This chapter argues that the power of the market and private interest should be better balanced by the democratic institutions representing the public good. Currently, in Britain the balance of power has shifted towards the former. However, as Eric Olin Wright (2010, p 6) proposes:

Yet writing in 2009 Gregor McLennan (2009, p 145) regrets that ‘[r]adical politics today has no viable institutional programme’. His observation remains apposite in 2016 and here I apply it to democratic institutional reform. In his 2015 campaign for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Tom Watson argued the case for ‘the empowering state’. I advocate ‘institutional democracy’ as a complement, but also as an antidote to state power: to avoid repeating the failings of previous state-centred politics. Equally, as well as in the formally political, institutional democracy is needed in other areas of institutional power/authority, including the economic and cultural.

The chapter makes two arguments. Firstly, it offers a brief narrative account from the late 18th century of a grudgingly conceded and currently troubled British democracy: illustrating that despite its formidable achievements, the post-war Labour Party largely failed to build on earlier aspirations to autonomy and democracy of social movements. During the inter-war and immediate post-war years socialist as well as communist parties adopted a centralist approach to reform; partly because of the perceived need to prioritise urgent issues of poverty and inequality over challenging problems of democratic planning and organisation. In contrast to political parties, recent social movements have generally maintained greater continuity with grassroots democratic traditions. However, the further development of democracy in a complex modern society may require the support of a political party, or parties.

My second and related argument is precisely that social democratic and socialist parties must commit to an enlarged democratic vision both to revitalise their popular base and to enhance their prospects of delivering greater equality. Since the debacle of progressive parties at the 2015 election, there are signs that grassroots democratic sentiment has strengthened, impacting particularly on the Labour Party.