends much of the book highlighting current and historical ways in which the Jeffersonian tendency built up veto points and regulatory hurdles until much of the great state capacity built under the New Deal Order was degraded to only a shadow of itself. However, he never provides a robust defense of the purported accomplishments of the Hamiltonian tendency other than simply expecting the reader to be in awe of FDR's accomplishments during the New Deal, LBJ's accomplishments with the "Great Society" programs, and Moses' ability to wield power even if for less than salutary ends.
As is probably clear, I think Dunkelman is doing a lot of magical thinking. He's isn't reflecting on what state capacity is supposed to be for and how effective we can expect it to be even if all the Jeffersonian constraints were removed. Sure, I agree, government could and should definitely become more efficient and less hobbled by legal challenges and bureaucratic sludge, but this is going to have minimal-to-marginal effects on the most critical problems facing Americans: cost of living (housing, case, & education), in situ economic opportunities, communal decay, and family formation. Government is hardly, if ever, an engine of economic growth, which is the real salve to most political problems, and it cannot function like a family or community to solve the root of social problems like anomie and broken families. If Dunkelman would like to help reduce legal barriers to in-demand private activity and help return America to a shared civic culture with strong social norms designed to compel upstanding personal and public behavior then I would see this as a more worthwhile project, but, as far as I can tell, Dunkelman wants to soup up the state so it can engage in his preferred social and civil engineering projects that will founder, eventually fail, and saddle us with future problems to solve just like the New Deal and the Great Society did for us today.
I'm generally favorably disposed to critiques of contemporary American progressivism, but this critique is neither clear-eyed nor trenchant enough about just how dysfunctional progressivism is. It overlooks just how committed modern progressives are to picayune identitarian concerns ("The Groups") or the current economic model (professional class urban elites), which undersells just how dominant the Jeffersonian tendency is and why it should be expected to remain dominant. It also utterly ignores what is fundamentally amiss in America, overlooking robust critiques of progressive thought, which likely offer it a better, humbler way forward.
August 19, 2025
This is like Ezra Klein's "Abundance" but even worse. I agree with the underlying premise that "blue" cities and states should do a better job of improving people's lives. But I was very disappointed by this book.
-The author bumps into relevant issues, like corruption and incompetence. The obvious solutions to those are accountability and competence, but he doesn't go there in terms of practical reforms. He just keeps saying we need to unshackle the government more. He explicitly equates a more competent government with a less democratic one (p. 323); this is dangerous authoritarian rhetoric. If the protoypical era when we got things done was under FDR, is he arguing that FDR represented the people's will less than his recent successors? That seems absurd. In his long historical ramblings, he doesn't provide evidence to back up that extraordinary implication.
-This book is mostly historical. The trips to the past are to try to tell a story about a battle between Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian government, but this is a false dichotomy, as the author's examples keep pointing out. Nevertheless, it becomes a frame for explaining all our problems. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
-Moreover, his framing is irrelevant to much of why things don't work. For example, today in the New York Times was another article about the Reading Wars and how to teach kids to read. There are two sides in that battle and one is wrong. I would have a tough time saying which side is Jeffersonian and which Hamiltonian.
-The author insists on using the word "progressive" a thousand times in a confusing way. How are right-of-Nixon neoliberals like Clinton punching down on Trump voters being anti-Establishment progressives?
-There's a paragraph about how the Fox News (etc.) disinformation machine is a problem, but one that "progressives" are basically told to ignore because it's out of their control. This neglects the crucial role of real journalists in accountability, which is necessary for competence. We need honest watchdogs, including journalists, but also whistleblowers, prosecutors, inspectors general, police, etc.
-There is a fascination with theories and processes of government as opposed to the outcomes, even though the book is supposed to be about what works. I'm sick of theory blah-blah. Can the kids read or not?
Alternatives:
Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowing in an Age of Fraud
Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market
How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between
The Watchdog: How the Truman Committee Battled Corruption and Helped Win World War Two
The Gifted Generation: When Government Was Good
Detroit: An American Autopsy
-The author bumps into relevant issues, like corruption and incompetence. The obvious solutions to those are accountability and competence, but he doesn't go there in terms of practical reforms. He just keeps saying we need to unshackle the government more. He explicitly equates a more competent government with a less democratic one (p. 323); this is dangerous authoritarian rhetoric. If the protoypical era when we got things done was under FDR, is he arguing that FDR represented the people's will less than his recent successors? That seems absurd. In his long historical ramblings, he doesn't provide evidence to back up that extraordinary implication.
-This book is mostly historical. The trips to the past are to try to tell a story about a battle between Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian government, but this is a false dichotomy, as the author's examples keep pointing out. Nevertheless, it becomes a frame for explaining all our problems. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
-Moreover, his framing is irrelevant to much of why things don't work. For example, today in the New York Times was another article about the Reading Wars and how to teach kids to read. There are two sides in that battle and one is wrong. I would have a tough time saying which side is Jeffersonian and which Hamiltonian.
-The author insists on using the word "progressive" a thousand times in a confusing way. How are right-of-Nixon neoliberals like Clinton punching down on Trump voters being anti-Establishment progressives?
-There's a paragraph about how the Fox News (etc.) disinformation machine is a problem, but one that "progressives" are basically told to ignore because it's out of their control. This neglects the crucial role of real journalists in accountability, which is necessary for competence. We need honest watchdogs, including journalists, but also whistleblowers, prosecutors, inspectors general, police, etc.
-There is a fascination with theories and processes of government as opposed to the outcomes, even though the book is supposed to be about what works. I'm sick of theory blah-blah. Can the kids read or not?
Alternatives:
Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowing in an Age of Fraud
Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market
How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between
The Watchdog: How the Truman Committee Battled Corruption and Helped Win World War Two
The Gifted Generation: When Government Was Good
Detroit: An American Autopsy
March 19, 2025
5 star substance with some lacking execution.
The premise of the book is compelling and captivating. It talks about how progressives rejected the top down style of government that was part of the New Deal to a more bottom-up mold that’s chock full of veto points. That basically in response to fears about bureaucrats running roughshod over people we created a situation where everyone who wants to gets heard and drags out processes.
It’s a compelling argument and one that really gets at a lot of the issues with blue state governance. And it sort of highlights how you can’t just blame this all on conservatives.
The latter chapters that loosely focus on construction and power line transmission are particularly compelling as they highlight real and contemporary examples of how this plays out. I’m also in the audience of like a dozen people who is captivated by his discussion of negotiated rule making.
Unfortunately, the book makes some kind of frustrating choices. The first half is focused on older history that feels like it could have been greatly condensed. I see why you need the new deal reaction to drive all this. But it’s too much background before we get to the captivating more contemporary pieces.
There’s also a bit of an odd naming choice here. Things are framed as Jeffersonian versus Hamiltonian. I think it’s smart to give these things names. But it just feels like more inherently explanatory names could have been used? (The Hamilton musical is like 70% of why I could keep these things straight). And while the idea of needing these things in better balance is compelling and correct it’s odd to see this at times framed as a contradiction across multiple issue domains. For instance, it’s pretty intellectually consistent to think about a Hamiltonian approach in an environment that includes tradeoffs—such as where do we build a road. But it’s not crazy for those same people to have a more Jeffersonian approach to say social issues that really are not zero sum. I don’t think he really was referring to those but lumping that in with progressives felt like it was ignoring that domain matters here.
Still, I think the overall argument is critical and compelling. Particularly the idea that at some point we need to accept tradeoffs and move on. You can’t have a no lose scenario. And you need to be willing to allow those choices to happen to make progress. Also his point that ineffective government makes for anger and strongmen feels particularly timely.
A few quotes that stood out:
“But beneath and beside these explan ations is another omnipresent reality: government today suffers from an endemic diffusion of authority. The ability of presi-dents, police chiefs, social workers, public authority executives, and others to exercise discretion has been severely curtailed. In many cases, too many disparate voices now wield a proverbial veto.”
“What progressives rarely acknowledged in this turn—what they still struggle to accept today—is that voice is not in and of itself a strategy for weighing the trade-offs born in public policy. It's not sufficient simply to engage a community worried about getting bulldozed by a highway project, or devalued by a proposed homeless shelter, or skunked up by the rank smells coming from a new factory nearby. Few of those directly affected will be inclined to be more accommodating simply because they've been consulted, or given more time to object, or provided a platform to voice their opinion earlier in the process.”
“Which is not to say that those communities hadn't been shorted adequate notice during the Moses era. Wily figures had undoubtedly managed to shroud their intentions in order to avoid public scrutiny. But no one is ever going to divine a forum where, simply by dint of everyone articulating their con-cerns, a controversial proposal elicits universal support. The residents of the South Bronx would have been unlikely to support the Cross Bronx Expressway even if Moses had been willing to negotiate the route. And that was (and is) the problem: at its most benign, participation is ineffective; but if given real teeth, it holds the potential to render government incapable of making hard choices.”
“A new highway will inevitably be a benefit to some and a burden to others— but is the net result a win? A proposed new regulation might protect some consumers but undermine an industry and its work-force-do the benefits outweigh the costs? A new development will change the character of the neighborhood—but where else will the people who would have moved there be able to live?
It was, and is, easy to argue that the downsides of any given decision could have been avoided if everyone affected had been given sufficient voice. But the reality was, and is, that progress involves ratifying trade-offs that distribute burdens across commu-nities, fair and unfair. And so a progressive agenda centered in almost every context on providing ordinary citizens with new tools to thwart that centralized authority—oppor-tunities to use their voice to lobby an official, to file a lawsuit, to register a complaint-too frequently fails to answer a crucial question: Who, after everyone has spoken, should make the final choice?”
“The underlying reason was obvious: environmental advocates and industry representatives weren't at odds because they'd failed to see the wisdom of the other's perspective; they were stuck because they had fundamentally different interests. No matter how deeply they listened to the other side, neither party was interested in cutting a deal. Moreover, nothing prevented parties who did participate in a NegReg process from subsequently throwing up additional hur-dles-commenting on proposals, lobbying Congress, litigating the outcome-to upend a consensus they'd previously agreed to support.”
“NegReg wasn't born of malice, even if many progressive reformers eventually deemed it a failed experiment. It was simply an extreme manifestation of the movement's Jeffersonian impulse gone awry. The dream-or, perhaps more accurately stated, the fantasy-was that giving everyone voice would ensure an optimal solution. But in too many cases, there is no way to serve the greater good without exacting some cost on at least someone.”
“Rather, the foundation of progressivism's frustration, and the genesis of America's general skepticism of government, is the reality that there are too many hurdles to clear, crosses to bear, and vetoes to avoid. Obama's Recovery Act, for example, spawned a full 192,705 NEPA reviews. Is it any wonder why he couldn't find any "shovel-ready" projects? Or that voters have been losing faith in govern-ment? Who would want to give more authority to a bureaucracy that is so utterly conflicted against itself?”
“Here is progressivism's self-contained dilemma distilled to its essence. Reformers want both to build great infrastructure and to protect communities from coercive power. We want fast trains without having to cut straight rights-of-way. We want the benefits of Robert Moses without the drawbacks.”
The premise of the book is compelling and captivating. It talks about how progressives rejected the top down style of government that was part of the New Deal to a more bottom-up mold that’s chock full of veto points. That basically in response to fears about bureaucrats running roughshod over people we created a situation where everyone who wants to gets heard and drags out processes.
It’s a compelling argument and one that really gets at a lot of the issues with blue state governance. And it sort of highlights how you can’t just blame this all on conservatives.
The latter chapters that loosely focus on construction and power line transmission are particularly compelling as they highlight real and contemporary examples of how this plays out. I’m also in the audience of like a dozen people who is captivated by his discussion of negotiated rule making.
Unfortunately, the book makes some kind of frustrating choices. The first half is focused on older history that feels like it could have been greatly condensed. I see why you need the new deal reaction to drive all this. But it’s too much background before we get to the captivating more contemporary pieces.
There’s also a bit of an odd naming choice here. Things are framed as Jeffersonian versus Hamiltonian. I think it’s smart to give these things names. But it just feels like more inherently explanatory names could have been used? (The Hamilton musical is like 70% of why I could keep these things straight). And while the idea of needing these things in better balance is compelling and correct it’s odd to see this at times framed as a contradiction across multiple issue domains. For instance, it’s pretty intellectually consistent to think about a Hamiltonian approach in an environment that includes tradeoffs—such as where do we build a road. But it’s not crazy for those same people to have a more Jeffersonian approach to say social issues that really are not zero sum. I don’t think he really was referring to those but lumping that in with progressives felt like it was ignoring that domain matters here.
Still, I think the overall argument is critical and compelling. Particularly the idea that at some point we need to accept tradeoffs and move on. You can’t have a no lose scenario. And you need to be willing to allow those choices to happen to make progress. Also his point that ineffective government makes for anger and strongmen feels particularly timely.
A few quotes that stood out:
“But beneath and beside these explan ations is another omnipresent reality: government today suffers from an endemic diffusion of authority. The ability of presi-dents, police chiefs, social workers, public authority executives, and others to exercise discretion has been severely curtailed. In many cases, too many disparate voices now wield a proverbial veto.”
“What progressives rarely acknowledged in this turn—what they still struggle to accept today—is that voice is not in and of itself a strategy for weighing the trade-offs born in public policy. It's not sufficient simply to engage a community worried about getting bulldozed by a highway project, or devalued by a proposed homeless shelter, or skunked up by the rank smells coming from a new factory nearby. Few of those directly affected will be inclined to be more accommodating simply because they've been consulted, or given more time to object, or provided a platform to voice their opinion earlier in the process.”
“Which is not to say that those communities hadn't been shorted adequate notice during the Moses era. Wily figures had undoubtedly managed to shroud their intentions in order to avoid public scrutiny. But no one is ever going to divine a forum where, simply by dint of everyone articulating their con-cerns, a controversial proposal elicits universal support. The residents of the South Bronx would have been unlikely to support the Cross Bronx Expressway even if Moses had been willing to negotiate the route. And that was (and is) the problem: at its most benign, participation is ineffective; but if given real teeth, it holds the potential to render government incapable of making hard choices.”
“A new highway will inevitably be a benefit to some and a burden to others— but is the net result a win? A proposed new regulation might protect some consumers but undermine an industry and its work-force-do the benefits outweigh the costs? A new development will change the character of the neighborhood—but where else will the people who would have moved there be able to live?
It was, and is, easy to argue that the downsides of any given decision could have been avoided if everyone affected had been given sufficient voice. But the reality was, and is, that progress involves ratifying trade-offs that distribute burdens across commu-nities, fair and unfair. And so a progressive agenda centered in almost every context on providing ordinary citizens with new tools to thwart that centralized authority—oppor-tunities to use their voice to lobby an official, to file a lawsuit, to register a complaint-too frequently fails to answer a crucial question: Who, after everyone has spoken, should make the final choice?”
“The underlying reason was obvious: environmental advocates and industry representatives weren't at odds because they'd failed to see the wisdom of the other's perspective; they were stuck because they had fundamentally different interests. No matter how deeply they listened to the other side, neither party was interested in cutting a deal. Moreover, nothing prevented parties who did participate in a NegReg process from subsequently throwing up additional hur-dles-commenting on proposals, lobbying Congress, litigating the outcome-to upend a consensus they'd previously agreed to support.”
“NegReg wasn't born of malice, even if many progressive reformers eventually deemed it a failed experiment. It was simply an extreme manifestation of the movement's Jeffersonian impulse gone awry. The dream-or, perhaps more accurately stated, the fantasy-was that giving everyone voice would ensure an optimal solution. But in too many cases, there is no way to serve the greater good without exacting some cost on at least someone.”
“Rather, the foundation of progressivism's frustration, and the genesis of America's general skepticism of government, is the reality that there are too many hurdles to clear, crosses to bear, and vetoes to avoid. Obama's Recovery Act, for example, spawned a full 192,705 NEPA reviews. Is it any wonder why he couldn't find any "shovel-ready" projects? Or that voters have been losing faith in govern-ment? Who would want to give more authority to a bureaucracy that is so utterly conflicted against itself?”
“Here is progressivism's self-contained dilemma distilled to its essence. Reformers want both to build great infrastructure and to protect communities from coercive power. We want fast trains without having to cut straight rights-of-way. We want the benefits of Robert Moses without the drawbacks.”
April 15, 2025
Thought-provoking, sharp-eyed, but ultimately underwhelming in its prescription
Why Nothing Works is a really well-written and thoroughly researched book. Marc Dunkelman has a gift for synthesis and storytelling—he moves confidently across decades of American governance, showing how overlapping progressive missions and institutional complexity have led to paralysis, despite the best of intentions. His central argument—that dysfunction often arises not from malice but from the collision of too many good causes—is both resonant and refreshingly non-cynical.
I had two main reservations.
The first is tonal. Dunkelman is brilliant at hindsight, but almost everyone in the book ends up looking foolish in the rear-view mirror. His tone can sometimes slip into condescension—there’s a sense that if only people had been a little smarter, or seen a little further, they might have avoided the obvious traps. But the truth is, most of them were trying to do the right thing with the tools and knowledge available at the time. They deserve more credit than they’re given here.
The second is more substantive. The book leans heavily on a binary between Jeffersonian localism and Hamiltonian centralism, structured around the image of a pendulum swinging back and forth. Dunkelman presents various attempts to find a middle ground—like the civic infrastructure of the early New Deal or negotiated rulemaking—but dismisses them quickly, without really probing why they faltered or how they might be adapted.
Then, having spent three hundred pages critiquing this unproductive back-and-forth, he proposes… a pendulum swing back to Hamilton. A new class of empowered national public servants who can cut through the noise and make difficult trade-offs. But why should that work, when so many similarly centralised efforts have failed? His solution feels like a dressed-up version of the very dynamics he’s been critiquing.
Still, there’s a lot to admire here. Dunkelman is a clear and forceful thinker, and the problems he highlights are real. I just wish the proposed fix had lived up to the diagnosis.
Why Nothing Works is a really well-written and thoroughly researched book. Marc Dunkelman has a gift for synthesis and storytelling—he moves confidently across decades of American governance, showing how overlapping progressive missions and institutional complexity have led to paralysis, despite the best of intentions. His central argument—that dysfunction often arises not from malice but from the collision of too many good causes—is both resonant and refreshingly non-cynical.
I had two main reservations.
The first is tonal. Dunkelman is brilliant at hindsight, but almost everyone in the book ends up looking foolish in the rear-view mirror. His tone can sometimes slip into condescension—there’s a sense that if only people had been a little smarter, or seen a little further, they might have avoided the obvious traps. But the truth is, most of them were trying to do the right thing with the tools and knowledge available at the time. They deserve more credit than they’re given here.
The second is more substantive. The book leans heavily on a binary between Jeffersonian localism and Hamiltonian centralism, structured around the image of a pendulum swinging back and forth. Dunkelman presents various attempts to find a middle ground—like the civic infrastructure of the early New Deal or negotiated rulemaking—but dismisses them quickly, without really probing why they faltered or how they might be adapted.
Then, having spent three hundred pages critiquing this unproductive back-and-forth, he proposes… a pendulum swing back to Hamilton. A new class of empowered national public servants who can cut through the noise and make difficult trade-offs. But why should that work, when so many similarly centralised efforts have failed? His solution feels like a dressed-up version of the very dynamics he’s been critiquing.
Still, there’s a lot to admire here. Dunkelman is a clear and forceful thinker, and the problems he highlights are real. I just wish the proposed fix had lived up to the diagnosis.
September 23, 2025
I'll be honest — I didn't expect to get much out of this, and certainly not as much as I did. I've been ambiently following the debates animating Dunkelman (zoning battles on housing, NEPA battles on clean energy buildout and transmission, infrastructure cost disease) for some time and mostly expected a treatise rehearsing opinions I already held. Zoning is too strict, and apartment buildings should be legal by right in major cities. Clean energy should be as easy to permit as fossil fuel projects. Subways should be cheap to build, like they are in Spain, not crazily expensive, as they are in the US.
What makes the book a cut above is Dunkelman's sense of historical perspective and eagerness to trace debates across many decades and sometimes centuries. The terminology he favors (Hamiltonian centralizers vs. Jeffersonian decentralizers) can feel a bit hokey at times, and practically screams "this book project originated when Hamilton was a bigger deal," but lets him tell a coherent story about ideological projects bouncing against and reacting to each other. The chaos of America's decentralized governance gives rise to Progressivism and the New Deal; the abuses of untrammeled government authority (personified by figures like Robert Moses) give rise to a progressive backlash against the imperious government their movement had created; the backlash in turn undermines state capacity, returning us to something like the sclerosis that set off the Progressive centralization project in the first place.
Some characters I didn't know about before, or learned important new information about from, this book:
The sheer length of this list speaks to the depth of research Dunkelman did, and how interested he is in the details of each policy domain he explores. Even if you think you already are onboard the broad "abundance" agenda, or already think it's a con, there is something new to you in here.
What makes the book a cut above is Dunkelman's sense of historical perspective and eagerness to trace debates across many decades and sometimes centuries. The terminology he favors (Hamiltonian centralizers vs. Jeffersonian decentralizers) can feel a bit hokey at times, and practically screams "this book project originated when Hamilton was a bigger deal," but lets him tell a coherent story about ideological projects bouncing against and reacting to each other. The chaos of America's decentralized governance gives rise to Progressivism and the New Deal; the abuses of untrammeled government authority (personified by figures like Robert Moses) give rise to a progressive backlash against the imperious government their movement had created; the backlash in turn undermines state capacity, returning us to something like the sclerosis that set off the Progressive centralization project in the first place.
Some characters I didn't know about before, or learned important new information about from, this book:
- George Walbridge Perkins, the JP Morgan aide who bankrolled the Bull Moose campaign and led the pro-centralization, antitrust-skeptical wing of Progressivism
- David Lilienthal, who I previously only knew for his plan with Dean Acheson to achieve international control of nuclear weapons, but who Dunkelman highlights for his centralizing approach to administering the Tennessee Valley Authority
- David Hackett, the JFK/LBJ aide who pushed them in the direction of the ultra-localized approach the War on Poverty and Office of Economic Opportunity would take
- Ed Logue, the Nelson Rockefeller-appointed successor to Robert Moses who just straight-up bankrupted the state
- Anona Stoner, the Memphis activist who got the Supreme Court to block a major highway project, utilizing a small provision that Ralph Yarborough passed as a favor to San Antonio conservationists that couldn't save the park his constituents had wanted to save, but nonetheless preserved a park hundreds of miles away
- Thomas MacDonald, the quiet power behind the US highway system for decades, who one source compares in his level of power to J. Edgar Hoover
- Samuel Insull, the Edison aide who helped create the modern electrical grid
- Michael Skelly, the wind power mogul who tried to send power from the Oklahoma panhandle all the way to the TVA, only for John Boozman and Tom Cotton to block him because the transmission had to pass through Arkansas
The sheer length of this list speaks to the depth of research Dunkelman did, and how interested he is in the details of each policy domain he explores. Even if you think you already are onboard the broad "abundance" agenda, or already think it's a con, there is something new to you in here.
May 1, 2025
slogged through this for a whole month and it almost murdered my love of reading
May 12, 2025
Basic premise is that progressivism has faltered in recent times due to a tug of war between Jeffersonian vs Hamiltonian impulses. An interesting thesis but unfortunately I was not impressed with how the book was written. Too many examples which seem to be pulled in to build an argument with an overwhelming amount of evidence, except those examples are often not fully developed and key details of the story are left out, which introduced some bias into the argument.
April 15, 2025
This book has fundamentally altered how I view the legislative process, administrative law, and housing/ urban policy. The lens of Hamiltonian/ Jeffersonian Progressivism is likely how I’ll look at so many policies in the future, and the book paints a relatively clear picture of why we have stalled as a country and how to fix our engine so that we can get moving again.
“Government, in the end, needs to be able to make decisions that impose costs and, in many cases, it needs to be able to do so with some degree of alacrity. No one should be denied an opportunity to voice their opinion on a question that affects them in general or in specific. But neither should voice give any figure the ability to hijack the decision-making process altogether. Government needs the ability to render difficult judgments even when they impose costs or remain unpopular.® If, by contrast, public institutions appear like mazes of dysfunction, progressivism is bound to lose.”
“Government, in the end, needs to be able to make decisions that impose costs and, in many cases, it needs to be able to do so with some degree of alacrity. No one should be denied an opportunity to voice their opinion on a question that affects them in general or in specific. But neither should voice give any figure the ability to hijack the decision-making process altogether. Government needs the ability to render difficult judgments even when they impose costs or remain unpopular.® If, by contrast, public institutions appear like mazes of dysfunction, progressivism is bound to lose.”
February 22, 2025
An extremely well written and digestible exploration of the history of progressivism in America. I enjoyed the prescriptive nature of the book and how it provides some hope for being able to, once again, tackle big projects. As he concludes: "Populism takes hold not when democracy works well, but rather when it doesn't deliver. No amount of righteous sanctimony can substitute for making public authority serve the public interest. Moving forward, that should be the progressive movement's north star."
November 14, 2025
Why ‘Why Nothing Works’ Works
When people are angry at the government getting in the way and nothing working anymore, health care is top on the list of grievances, even if the problem isn’t all government’s fault. As such, I was expecting (just going on title) big systemic failures like health care to be the subject of Marc Dunkelman’s Why Nothing Works.
It is not the case. If you want to find out why nothing works- why systems fail their beneficiaries- you should read Recoding America. This book instead examines politics and legal capture; A more apt title would be Why We Can’t Do Big Things Anymore.
The book examines shifting values and power in the history of the American progressive movement. I’m studying policy and pursuing a career in public service because I believe the nature of the United States’ biggest problems- climate change, health care, algorithmic capture of our attention- require more than incremental reforms. It requires the underlying incentives of the individuals and organizations to be realigned away from profits, towards the public good. This is change that only public institutions can effectively bring about. And as Dunkelman argues, government has willingly kneecapped its ability to do so.
Dunkelman structures the book over a long scope of history, tracing how his framework of two competing impulses within the left have battled over time. Hamiltonian progressivism advances progressive goals through the centralization of power and decision making capacity in government and civic institutions. Conversely, Jeffersonian movements disseminate rights and control downwards, advancing progressive goals through grassroots participation and collective decision making. Conservatives are taken as exogenous to the book—coming into play only to frame the imperative of good governance (slow and incompetent government just empowers bad actors to undermine it further).
Dunkelman consistently brings up Robert Moses’s reign over New York as a reference for peak Hamiltonianism, and actually spends some time exploring the fallout of that reign on New York’s institutions. He directly traces post-Moses reforms to New York’s inability to build housing, renovate Penn Station, and the recent progressive-led rejection of Amazon’s HQ2 in Queens. The pop-science framework of progressivism reads similarly to Abundance, but given the historical narrative, the book fashions itself more of a spiritual successor to The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York.
My book club of policy wonks had a hilarious time puzzling through and debating the impulses. Is this law Hamiltonian? Are NIMBYs Jeffersonian? Is antitrust litigation Hamiltonian means to Jeffersonian ends? Most issues don’t actually fit neatly into the two camps, illustrating that Dunkelman pushes his framework slightly beyond its bounds of usefulness.
The two impulses coexist, but each have dominated separately: Hamiltonian liberalism reshaped the country through the New Deal Order, the Great Society, and omnipotent bureaucrats like Robert Moses, David Lilienthal, and Robert McNamara. Then came the backlash to unchecked power. From the Carter Administration onward, the Jeffersonian impulse has been ascendent.
Today’s progressive readers may take issue with the book’s framing, because conservatives indeed have agency, and have undermined government at every turn. But the left has also undermined state capacity through the excesses of each impulse, so I appreciated the more focused study. If you are tired of debating how far left the Democratic Party is or isn’t, or the constant blame game between the wings of the party, you may also find this centralization-based policy lens refreshing. All in all, despite feeling a bit misled about the subject under discussion and some shaky claims throughout, I say this book works. Whether or not you are feeling Abundance-pilled, I would recommend picking to learn about legal capture of the administrative state and to think about getting the public sector moving again.
Full review on Substack!
When people are angry at the government getting in the way and nothing working anymore, health care is top on the list of grievances, even if the problem isn’t all government’s fault. As such, I was expecting (just going on title) big systemic failures like health care to be the subject of Marc Dunkelman’s Why Nothing Works.
It is not the case. If you want to find out why nothing works- why systems fail their beneficiaries- you should read Recoding America. This book instead examines politics and legal capture; A more apt title would be Why We Can’t Do Big Things Anymore.
The book examines shifting values and power in the history of the American progressive movement. I’m studying policy and pursuing a career in public service because I believe the nature of the United States’ biggest problems- climate change, health care, algorithmic capture of our attention- require more than incremental reforms. It requires the underlying incentives of the individuals and organizations to be realigned away from profits, towards the public good. This is change that only public institutions can effectively bring about. And as Dunkelman argues, government has willingly kneecapped its ability to do so.
Dunkelman structures the book over a long scope of history, tracing how his framework of two competing impulses within the left have battled over time. Hamiltonian progressivism advances progressive goals through the centralization of power and decision making capacity in government and civic institutions. Conversely, Jeffersonian movements disseminate rights and control downwards, advancing progressive goals through grassroots participation and collective decision making. Conservatives are taken as exogenous to the book—coming into play only to frame the imperative of good governance (slow and incompetent government just empowers bad actors to undermine it further).
Dunkelman consistently brings up Robert Moses’s reign over New York as a reference for peak Hamiltonianism, and actually spends some time exploring the fallout of that reign on New York’s institutions. He directly traces post-Moses reforms to New York’s inability to build housing, renovate Penn Station, and the recent progressive-led rejection of Amazon’s HQ2 in Queens. The pop-science framework of progressivism reads similarly to Abundance, but given the historical narrative, the book fashions itself more of a spiritual successor to The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York.
My book club of policy wonks had a hilarious time puzzling through and debating the impulses. Is this law Hamiltonian? Are NIMBYs Jeffersonian? Is antitrust litigation Hamiltonian means to Jeffersonian ends? Most issues don’t actually fit neatly into the two camps, illustrating that Dunkelman pushes his framework slightly beyond its bounds of usefulness.
The two impulses coexist, but each have dominated separately: Hamiltonian liberalism reshaped the country through the New Deal Order, the Great Society, and omnipotent bureaucrats like Robert Moses, David Lilienthal, and Robert McNamara. Then came the backlash to unchecked power. From the Carter Administration onward, the Jeffersonian impulse has been ascendent.
Today’s progressive readers may take issue with the book’s framing, because conservatives indeed have agency, and have undermined government at every turn. But the left has also undermined state capacity through the excesses of each impulse, so I appreciated the more focused study. If you are tired of debating how far left the Democratic Party is or isn’t, or the constant blame game between the wings of the party, you may also find this centralization-based policy lens refreshing. All in all, despite feeling a bit misled about the subject under discussion and some shaky claims throughout, I say this book works. Whether or not you are feeling Abundance-pilled, I would recommend picking to learn about legal capture of the administrative state and to think about getting the public sector moving again.
Full review on Substack!
June 19, 2025
The entire book could’ve been compressed into one sentence. Everyone gets to have input, so there is no consensus and nothing gets done.
August 29, 2025
DNF. Got bored.
March 13, 2025
Very helpful and important contribution. The book seems to be mostly interested in reframing the narrative around what is impeding public progress in the United States. The lens is more historical than I had expected. That approach definitely works but it has limits and I would read like three other books on this subject tackling the problem from different angles. It’s a tricky governance issue to solve but we have to.
April 2, 2025
What a disappointment! Yet another book blaming zoning for the housing crisis. Housing was affordable until the housing bubble and zoning has been around since 1916. During the bubble one out of every four buyers was an investor who flipped and sold, sending prices higher and higher. In the high-demand cities the housing bubble never corrected. The other problem is everyone wants to live in the same places because that's where most of the jobs are being created. Really lazy thinking. Go after the true culprits--the banks and investors who made millions off the housing bubble and quit blaming residents.
May 20, 2025
This falls in a category of recent books (most notably Abundance by Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein) that broadly seek to reckon with the current state of progressivism. The message of both books is essentially, "We've done this to ourselves." Or more optimistically: "We have options beyond current right-wing fights and obstructionism."
Dunkelman's version of this story traces two competing impulses within left-wing though over the past 150 years: the Hamiltonian desire to centralize and impose change by technocrats from above and the Jeffersonian belief in diffusing power "down and out" to empower those affected to make change from below.
At its most crude, good Hamiltonian policy is much of the New Deal, like the Tennessee Valley Authority. Bad Hamiltonism is Robert Moses demolishing neighborhoods and building expressways.
Good Jeffersonian policy is communities coming together to block polluting factories from their neighborhoods. Bad Jeffersonism is homeowners blocking low-income housing.
Clearly we need both to achieve progressive aims. Over the past century, liberalism has swung too far in either direction - Dunkelman's argument is that since the 1970s we've entered a period too far indexed on Jeffersonism via proceduralism, lawsuits, and a fear of power that prevents the left from achieving big goals.
The most compelling section to me was on the need for centralized authority to sort out tradeoffs around power lines to deliver clean energy, but you can see this challenge in housing, in transportation, and other areas too.
I know I am a Hamiltonian at heart - I love elite planning and the promise of high speed rail. I also learned a lot from Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed - technocratic arrogance can lead to terrible outcomes. My biggest takeaway from this book was that the left needs a better framework for dealing with tradeoffs. Leftists believe in standing for the powerless - but policy creates winners and losers that cut across different causes and groups. Powerlines that deliver clean energy from Canada can help avert climate change, deliver cheaper electricity, and create new jobs. They can also endanger certain animal populations and disrupt the communities they pass through. There isn't an easy villain in this story - sometimes we will have to trust someone in power to make a choice.
Dunkelman's version of this story traces two competing impulses within left-wing though over the past 150 years: the Hamiltonian desire to centralize and impose change by technocrats from above and the Jeffersonian belief in diffusing power "down and out" to empower those affected to make change from below.
At its most crude, good Hamiltonian policy is much of the New Deal, like the Tennessee Valley Authority. Bad Hamiltonism is Robert Moses demolishing neighborhoods and building expressways.
Good Jeffersonian policy is communities coming together to block polluting factories from their neighborhoods. Bad Jeffersonism is homeowners blocking low-income housing.
Clearly we need both to achieve progressive aims. Over the past century, liberalism has swung too far in either direction - Dunkelman's argument is that since the 1970s we've entered a period too far indexed on Jeffersonism via proceduralism, lawsuits, and a fear of power that prevents the left from achieving big goals.
The most compelling section to me was on the need for centralized authority to sort out tradeoffs around power lines to deliver clean energy, but you can see this challenge in housing, in transportation, and other areas too.
I know I am a Hamiltonian at heart - I love elite planning and the promise of high speed rail. I also learned a lot from Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed - technocratic arrogance can lead to terrible outcomes. My biggest takeaway from this book was that the left needs a better framework for dealing with tradeoffs. Leftists believe in standing for the powerless - but policy creates winners and losers that cut across different causes and groups. Powerlines that deliver clean energy from Canada can help avert climate change, deliver cheaper electricity, and create new jobs. They can also endanger certain animal populations and disrupt the communities they pass through. There isn't an easy villain in this story - sometimes we will have to trust someone in power to make a choice.
June 15, 2025
"Government, in the end, needs to be able to make decisions that impose costs - and in many cases, it needs to be able to do to with some degree of alacrity ... Government needs the ability to render difficult judgements even when they impose costs or remain unpopular. If, by contrast, public institutions appear like mazes of dysfunction, progressivism is bound to lose."
Conceit is to explain the ineptitude of modern American government through examining the history of the two prevailing democratic/progressive theories of governance - Hamiltonians who believe in governing through centralized control, and Jeffersonians who oppose centralized power and believe in 'pushing power down' so that the marginalized are able to challenge state authority.
Book traces the rise of Hamiltonian thinking in the early 1900s through the New Deal and Great Society through its fall in the 1970s, culminating in the rise of Jeffersonianism and dismantling of state power as distrust of institutions rises following Watergate and The Power Broker.
Dunkelman shows how the judiciary evolves to become a primary guardrail against the executive through CEQA/NEPA and common law decisions which result in further decentralization of power, concluding in modern day where power is so diffuse, government is no longer able to get anything done.
Crucially, the imbalance of these impulses (in either direction) leads to ineffective governance (and as Dunkelman points out, these progressive failures 'open the door' to conservatives). Hamiltonians are suspect to corruption and regulatory capture over time, whereas Jeffersonians weaken institutions and what they are able to accomplish. The book advocates for a hybrid approach which tries to thread the needle, requiring regulators to listen to concerns but ultimately empowering them to make decisions, even if those decisions impose costs.
I thought this was a great companion to Abundance as it touches on a lot of the same themes in more detail. It was a little repetitive and probably could have been structured more efficiently.
Conceit is to explain the ineptitude of modern American government through examining the history of the two prevailing democratic/progressive theories of governance - Hamiltonians who believe in governing through centralized control, and Jeffersonians who oppose centralized power and believe in 'pushing power down' so that the marginalized are able to challenge state authority.
Book traces the rise of Hamiltonian thinking in the early 1900s through the New Deal and Great Society through its fall in the 1970s, culminating in the rise of Jeffersonianism and dismantling of state power as distrust of institutions rises following Watergate and The Power Broker.
Dunkelman shows how the judiciary evolves to become a primary guardrail against the executive through CEQA/NEPA and common law decisions which result in further decentralization of power, concluding in modern day where power is so diffuse, government is no longer able to get anything done.
Crucially, the imbalance of these impulses (in either direction) leads to ineffective governance (and as Dunkelman points out, these progressive failures 'open the door' to conservatives). Hamiltonians are suspect to corruption and regulatory capture over time, whereas Jeffersonians weaken institutions and what they are able to accomplish. The book advocates for a hybrid approach which tries to thread the needle, requiring regulators to listen to concerns but ultimately empowering them to make decisions, even if those decisions impose costs.
I thought this was a great companion to Abundance as it touches on a lot of the same themes in more detail. It was a little repetitive and probably could have been structured more efficiently.
Read
June 12, 2025Cogently argued. Far too many examples. Far too many details. Far too long. Somewhat of an exhausting read.
The point the book makes is that progressive politics has two animating principles: (1) use government to solve big problems (the “Hamiltonian” impulse) and (2) undermine government’s power because it is untrustworthy (the “Jeffersonian” impulse). Over time, the progressive movement has become far more Jeffersonian than Hamiltonian, as evidenced by an overall push that began during the 1970s to provide more voices and ultimately more vetos to constituents affected by big projects (e.g., infrastructure, housing) evidenced by the Administrative Procedure Act, certain provisions of federal environmental law, etc. That, combined with liberal jurisprudence (particularly expanded legal standing rights for individuals and loosely defined “community” or interest groups, and the willingness to reexamine decisions made by government authorities), has resulted in building projects that take forever, have exploded in cost, and often make it undesirable to even try. In sum, too many voices and too many potential vetoes exist.
Notwithstanding this, progressives still have a knee-jerk penchant to argue for more government. As a result, they seek more government involvement while at the same time they have set it up to fail. This makes government and progressives easy targets for conservative complaints about inefficient and incompetent bureaucracy. In other words, progressives have themselves to blame. We can’t solve climate change because progressives have created too many impediments to infrastructure projects.
The book offers a philosophical solution (a process with voice, fewer vetoes, more empowered government), but is a touch light on the details.
The point the book makes is that progressive politics has two animating principles: (1) use government to solve big problems (the “Hamiltonian” impulse) and (2) undermine government’s power because it is untrustworthy (the “Jeffersonian” impulse). Over time, the progressive movement has become far more Jeffersonian than Hamiltonian, as evidenced by an overall push that began during the 1970s to provide more voices and ultimately more vetos to constituents affected by big projects (e.g., infrastructure, housing) evidenced by the Administrative Procedure Act, certain provisions of federal environmental law, etc. That, combined with liberal jurisprudence (particularly expanded legal standing rights for individuals and loosely defined “community” or interest groups, and the willingness to reexamine decisions made by government authorities), has resulted in building projects that take forever, have exploded in cost, and often make it undesirable to even try. In sum, too many voices and too many potential vetoes exist.
Notwithstanding this, progressives still have a knee-jerk penchant to argue for more government. As a result, they seek more government involvement while at the same time they have set it up to fail. This makes government and progressives easy targets for conservative complaints about inefficient and incompetent bureaucracy. In other words, progressives have themselves to blame. We can’t solve climate change because progressives have created too many impediments to infrastructure projects.
The book offers a philosophical solution (a process with voice, fewer vetoes, more empowered government), but is a touch light on the details.
April 28, 2025
This book fundamentally changed the way I think about progressivism. By framing the movement’s history as a tug-of-war between Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian impulses, it makes sense why some periods of American history saw huge government accomplishments but in others government has been painfully hamstrung. We are in a catch-22 of sorts: Nobody wants to push power up because the government is so incompetent, yet for the government to be more effective, it needs to be granted more trust and centralized authority. The failure to build much-needed infrastructure is most pronounced, in my opinion. Also, the book’s chapter on climate change was really interesting to me. The author novelly attacks the root cause of our failure to combat it: not conservative denialism but mazes of red tape and stifling vetoecracy. Even a unified Obama administration struggled to pursue its own green agenda. Lastly: At points, the author mentions Donald Trump in passing (the idea is to induce Progressives into inward reflection and not to fall back on criticizing the opponent) and even maybe alludes to him (“shaving back but not eviscerating” reforms) but I wish he had more to say about Trump’s own paradox: a tendency to maximize central power in the executive branch (pushing power up) while simultaneously wanting to empower the people and promote state and local rights (pushing power down). Not only that, Trumpian Conservatism is often at odds with traditional American Conservatism, especially on issues of free trade and foreign policy. It seems we are all have our political and ideological contradictions.
March 29, 2025
The main argument to this book - that there are too many vetos in the political and regulatory process, and as such nothing gets built, providing a roadblock to progressive goals - is a sound one. It’s well argued and well written, and the conclusions are useful (if light on details).
Where I wanted more was on comparisons to other countries. This isn’t just an American problem - Canada is similarly stymied by federalism, litigiousness and distributed veto power. (Funnily enough, at one point on electricity transmission, Canada is briefly referenced as being more efficient with projects!) The UK is also struggling with the same housing and infrastructure challenges, yet doesn’t have a federal distribution of powers, as are other countries. So, ultimately, what is the common causal factor?
This book identifies the problematique in robust ways, with well-researched historical examples from the US. But once you’ve defined the problem, the question is, now what? How do we better design institutions, better distribute (or rather, concentrate) power in a more effective way? I have many thoughts, most of which I can’t post on the internet.
Ultimately a good read, especially for energy and process nerds like myself.
Where I wanted more was on comparisons to other countries. This isn’t just an American problem - Canada is similarly stymied by federalism, litigiousness and distributed veto power. (Funnily enough, at one point on electricity transmission, Canada is briefly referenced as being more efficient with projects!) The UK is also struggling with the same housing and infrastructure challenges, yet doesn’t have a federal distribution of powers, as are other countries. So, ultimately, what is the common causal factor?
This book identifies the problematique in robust ways, with well-researched historical examples from the US. But once you’ve defined the problem, the question is, now what? How do we better design institutions, better distribute (or rather, concentrate) power in a more effective way? I have many thoughts, most of which I can’t post on the internet.
Ultimately a good read, especially for energy and process nerds like myself.
June 21, 2025
"Here is progressivism’s self-contained dilemma distilled to its essence. Reformers want both to build great infrastructure and to protect communities from coercive power... We want the benefits of Robert Moses without the drawbacks."
Really good stuff from Dunkleman. Fun mix of history and political philosophy to explore why American politics (particularly on the progressive/lib/Dem side) are pretty broken. He does a good job demonstrating that the same exact question has dominated American life for 250+ years: should government be small enough that it can't hurt you, or big enough that it can solve your problems *and* stop other people from hurting you? Long story short: the American people are indecisive on this, and we're currently in a weird place when the govt *can* hurt you but *can't* do anything good for you.
Minus 1 star because the book doesn't really offer tangible solutions to these problems.
Really good stuff from Dunkleman. Fun mix of history and political philosophy to explore why American politics (particularly on the progressive/lib/Dem side) are pretty broken. He does a good job demonstrating that the same exact question has dominated American life for 250+ years: should government be small enough that it can't hurt you, or big enough that it can solve your problems *and* stop other people from hurting you? Long story short: the American people are indecisive on this, and we're currently in a weird place when the govt *can* hurt you but *can't* do anything good for you.
Minus 1 star because the book doesn't really offer tangible solutions to these problems.
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June 20, 2025I basically agree with the argument this book is making but found myself frequently frustrated by the examples used to make the argument. where is conservative politics generally in this book? where are the local corruption scandals leading to distrust of government? why is legalism constrained to basically one chapter? why do progressives just Magically Appear in the early 20th c.? its not sloppy, it just seems like things that if you know about the topics covered were omitted to make it seem as though the only important dynamic going on at any point during the 20th century was between burn-it-down radicals and we-can-fix-it technocrats (who the book admits were doing a bad job!)
April 12, 2025
“Abundance” brought me here, and this was a perfect and essential follow-up. Klein and Thompson issued a call for the future, but to get there we need to understand the past and Dunkelman is up to the task. If you have ever screamed into the void, “Why are Democrats so afraid of doing X?!?” herein lies the answer. Make no mistake, it will not be easy to fix the malaise of the past half-century; but by understanding the road behind we can more clearly see the route ahead.
July 6, 2025
This was more of a history book than I was expecting, but in a wonderful way. I wish the book wasn't focused so much on just progressives, as It think it has lessons for anybody. The concept that we are torn between Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian believes is something I have thought about for a long time, and Dunkelman does a great job at highlighting how those swings have had a meaningful impact on our policies in American. I hope many people read this.
June 4, 2025
Very detailed and informative for anyone interested in the subject. However, could be a bit ponderous and while I understand the framing mechanism, the Hamiltonian/Jeffersonian labels were driving me insane by the end
October 24, 2025
“As it was, everyone lost”
Brilliantly researched dive into the United States’ wavering relationship with centralized power throughout our history. These issues deserve way more deep thought by anyone who wonders why the government doesn’t seem to be able to do ambitious problem solving anymore.
Brilliantly researched dive into the United States’ wavering relationship with centralized power throughout our history. These issues deserve way more deep thought by anyone who wonders why the government doesn’t seem to be able to do ambitious problem solving anymore.
May 3, 2025
This is the galaxy brain version of abundance
May 5, 2025
Eye-opening at times, but not a fun read. Repetitive. Good at diagnosing the problem but offers no remedy. Depressing.
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August 19, 2025read solely to fulfil my library reading challenge (i want that tote bag so badly). Not my style at all, but had a lot of interesting points.
August 21, 2025
This book and Abundance are a good pair to read together
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