Who Decides What Issues Are Debated?

1 of 52 Questions for Democratic Renewal

Question 1: Who Decides What Issues Are Debated—And Whose Voices Shape Those Debates?

In any democratic system, the first exercise of power is not voting—it is agenda-setting. Before ballots are cast or policies debated, someone decides what questions are worth asking, which stories get airtime, and whose experience is taken seriously enough to shape the conversation. In theory, that power belongs to the people. In practice, it is increasingly monopolized by a narrow caste of institutional actors: party elites, corporate-funded think tanks, media conglomerates, and professional campaign operatives. These gatekeepers don’t just influence the answers—they shape the very questions.

This arrangement is not accidental. It is the predictable outcome of a system optimized for continuity, not change. Over the last fifty years, the structure of American democracy has calcified into a two-party duopoly that controls access to the public square through primary ballots, debate eligibility, redistricting, and campaign finance rules. Civic participation has been reduced to episodic voting, stripped of the deliberative power that once animated town halls, local newspapers, and grassroots movements. And the price of entry for anyone outside this club—especially independents, reformers, or citizens’ movements—is prohibitive. The result is a public debate that feels increasingly disconnected from lived experience, and a political class that governs without listening.

To answer the question “Who decides?” is, then, to trace the structure of power itself. Decisions about debate—what is up for discussion, what is taboo, what is trivialized—are political acts. They encode values, reveal priorities, and shape public consciousness. When national debates center endlessly on tax brackets or border fences while ignoring systemic corruption, civic disempowerment, or the health of democratic institutions, we must ask: who benefits from that framing? And who is left out?

But this is not cause for despair. It is cause for reimagining. A counter-ideology rooted in civic virtue and democratic renewal begins by reclaiming the agenda-setting power of the people. That means building new civic structures that decentralize deliberation, amplify diverse voices, and center the common good over partisan gain. Citizens’ assemblies, open primaries, deliberative polling, participatory budgeting, and publicly funded election campaigns are not fringe ideas—they are tools for restoring balance to a political ecosystem that has become dangerously asymmetric.

When citizens are merely spectators of debate, civic engagement erodes. But when citizens become co-authors of the political story—defining the terms, elevating overlooked concerns, and holding institutions accountable—a new kind of power is born. Not the power of domination, but the power of direction. The power to say: this is the kind of world we want to build, and here is where the conversation must begin.

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Question to readers: what is missing or what would you add?

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The Common Sense Papers are an offering by Common Sense 250.

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