The Future of US Democracy Why Trust the Process? Avoiding Democracy in Massachusetts

For the past few decades, politicians in the Democratic party have held a legislative super majority in the U.S. state (the Commonwealth) of Massachusetts, yet they have largely failed to deliver on longstanding Democratic priorities, such as socialized medicine. Moreover, many major policy advances in Massachusetts have come from the ballot initiative, a sort of direct democracy designed to bypass the legislature. At best the legislature in Massachusetts is reactive, and at worst it seems to actively avoid the preferences of its constituents. This talk draws on several years of fieldwork in Boston at the Massachusetts State House to explain why politicians are acting this way.