When government institutions fail to deliver, those trying to destroy the public sector win twice. Once when people give up on a benefit they qualified for. Again when those same people decide the government doesn’t work, and never will.

The dysfunction is a strategy: starve the agencies, lengthen the forms, require the interviews, and let the experience of the public sector do the political work.

IFPG diagnoses where the public sector is breaking down, reframes that breakdown as a failure of the system (not of the individual), and designs policy, and the narrative that carries it, and gives governors, legislatures, and members of Congress a playbook they can run to rebuild trust

• The causal relationship between people’s difficulty accessing public services and the collapse of public trust in democratic institutions
• Income inequality and the institutional levers that enable the growing wealth disparity

Research establishing the causal link between public-sector accessibility and declining trust in democracy, paired with the “Make the Public Sector Work” policy playbook that any Democratic governor or legislature can run at the state level. 

Massive distortions in income or wealth have led to increasing authoritarianism and nationalist movements. There are many groups in this field whose work is excellent. We are missing an overall story, a compelling narrative and a multi-phased strategy that moves people to action in a way that incentivizes elected officials to enact needed reforms.