John Macgregor’s “The Mechanics of Changing the World” is a formidable and timely contribution to the ongoing conversation about democratic reform and systemic change. In an age of growing political polarisation, environmental crisis, and rising inequality, Macgregor calls not for policy tweaks, but for a total redesign of our political architecture. His message is clear: crises like war, climate collapse, and economic injustice cannot be solved within the constraints of our current systems. Structural change is not optional – it’s essential.
At the heart of the book is Macgregor’s concept of “Third Draft Democracy,” a comprehensive and nuanced framework for governance that draws from Athenian direct democracy, the representative traditions of the West, and an understanding of human nature since 1789. These interlocking reforms aim to decentralise information, decontaminate politics, and empower informed majorities to craft policy mosaics that transcend the simplistic right-left pendulum.
Macgregor critiques what he calls our society’s neurotic “displacement activity” – the way we obsess over surface-level political drama while ignoring the need for system-wide reinvention. Without foundational redesign, he warns, inefficient democracies risk being overtaken by more “efficient” authoritarian alternatives. The threat, he argues, is no longer theoretical – especially in a post-2024 world.
Drawing on his extensive background in journalism, politics, and international development – including on-the-ground reporting from East Timor to Burma – Macgregor brings a global lens and practical weight to his proposals. He analyses the limitations of movements like Perestroika, Tiananmen, the Arab Spring, and Occupy, highlighting how their failure to achieve lasting change stemmed from a lack of structural reform. Unlike those movements, this book offers a detailed blueprint to build a sustainable democratic future – not just protest the present.
The relevance of “The Mechanics of Changing the World” to today’s political climate is striking. Around the globe, democracies are backsliding, strongmen are tightening their grip, and disinformation is being weaponised on an industrial scale. In the wake of the 2024 U.S. election and a wave of anti-democratic sentiment in both developed and developing nations, Macgregor’s warning feels eerily prescient. His call for systemic reform isn’t just philosophical – it’s a direct response to the democratic decay unfolding in real time. As governments grow increasingly unresponsive to their citizens while corporations consolidate unprecedented power, this book offers a clear-eyed, actionable path forward at a moment when such clarity is urgently needed.
While Macgregor’s optimism may feel dense or daunting at times, especially for casual readers, the urgency of his argument makes it compelling. Some of the reforms may seem ambitious, but as noted in a review on LibraryThing, problems like inequality, war, and climate catastrophe “will only be curable at the level of causes: the level of democratic design.” A Reedsy Discovery reviewer similarly calls it “extremely well-written” and “a manual to build a prototype of a new democratic revolution.”
Ultimately, the book’s strength lies in its synthesis of deep political theory with practical application. Macgregor doesn’t just diagnose dysfunction – he offers tangible, evolutionary solutions that grow with society rather than stifle it. The “Mechanics of Changing the World” is essential reading for anyone serious about creating meaningful, lasting reform. It asks us to think not just about what needs fixing, but how we rebuild the entire foundation.
Rating: 4.5/5
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Michael, thanks, it sounds like a must-read.
I just came across another book review on a related topic.
In his book, ‘Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons,’ independent scholar David Bollier shows how the idea of commons — that which belongs to or affects the whole of a community — takes highly diverse forms. In land trusts, co-housing commons, alternative currencies, digital collaborations and mutual aid networks that can leverage human cooperation in novel, democratic, and durable ways. With democracy on the ropes around the world, now more than ever, we can all benefit from a better understanding of how to share these common resources.
An extract Page 1 — When my seat mate on the airplane turned to me and abruptly asked, “So what do you do?” I replied that I study the commons and work as an activist to try to protect it.
Polite bewilderment. “Say what?” It was not the first time.
So I cited the familiar references — the Boston Common and medieval pastures — and moved on to the so- called tragedy of the commons, the meme that brainwashed a generation of undergraduates.
Sensing a quiver of interest, I ventured further, mentioning open-source software, Wikipedia, countless collaborative websites, and billions of books, articles, images, and music made shareable via Creative Commons licenses… community supported agriculture and community land trusts. The “gift economies” of blood donation systems, mutual aid networks, and Indigenous commitment-pooling traditions. There are fisheries managed by coastal fishers, water protectors defending precious rivers and groundwater, and alternative local currencies. There are makerspaces, mesh network WiFi systems, and platform cooperatives. Language itself is a commons, free to anyone to use, but whose letters and words are fast becoming proprietary trademarks.
In the modern industrialized countries of the world, the commons tends to be a baffling, alien idea. The word may be invoked to make faux-genteel allusions to Merrie Olde England (“Coxswain Commons Apartments”), but otherwise it has scant currency. We don’t really have a language for naming commons — real commons — and so they tend to be invisible and taken for granted. The commons is not a familiar cultural category. (Confusingly, “commons” is both the singular and plural of the term, and some people make things even more confusing by using the word “common” instead of “commons.”) Anything of value is usually associated with the “free market” or government. The idea that people could actually self-organize durable arrangements for managing their own resources and that this paradigm of social governance could generate immense value, well, it seems either utopian or communistic, or at the very least, impractical. The idea that the commons could be a vehicle for social and political emancipation and societal transformation, as some commons advocates argue, seems just plain ridiculous.
https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/think-like-a-commoner/
Yes. Thanks Michael
I now feel the urge to purchase a couple of books (then again, maybe they’re available through commons 😎
Steve,
The closing sentence of your quoted ‘extract Page 1’ dangled provocatively. So of course I read the review between Bollier and Lowry. Enjoyed every word of it, and had my mind tripping the light fantastic through the vast commons network, and its potential. Seems it’s a door that’s already not just ajar, but ever opening. Perhaps it’s what the ‘quiet ones’ of the last few generations are doing?
Clakka, yes, that sentence is a bit ambiguous — the risk I suppose, in quoting portions — I should have deleted that bit.
But you’re right about the potential of developing the commons concept, and right about “the quiet ones” already doing it.
It’s happening as we speak, and to my mind is the only hope we have for a viable future.
A great recent example is communities organising local renewable energy systems.