Then there have grown up powerful interest groups that can stand in the way of substantial and necessary reform. Anyone who has ever tried to reform an education system, for example, knows how tough and bitter a struggle it is. The bureaucracy fights change. The teachers’ unions fight change. The public gets whipped up to defeat change even when it is in the public’s own interest. The nearest I came to losing my job as prime minister was not over policies of war and peace, but over education reforms. The effort to reform health care has similar characteristics.

Image Tony Blair

Yet since the world is changing so fast, updating government systems is essential.

The impact of the lack of reform is felt by the public. People need better services, have higher expectations, but as any politician can tell you, they don’t want to pay more for them. So the absence of reform, particularly in an era of tight budgets, is immensely challenging. Thus you have the curious paradox of modern leadership: There has to be reform to satisfy rising public demands, but the public can be easily mobilized to oppose those reforms. Therefore politicians often back off the change, which then increases voters’ disillusionment with the political process.

Look at European nations like France, Italy, Spain and Greece, which are struggling to reform their tax systems, to change how public benefits are distributed, or to decrease systemic redundancies. The public blowback against reform is intense and yet there really is no alternative. Meanwhile the European Union is unable to take measures to stimulate growth, the essential accompaniment to reform.

Examine the changes in the private sector over the past 20 years. Look at the top companies by market capitalization and how new names have displaced the old. This is the way of the world, except in government. We go along in the same old way — unable to change, due in part to top-down bureaucracies that manage the status quo instead of changing it.

Technology alone could transform the way education and health care work. It could revolutionize learning and teaching. It could create whole new pathways of diagnosis and treatment. In the best places this is happening, but not in most. It is this — the efficacy gap — that is the real cause of political disillusionment and why people go running after populist solutions that aren’t really solutions at all. This is what we need to fix.

Moreover, at the very time when leadership is needed, the gene pool of political leaders has shrunk. How many leaders and, for that matter, followers in a parliament or congress have real-life experience in responsible positions outside of politics? Today it is very common for a young person interested in politics to graduate from university, go to work for a politician as a researcher or political analyst, and then transition straight into an elected position.