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Dear Friend
In 1942, as the world was collapsing into war, Peter Drucker asked a question that still defines our moment: Can a modern society remain legitimate? Not efficient. Not innovative. Not powerful. Legitimate.
For Drucker, legitimacy was not a matter of public opinion or political consent alone. It was something deeper. A society is legitimate when its institutions enable individuals to see themselves as participants, not spectators. When people experience their work, their communities, and their civic life as meaningful contributions to a larger whole. Without that foundation, no economic system, no political structure, no organization can endure. It may function for a time, but it will not hold together. Eighty years later, we are living inside the crisis he anticipated. In a recent interview given while facing a terminal diagnosis, former senator and university president Ben Sasse described a country where institutions no longer command trust, where politics feels performative rather than purposeful, where technological abundance has fragmented attention, and where shared culture has thinned to the point that common life is increasingly difficult to sustain. But what stands out is not just his critique of institutional failure. It is the clarity about what remains when those institutions no longer provide coherence. He points to family. To discipline. To the deliberate use of time. To community. To the small, concrete commitments that give structure to a life and anchor it in reality. Drucker argued that a functioning society depends on institutions that confer dignity through responsibility. That individuals must be able to locate themselves within a system that both needs them and holds them accountable. When that connection breaks, legitimacy erodes. Institutions become distant. Work becomes transactional. Citizenship becomes performative. That erosion is no longer abstract. It is visible in the loss of trust across sectors, in the inability of major institutions to command credibility, and in the growing sense that systems are operating without clear purpose or moral grounding. Sasse’s reflection points to a parallel truth. When institutional legitimacy weakens, the burden shifts back to the individual. Meaning is no longer mediated through strong institutions. It must be constructed through habits, relationships, and personal responsibility. This is where Drucker’s question becomes urgent again. If legitimacy is not restored, institutions cannot perform their function. But legitimacy cannot be rebuilt through structure alone. It requires clarity of purpose, accountability, and a renewed connection between individual contribution and institutional mission. This month’s featured essay, The Path Forward to a More Functional Society (originally published in April 2025), takes up that challenge directly. It argues that restoring legitimacy will require more than policy change or institutional reform. It will require rebuilding the conditions under which individuals can see themselves as responsible actors in a shared social order. It will require institutions that are smaller in ambition but clearer in purpose, more disciplined in execution, and more accountable for results that matter. Drucker did not believe that a functioning society would emerge automatically from economic growth or technological progress. He believed it had to be built. Intentionally. Patiently. With a clear understanding of what institutions are for and who they serve. That work remains in front of us.
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