The future of liberal democracy: What do we want the next 250 years to look like?

It’s America’s 250th birthday; a time to celebrate and take stock. We can celebrate everything that the founding principles of liberal democracy have afforded us. Individual liberty. Constitutionally limited government. Equality under the law. A free and open society. However, as we take stock, we must acknowledge the more recent erosion of these founding principles and the consequences for this nation’s institutions. In the face of this deterioration, my colleague Sabrina Schaeffer recently called for a recommitment to liberal democracy’s first principles. She was right to do so, and there’s more that we can do.

In this moment of reflection on how far we’ve come as a nation, let’s ask ourselves: “what do we want the next 250 years to look like?”

That’s a big question and maybe it instinctively feels like the wrong one. It’s so far ahead and we already have challenges right in front of us that we need to address. There’s so much uncertainty between now and then and none of us will be around to see it anyway. It’s an understandable instinct. However, these concerns are exactly why we need to look to a longer horizon to sustain the founding principles, and their benefits.

I work in strategic foresight, which is the practice of thinking systematically about the future in order to make better decisions today. This field is increasingly recognized for its capacity to shape future-ready institutions. Thinking intentionally about possible futures reveals that nothing about the present was inevitable. Everything about our society – our institutions, our norms, our laws, our culture – is the product of choices made by people. By thinking about the future we want, we can discern the decisions we can make now that move us in that direction.

This ability to make choices is our superpower. It’s also a common thread between futures thinking, liberalism, and democracy. Liberalism gives us the freedom of self-determination. It doesn’t prescribe how communities should be organized, what values families should hold, or what vision of human flourishing everyone must share. Instead, it preserves our ability to figure these things out for ourselves while recognizing the role for institutions in facilitating our society. Democracy enables us to have a voice in how those necessary institutions interact with our individual lives.

Liberal democracy has shepherded the American experiment for the past 250 years; that’s a track record, not nostalgia. Yet it’s more than a set of founding principles worth sustaining today. It is the architecture that makes the future available to everyone. It creates the conditions that give us the intellectual freedom to imagine different futures, from the ones we want to the ones we don’t want. It facilitates the physical and virtual spaces for us to share these ideas about the future. We need these spaces to agree, disagree, and learn from each other’s perspectives. It establishes the institutions and protects the civil environment that enables us to bring about or prevent possible futures. To do so collectively in a manner that aligns with our individual perspective.

That may not feel familiar to everyone right now. We can acknowledge that gap without detracting from the value of liberal democracy. In fact, it enables us to double down on doing the work to ensure that these principles deliver on their promise. Here it is important to appreciate the distinction between the principles of liberal democracy and their practice. The principles are the essential foundation. The practice – the specific institutions, processes, and structures through which those principles are expressed and facilitated – are choices. Recognizing this distinction while adhering to liberal democracy’s first principles opens the door to making different choices without losing what is essential.

That’s another big thought, but a necessary one. The world of today is almost unrecognizable from the world in which this nation was founded. In just the past 50 years we’ve seen the mainstreaming of mobile technology, the internet, social media, and live streaming. These are just a few of the changes that have reshaped how we communicate, connect, and make decisions. Now, the mainstreaming of generative AI and its continued evolution is set to transform further how we undertake these processes. Change is happening, and we have the choice to respond and adapt in a manner that sustains and strengthens our liberal democracy.

Here too we see the value of looking to the future rather than just focusing on what is in front of us right now. We can’t predict the future, but everything we see happening today suggests that transformational change will continue, possibly even more rapidly. If we only address the challenges of today we risk creating renewed institutions that are already outdated by the time they are established.

We need liberal democracy to shape our future. We need to envision our future to sustain liberal democracy. This isn’t a new idea, it’s just something we’ve lost sight of. This nation was founded on a shared belief in an imagined future that facilitated political and personal self-determination, and the collective choice to create this future despite its uncertainties. Just as our nation’s founders made decisions that set the path to everything that we enjoy in this country today, we are ancestors to future generations that need us to make good choices now to secure their future. Unlike our forebears, we already have three key ingredients – liberalism, democracy, and the freedom to imagine our future. We just have to choose to use them.