by Alexandre Trad and Allison Berland
This is the third and final essay in The State — Seen and Unseen, the opening exploration in our First Principles series. Here, we consider why some people see the state primarily as a solution, while others see it as a problem, and what kind of state is capable of earning public trust.
Opinions about what the state is, and what it should be, have shaped political debate for generations. Franklin Roosevelt built his New Deal coalition around the promise of an expanded welfare state. Margaret Thatcher entered office pledging to “roll back the state.” Although these visions differ dramatically, they all revolve around a common question: What role should the state play in our collective lives?
In the first two essays in this series, we explored the state first as a political concept and then through the ways we encounter it in everyday life. This final essay turns to the debates that emerge from those discussions. Why do some people see the state primarily as a solution, while others see it as a problem? What kind of state is capable of earning public trust, and what would it take to build it? Our objective is to clarify the terms of these debates and consider what distinguishes constructive reform from changes that ultimately weaken the state’s ability to serve the public.
The State as a Source of Frustration
Many contemporary debates about the state begin with frustration. These frustrations often arise from ordinary experiences: a service that takes longer than expected, a regulation that feels unnecessary, or a sense that public institutions are not performing as well as they should. These experiences naturally lead people to ask: How could this be improved? What should the state do differently?
One common criticism concerns efficiency. Detractors argue that the state often accomplishes less than it should with the resources available to it. A person who drives over the same pothole every day may reasonably wonder how efficiently public funds are being used. More broadly, people naturally want the taxes they pay to be used effectively and directed toward the problems they encounter in their everyday lives.
Others worry less about efficiency than about the appropriate scope of the state. These critiques span the ideological spectrum. Libertarians and conservatives often emphasize individual liberty, while many progressives focus on unequal or discriminatory enforcement of state power. Although they reach different political conclusions, they each raise important questions about where the boundaries of state authority should lie.
Underlying many of these criticisms is a broader concern about trust in public institutions. Some people worry that public institutions prioritize their own preservation over the public interest. They point to problems such as regulatory capture, in which industries exert influence over the agencies meant to regulate them, or decision-making processes that appear distant from democratic accountability. Whether or not one agrees with these critiques, they have become an important part of contemporary debates about the role of the state.
What the State Makes Possible
What’s at stake in these debates is not only how the state performs, but what it makes possible. Many of the frustrations are real. A service that should be simple becomes difficult. Rules feel opaque or unnecessarily burdensome. Public resources appear disconnected from pressing needs, or even wasteful. These experiences shape how people come to view the state, not as an abstract institution, but as something encountered in moments of delay, confusion, or constraint.
As we saw in the previous article, much of what the state provides is easy to overlook precisely because it works and has become embedded in the background of everyday life. Systems of law that structure expectations and resolve disputes. Infrastructure that makes movement and exchange possible. Public health systems that reduce risk or harm, often in ways that are only visible in their absence. Electoral systems that allow citizens to hold leaders accountable, even if imperfectly.
These are more than services. They are the conditions that make collective life possible. And like many of the systems discussed earlier in this First Principles series on the state, they depend on coordination, capacity, and sustained investment.
Even when these systems function as intended, they are not without tension. The same structures that enable coordination can also produce complexity. Efforts to ensure fairness can introduce procedures that feel slow or rigid. Expanding access can place strain on systems that were not designed to operate at that scale.
Seen from this perspective, debates about whether the state is a problem, a solution, or both are not only disagreements about performance. They are also disagreements about what we expect the state to do, what goods and services should be treated as public responsibilities, and what we gain or lose when those responsibilities are taken up by the state, the market, or not at all.
Understanding these stakes does not resolve these debates. But it can help clarify what is being argued over, and why those arguments persist. These debates also point to a more fundamental question: What distinguishes constructive reform from institutional rupture?
One key difference between constructive reform and institutional rupture lies in whether change strengthens institutions or leaves them less capable of carrying out their responsibilities. Constructive reform strengthens institutions while they remain functional. Institutional rupture occurs when the desire for change outpaces the state’s ability to manage that change, leaving the system weaker rather than improved. Importantly, rupture can take the form of over-expansion or over-contraction.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, Oregon voters approved Measure 110, decriminalizing possession of small amounts of drugs and redirecting tax revenue toward addiction treatment. While the reform reflected a genuine commitment to treating addiction as a public health issue rather than a criminal one, drug possession was decriminalized before the treatment and recovery housing infrastructure was built out, creating bottlenecks in care. Some residents pointed to continued visible public drug use as evidence that the state’s approach wasn’t working. As public frustration grew, many came to question whether the state could deliver on the responsibilities it had assumed. In this sense, reforms intended to strengthen the state’s role can, when capacity does not keep pace with ambition, unintentionally weaken public trust in the state itself.
Conversely, calls to reduce the size of the administrative state often arise from genuine concerns about bureaucratic inefficiency and government waste. Yet even well-intentioned efforts to streamline public institutions can inadvertently strip away the capacity needed to solve complex collective action problems. In recent years, efforts to reduce the size of government have included budget cuts, personnel reductions, and the elimination of regulatory functions across a number of public agencies. While these reforms reflected a desire to make government leaner and more efficient, they also reduced the state’s ability to provide services that markets were often unwilling or unable to replace. In this sense, reforms intended to strengthen society by shrinking the state can, when they erode institutional capacity, unintentionally weaken the state’s ability to serve the public.
“Every proposal to reform the state involves tradeoffs.”
The real challenge is distinguishing between reform that strengthens state capacity and that which hinders its ability to act. Constructive reform preserves its core functions while improving how it operates. Institutional rupture weakens or removes those functions entirely, leaving gaps that neither markets nor altruists can or want to fill. Reform builds better systems; rupture breaks the ones we have, leaving our collective action problems unresolved.
Every proposal to reform the state involves tradeoffs. Attempts to reform the state may improve efficiency in some areas while weakening the institutions responsible for maintaining infrastructure, regulating water quality, or responding to emergencies. Change is rarely cost-free, which is why distinguishing between institutional reform and rupture matters.
More broadly, who takes responsibility for making society function? Can markets, decentralized authorities, or new technologies assume responsibilities traditionally carried out by the state? Ceding state responsibilities to these alternatives carries real consequences. For that reason, the central question is not only whether the state should do more or less, but whether proposed reforms strengthen or weaken its capacity to solve collective action problems in a way that earns public trust.
What Kind of State Earns Public Trust?
A trustworthy state delivers core functions, such as maintaining roads, running schools, and administering justice, while remaining responsive to criticism. It addresses inefficiencies without abandoning capacity. It recognizes its responsibilities and limits. Trust grows when institutions prove stable over time. The state need not be perfect to earn trust. It needs to be functional, accountable, and committed to solving collective action problems.
In a democratic system of government, the state can and should remain responsive to popular will. When citizens lose trust in public institutions, change is both necessary and legitimate. Through elections, public debate, and civic participation, citizens can continually renegotiate what they expect the state to do and how it should do it.
This article has illustrated how, depending on who you ask, the state can be viewed as a problem or the solution. In a deliberative democracy, both viewpoints are valuable: their constant interplay helps us define the state. The goal is not simply a larger or smaller state, but a more capable, trustworthy, and democratically accountable one.
© 2026 Alexandre Trad and Allison Berland