Concentric Governance | Independent Electors

The underlying premise of Concentric Governance is that government works best when individuals are empowered to make the decisions that most impact their daily lives.

Concentric Governance: An Organizing Principle

American government is widely experienced as distant, polarized, and unresponsive—regardless of which political party holds power. Elections feel consequential yet unsatisfying, and many citizens sense that important decisions affecting their daily lives are being made by people who are far away and are not affected by the consequences of those decisions.

This web page introduces Concentric Governance: a way of organizing political authority so that decisions are made as close as possible to the people affected by them, while still enabling cooperation on problems that genuinely require broader coordination.

Concentric Governance is not a political party, an ideology, or a fixed blueprint. It is a structural principle—one that helps explain why our current system struggles, and how reforms such as Independent Electors fit into a larger, coherent vision of self-government.

The Structural Problem: Government as a Two-Party System

Although the U.S. Constitution establishes three independent branches of government, in practice those institutions now operate largely through party alignment.
•Members of Congress must caucus with one of two major parties to be effective.
•Presidential candidates are selected through party-controlled processes.
•Judicial appointments are evaluated primarily through partisan lenses.
•Independent and third-party candidates face significant structural barriers.

These features are not accidents. They are the result of a political system in which two national parties function as the operating system of government itself.

When political success depends on defeating the opposing party rather than solving shared problems, polarization becomes a structural outcome. Conflict is rewarded; compromise is penalized. Issues that vary widely by place are increasingly debated and decided in a single national ideological arena.

Loss of Accountability

As authority has become increasingly centralized, the distance between decision-making and lived experience has grown. National government now plays a dominant role in areas such as education, housing, land use, public safety, and health—issues that are inherently local and context-dependent. States and communities are often made responsible for carrying out policies that were established without their meaningful input.

This misalignment weakens accountability:
•Citizens struggle to influence decisions made far away.
•Local knowledge is overridden by uniform national rules.
•Political conflict intensifies without producing resolution.

The result is frustration, distrust, and a sense that governance is something imposed rather than shared.

Concentric Governance Defined

Concentric Governance is a framework that organizes authority according to proximity, scale, and competence.
The basic principle is simple:
Decisions should be made at the lowest level capable of addressing them effectively, while higher levels of government focus only on problems that exceed local capacity.
Rather than funneling most political conflict into a single national arena, concentric governance distributes responsibility across nested layers—each with a clear role and each accountable to the people it serves.
This approach aligns authority with knowledge, responsibility with impact, and governance with human scale.

Circles of Concentric Governance

The following description is conceptual rather than prescriptive. Its purpose is to illustrate how authority can be distributed, not to dictate exact institutional forms.

Individual Individuals retain autonomy over their beliefs, expression, personal relationships, and lawful private conduct. Government exists to protect these freedoms, not to define them.
Household and Family Families and households are afforded privacy and self-determination, with limited public intervention that is focused on protecting children, vulnerable individuals, and basic rights.
Local Community Local governments exercise primary authority over education, public safety, housing, land use, and community well-being—areas where local knowledge and accountability matter most.
Municipal and County Government Municipal and county governments coordinate among communities, manage shared infrastructure, and provide services that benefit from economies of scale, such as transportation systems, utilities, public health, and community colleges.
State Government States harmonize regional activity, oversee statewide systems such as insurance, finance, transportation, and professional regulation, and represent their citizens in relations with the national government.
National Government The national government addresses matters requiring uniformity or collective action among states, including national defense, monetary policy, interstate commerce, immigration, and foreign relations.
Global Cooperation International institutions facilitate cooperation on challenges that transcend national borders, such as climate change, pandemics, large-scale disasters, war prevention, and humanitarian crises.

Devolution: The path to Concentric Governance

Devolution is the process by which decision-making power is deliberately shifted downward—from national to state, from state to local—so that responsibility and accountability are restored as much as possible to the human scale.

Devolution does not weaken government; it strengthens self-government by placing authority where knowledge and consequences are closest.

Local governments are the natural starting point for devolution. They are closest to the people, more adaptable, and better able to experiment lawfully without destabilizing the entire system. The ability of local governments to develop their own systems of governance builds resilience into the overall system as features of more effective local governments may be adopted by other local governments or even by higher levels of government. Thus best practices have the ability to spread or grow organically.

Non-partisan Local Government

In the American two-party system of government political parties are indistinguishable from the government itself. A practical and immediately available form of devolution is therefore for local governments to exclude political parties from formal roles within their local government. Political parties themselves are important vehicles for amplifying the will of individual voters through free association and coordination. Political parties may endorse candidates, advocate policies, and organize supporters. A non-partisan government, however, does not grant parties privileged institutional status as those privileges granted to parties come at the expense of the rights non-partisan citizens.

At the local level, exclusion of political parties from formal roles can include:
•Nonpartisan ballots and elections
•No party labels on official ballots or documents
•No party-based leadership roles or caucuses
•Equal ballot-access standards for all candidates
•Issue-based coalitions rather than partisan alignment

Many municipalities already operate this way, particularly for city councils, school boards, and local commissions. Where adopted, non-partisan governance tends to:
•Encourage problem-solving over ideology
•Reduce imported national conflicts
•Strengthen accountability to residents rather than party organizations

As communities demonstrate that non-partisan governance works, states can expand home-rule authority and authorize similar structures at broader levels. In this way, devolution allows concentric governance to emerge organically—layer by layer—without coercion.

Independent Electors are chosen by citizens rather than national parties

The Independent Electors approach fits naturally within concentric governance. Article II of the U.S. Constitution grants states the authority to determine how presidential electors are chosen. Over time, national political parties have effectively absorbed this function by requiring electors to pledge support to one of two candidates selected by the national two-party government.

Electing Independent Electors—individuals free to exercise judgment on behalf of voters—restores authority to citizens and states while reducing the dominance of national party structures. It is a state-led, constitutional reform that addresses polarization at the highest level of the system without imposing a single national solution.

Independent Electors are a clear, achievable example of how authority can be realigned through lawful devolution.

Reduce Societal Polarization

When authority is concentrated at the top, every issue becomes a national ideological battle. When authority is distributed, disagreement can coexist with self-rule.

Concentric governance:
•Allows communities to reflect their own values
•Encourages diversity and experimentation
•Contains failures locally rather than system-wide
•Preserves unity without demanding uniformity

In this way, diversity becomes a strength rather than a threat.

Moving Forward

Concentric governance is not a single reform or a finished design. It is a way of thinking clearly about where power belongs and how self-government can function in a large, diverse society.

By devolving authority, excluding political parties from formal government roles, and reserving higher levels of governance for problems of scale, Americans can reduce polarization while preserving cooperation and unity.

Devolution and Independent Electors are two practical, legal, and non-violent paths forward. There are others - amendments to state or to the national constitution, voter initiatives, legislative action and litigation, but these paths face even higher practical obstacles. What matters first is defining the goal—and then allowing governance to evolve toward it.

The underlying premise of Concentric Governance is that government works best when individuals are empowered to make the decisions that most impact their daily lives.

Circles of Concentric Governance The following description is conceptual rather than prescriptive. Its purpose is to illustrate how authority can be distributed, not to dictate exact institutional forms.

Individual Individuals retain autonomy over their beliefs, expression, personal relationships, and lawful private conduct. Government exists to protect these freedoms, not to define them.

Household and Family Families and households are afforded privacy and self-determination, with limited public intervention that is focused on protecting children, vulnerable individuals, and basic rights.

Local Community Local governments exercise primary authority over education, public safety, housing, land use, and community well-being—areas where local knowledge and accountability matter most.

Municipal and County Government Municipal and county governments coordinate among communities, manage shared infrastructure, and provide services that benefit from economies of scale, such as transportation systems, utilities, public health, and community colleges.

State Government States harmonize regional activity, oversee statewide systems such as insurance, finance, transportation, and professional regulation, and represent their citizens in relations with the national government.

National Government The national government addresses matters requiring uniformity or collective action among states, including national defense, monetary policy, interstate commerce, immigration, and foreign relations.

Global Cooperation International institutions facilitate cooperation on challenges that transcend national borders, such as climate change, pandemics, large-scale disasters, war prevention, and humanitarian crises.

Circles of Concentric Governance

The following description is conceptual rather than prescriptive. Its purpose is to illustrate how authority can be distributed, not to dictate exact institutional forms.