Karch and Rose commend the “expansive perspective” of The Policy State. But the ambition of the book misfires if key pieces remain blurred. Based on their account, one of these seems to be our treatment of rights. Clearly, entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare create rights, of a sort. Our point was to chart how rights have fundamentally changed not only these programs’ character but also their corresponding function. We referenced a point in time when rights, both of citizens and public officers, tightly encircled and contained government activities. In contrast, rights that galvanize new programs empower government, with the overall effect of undermining their distinctive disposition and prior force. If examples are required, we might point to recent inroads on public education, where it is increasingly unclear who has rights to what, or to the perceived fragility of abortion rights.

Similarly, the structures of government: any explanation of the depredations of the “deep state” must include the contemporary culture of office holding—enterprising, outwardly directed, impervious to institutional boundaries at all levels. Here again, with the expansion of government by policy, containment gives way to opportunity, and arrangements once firm turn plastic. The range of possibilities widens, but the achievements become less secure.

Our admittedly modest wave at the causes of polarization draws out an implication of these larger, more systemic changes: the elimination of safe space. As all politics becomes national and policy initiative moves to Washington, the localism that supported representatives’ outlier status has shriveled apace. In this setting, proposals for juridical democracy and deliberative democracy are more symptoms than likely “alternatives.” Our intent in any case was not to dismiss the values they affirm but to point out how quickly the new state is pushing them out of reach.

In the end, we doubt that there are serious disagreements among the pairs of authors. As one of our current political leaders might say, “That is a good thing, not a bad thing.”