What Do Courageous Citizens Do With/About Government? Part 1
Newsletter # 458 - June 1, 2026
Heidi Burgess and Guy Burgess
In May we posted two newsletters on Braver Angels' term "Courageous Citizenship." In Part 1 we introduced the concept and explained why we thought it was so important. We also laid out a set of thought patterns and behaviors that we think courageous citizens should pursue as they work to build a stronger and healthier democracies in the United States and elsewhere.
In the second newsletter, we explained more about the courage that courageous citizens need, and gave the example shared earlier by Harry Boyte about how this was done so well in the past by participants in Martin Luther King's civil rights movement.
Here we talk more about the obstacles to courageous citizenship and add ideas about ways those obstacles can be overcome. Because of its length, we are dividing this post into two parts. Here we will talk about the obstacles and what we call "key considerations." In the next newsletter we will get down to specific ways citizens can strengthen democracy and build healthier communities by participating in and working to improve governmental processes more effectively.
Distrust of Government
One of the dilemmas courageous citizens face is what to do with or about their governments.
According to a December 2025 Pew poll, only 17% of Americans said that "they trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” (2%) or “most of the time” (15%). This is close to the lowest level of confidence in the U.S. federal government Pew has measured over seven decades. While trust is always higher among members of the party that controls the presidency, Pew reported that "only 26% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they trust the federal government," which, they say, is "on par with GOP views during the first Trump administration."
And the problem isn't just with the president; Congress is viewed even more poorly. Quoting from a Gallup poll done in April 2026, "Americans’ approval of Congress has fallen to 10%, barely above its all-time low of 9%, while disapproval has climbed to 86%, tying the record high for the institution."
Trust in state governments is higher and trust in local governments is higher yet, but it is still not great. Another poll taken by Gallup in November, 2025 showed that in the 2020s, the percentage of people who had a "great deal," or "fair amount" of trust in their state governments ranged from 54% (for independents), to 56% (for Republicans) to 66% (for Democrats). The percentage of people who had a "great deal," or "fair amount" of trust in their local governments ranged from 63% (for independents), to 68% (for Republicans) to 75% (for Democrats).
This is more than just a public relations problem. The media is full of lots of solid, well-written horror stories explaining why much of what the government does is not worthy of the public's trust. And even when the government acts in good faith, passing bills and enacting regulations that make sense in one context, they can create nightmares (as described in this article about a $375,000 drinking fountain.)
The problem isn't, however, just with the government. Citizens (and the interest groups through which they commonly try to exert their influence) commonly demand that the government do all sorts of expensive things — things that advance their narrow interests at the expense of most everyone else (and, in the process, also undermining the public's trust in government). Also, too few citizens take advantage of the many opportunities that do exist for challenging unwise and unfair processes and decisions and promoting actions that genuinely do advance the common good.
Implications for Democratic Renewal Efforts
The widespread distrust in the federal government has led many (probably most) people who are working in the democratic renewal field to focus their efforts at the state and local (most often local) level, where they feel they can make more of a difference. Even so, there is palpable distrust of government among many of these actors, and hence, a large fraction of democratic renewal activity is happening outside of government through civil society-run mechanisms such as bridge-building dialogues, citizen's assemblies, and civic hubs.
In some cases, that makes sense. Civil society actors can run bridge-building dialogues just fine. (In this sense this can be seen as a domestic counterpart to the international system's Track II Diplomacy.) But more and more bridge builders are coming to the conclusion that even if dialogues reduce polarization (and it isn't clear that they do so over the long run), that, alone, will not be enough to reverse democracy's ongoing slide. In order to really build a democracy in which we would all like to live, long-term relationships need to change, and problem-solving strategies have to change. People need to be willing to listen and consider views that differ markedly from their own, they must be willing to consider the possibility that they and their group is wrong and has made mistakes in the past; and they must be willing to compromise, and engage in collaborative action.
That is why Braver Angels has moved from just doing bridge building, to a focus on "citizen-led solutions" and "courageous citizenship," which according to CEO Maury Giles, means "the intentional effort to engage in human connection the Braver Angels Way: contend without contempt, listen with dignity, and work where values overlap. Relationships. People. Dialogue. Action."
Better Together America's (BTA) Civic Hubs have similar goals. In our interview with BTA CEO Jacob Bornstein and Caleb Christen, Jacob explained that "civic hubs are working on community-building, collaborative problem-solving, and combined action."
Relationship with Government
While they sometimes do this in conjunction with local governments, neither Braver Angels, nor Better Together America, nor most others working in the democracy renewal area see these efforts as primarily led or driven by government. Rather, they are primarily led and driven by private citizens who are willing to put in the work to improve their communities (and, ultimately, their nation).
When we first talked to BTA Co-Founders Caleb Christen and Vinay Orekondy, I asked them "how hubs get people involved and excited, when so many people have given up, thinking politics is hopeless and there's just no point in trying to fix it." Caleb replied that
as a country, we have delegated a lot of problem-solving to, especially, the Federal government, but institutions as a whole. And we've centered ourselves on issues, very polarizing issues. So what this [BTA] is offering, and a reason why it's a place to refocus our energies, is it's focusing on communities and that we have the power to solve our problems. So we don't have to entirely rely on politicians and elected officials. We can still work with them. And it's not to say that they're not important in their own right. But that together, I guess it's in our name, but together, we can solve problems. And there's excitement in that. There's also very real, and in some ways, unrealized potential there that we're tapping into.
And then Vinay added:
When people say "you know, it's all pointless," I'll say, "Well, let's look at what's dysfunctional and sidestep that." Because actually, the whole model is built on sidestepping that which is dysfunctional.
This notion of "sidestepping that which is dysfunctional" has meant that some hubs and other civic actors have tried to sidestep government, because they see it as dysfunctional or otherwise not supportive of citizen-led efforts. But this causes problems when citizens need governmental approval to do something. Or they need government money. Or expertise. Or data. So figuring out how to successfully work with government, and how to get government involved in and supportive of these citizen-led efforts — without having the government take over leadership — is very important.
We also need to remember that democracy is, at its core, a rule-of-law based system that gives duly-elected and appointed leaders the authority to make decisions on behalf of the public. This includes the allocation of public resources and the making and enforcement of the laws.
We can't fix democracy by writing public officials out of the process. That would almost certainly wind up violating the law in some important way. And, even if it were successful, it would wind up producing the kind of revolutionary change that (as we argued in our essay on the Crane Brinton Effect) almost always leads to terrible tragedy, as bad faith actors are able to hijack reform efforts. A much better approach focuses on taking fuller advantage of many opportunities that do exist for meaningful public participation — the kind of participation that, if pursued vigorously, can push the government back on track.
Key Considerations
While it is true that many government agencies and institutions are not working as well as we wish, we still depend on government to do many things. When we asked ChatGPT "what are the primary functions of local government," we got a really long list: public safety; infrastructure and public works; land use, zoning, and development planning; utilities and environmental regulations and services; education; public health and human services; parks, recreation, libraries, and cultural facilities; transportation and mobility services; courts, records, and local administrative services; and local taxation, budgeting, and governance. And each of these areas had five to ten items listed under them. So we may think that government isn't doing anything for us — but imagine what would happen if all that went away!
The same is true for the state and federal governments. We have gotten glimpses of what this means during the occasional federal government shutdowns in the U.S., which fortunately, have never been total government shutdowns. (For non-American readers, these partial shutdowns happen due to our very polarized government, which prevents passage of necessary government funding bills as a tactic for exerting political pressure on the other side.) Some government agencies and workers are always considered "exempt" from shutting down because they are too important. So we still get the military and most national security operations, federal law enforcement and border control, air travel safety (the FAA and TSA), major benefits payments (such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Veterans Benefits), the Post Office, and segments of other agencies, as decided on a case-by-case basis. Despite these exemptions, the importance of government services quickly becomes apparent to the many people who are hurt by their absence. So we can't just do without government.
And we also can't "burn it all down" and start over, as some very frustrated people have advocated. There is a tremendous amount of knowledge, and data, and systems that have been developed and accumulated by government workers over many years. Eliminating all of that (as Trump apparently did with USAID and USIP), is losing incalculable amounts of knowledge that will take decades to replace. Throwing all current expertise and starting over would be like burning down a city and expecting construction workers to be able to rebuild it quickly — and better. Have you ever seen how long it takes to rebuild a city after a wildfire? (We have, living just four miles from the devastating Marshall Fire of 2021). It takes a LONG time. And that is if you are dealing with simple systems — buildings that have blueprints, known supply chains, known building methods, etc. Social, economic and political systems are what are called "complex adaptive systems." They have evolved over many years or even decades. No one knows exactly how they work, or what worked well, and what didn't. But to the extent people know these things, they are most likely the people who have worked there. So throwing them all out, never to return, is throwing away enormous stores of useful knowledge. And, as mentioned above, it would also create opportunities for bad-faith actors to take advantage of political uncertainties and craft sweetheart deals that give them unfair advantages.
Truly fixing our broken political system requires taking the time to truly understand why things are going wrong and then figuring out ways to overcome those difficulties. We will talk in more detail about how to do this in the next newsletter.
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Two or three times a week, Guy and Heidi Burgess, the BI Directors, share some of our thoughts on political hyper-polarization and related topics. We also share essays from our colleagues and other contributors, and every week or so, we devote one newsletter to annotated links to outside readings that we found particularly useful relating to U.S. hyper-polarization, threats to peace (and actual violence) in other countries, and related topics of interest. Each Newsletter is posted on BI, and sent out by email through Substack to subscribers. You can sign up to receive your copy here and find the latest newsletter here or on our BI Newsletter page, which also provides access to all the past newsletters, going back to 2017.
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