Wolfgang Streeck believes that the future of democracy lies not in newfangled structures of planetary governance, but in a recuperation of the nation state’s lost capacities. In Taking Back Control?, published by Verso last year, the German sociologist and former director of the Max Planck Institute methodically traces the quiet transfer of authority over economic life from elected parliaments to technocratic institutions beyond democratic reach. Streeck’s project warrants attention as a distinctly non-right-wing flavor of protectionism that cuts through the priors of the American political landscape.

From the inflation crisis of the 1970s onwards, Streeck argues, national governments have ceded ever-larger swaths of policy to an extraterritorial network of treaties, courts, and market watchdogs. The neoliberal turn, in his telling, did not emancipate markets from the state; it re-cast the state—above all the United States—as the enforcer of a single, border-spanning market regime. The promise of friction-free trade rests on an imposed economic uniformity that ultimately strips democracies of their sensitivity to citizens’ “collective particularism.” This enforced uniformity, Streeck shows, generates the discontent that authoritarian movements in turn exploit.

Streeck’s history helps us think about the origins of reactionary disquiet without conceding to its rhetoric. It also helps us think about the necessary conditions for an alternative populism. Drawing on thinkers including Karl Polanyi, John Maynard Keynes, and Herbert Simon, Streeck argues that the complexity of the global economy can only be democratically addressed by the downward delegation of sovereign powers. Against both planetary technocracy and reactionary nationalism, Streeck envisions an international order of small, democratically empowered states capable of shaping economic outcomes in response to the public good.

Combinations’ Matt Prewitt and Guy Mackinnon-Little spoke with Streeck about the sources of state authority, the complexity gap between networks and human societies, and what an international system that bolsters rather than undermines sovereignty might look like.

In this series, we share stories of co-governance in practice. For this interview, New America’s Hollie Russon Gilman and Sarah Jacob spoke with Paula Berman, Alex Randaccio, and Matt Prewitt from RadicalxChange (RxC). Founded by economist Glen Weyl in 2018, the RadicalxChange Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to advancing the RxC movement, building community, and educating about democratic innovation. RxC connects people from all walks of life—ranging from social scientists and technologists to artists and activists. The RxC movement is ever-evolving and always welcomes new people and ideas to make our social world more diverse, equal, and free.