Less Than Meets the Eye: An Analysis of Robert Reich’s Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better (2018)

Abstract

For more than ten years, Prof. Rob Reich has lamented that foundations have been allowed to be “subsidized,” unaccountable, opaque, and powerful – as he and others conceive of foundations and their environment.

This lament is presented in his recent book, which positions its purposes on five pillars: (1) philanthropy is repugnant to democracy as described; (2) philanthropy is an “artifact” of the State; (3) foundations are opaque and unaccountable; (4) donor intent and perpetuity are subversive; and (5) the charitable deduction is a “subsidy” with no redeeming value except possibly as a tool to justify reining in foundations and philanthropy. However, each pillar leaves out critical elements and analysis, and the vacillation between theory and practice without noting the switches or fully presenting either creates confusion.

Those pillars are intended to support two possible roles – and only two roles – as acceptable for foundations in democracy: discovery and advancing pluralism. However, their positioning neglects important chronologies and histories and suffers from other missing substantive analysis that also does not sufficiently support restricting foundations to these and only these functions.

Finally, there seems to be a disconnect between overt objectives, actual presentation, and implicit purposes, which contribute to substantial concerns about critical gaps and missing information and perspective about foundations, philanthropy, and democracy.

Ultimately, the theory and its presentation are too confusing, incomplete, and nuanced in part because they neglect substantive ways in which foundations and philanthropy are not only not repugnant to and not failing American representative democracy but are actually consistent with it and even exemplars of it, which is a topic for another day.

Keywords: philanthropy, foundations, democracy

JEL Classification: H2, L3, P1