My research on leadership and institutions clearly points to the direction that the State is continuously evolving towards more open formats. For example, what started out as autocracies or monarchies are gradually evolving towards democracies.

The less democratic a state is, the more powerful its elite becomes. The less openness there is in a society, the more citizens are disempowered, the more the elite can accrue to itself not only positions of influence, but financial wealth. We have seen a steady destruction of the democratic process in the United States with the rise of the corporate state, so that we exist in what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin, probably America’s greatest living American philosopher, calls a system of inverted totalitarianism.

It is something else. First, it is a sense of co-ownership, i.e. a feeling that this is in some sense my state, my political system. Second, it is a sense of fairness, a sense that even if an individual decision may be unjust, normally, and in the medium run at least, these institutions treat everyone fairly and intelligibly. Thirdly, it is a sense of protection by the institutions and protection against violence, fraud, hardship, and poverty.