Democratic governments shape markets, support growth and ensure prosperity through the decisions they make and, by listening to citizens and business, they ensure those decisions respond to changing economic and societal needs. This constant self-assessment and improvement is the reason why, in the Luxemburg Declaration in 2022 (Declaration on Building Trust and Reinforcing Democracy), OECD ministers reaffirmed that democracies are the system of government best placed to build prosperous societies.
But delivering on this promise requires keeping pace with a fast-changing world. Governments of OECD countries are facing a period of significant change and disruption, with rising citizen expectations, rapid technological change, volatile geopolitical conditions and environmental pressures. Trust remains persistently low, driven by people's perceptions that they lack a voice in decision making and low confidence in governments’ abilities to address long-term and complex policy challenges. Increasingly, and despite many ongoing reforms, governments appear “stuck”; struggling to engage, adapt, and deliver at the pace and scale required. Addressing this historical challenge will matter not only for government effectiveness, but for reinforcing confidence in democratic governance itself.
This report is the next phase of the OECD Reinforcing Democracy Initiative. It sets out a direction of change for a “Government Unstuck”. It also identifies a set of defining practices that democracies are implementing to support this change and proposes a measurement agenda to help governments track whether it is taking hold. The analysis draws on work across the OECD's Public Governance, Senior Budget Officials and Regulatory Policy committees, as well as on comparative data from the OECD 2026 Survey on the Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions and a new dedicated Survey on Government Unstuck covering 40 countries.
The practices and data collected throughout this report show that OECD countries have not been standing still. Across the membership, governments are building shared digital infrastructure, experimenting with new forms of citizen engagement and communication, reforming regulatory systems and investing in the capabilities of their public servants. Yet, much of this progress remains piecemeal. The challenge has shifted from building the right components to ensuring they are used, connected and sustained at a scale that changes how governments work, with and for citizens.
The present moment offers a rare opportunity to move from piecemeal reform to a fundamental transformation of how governments operate and deliver public value. Advances in artificial intelligence create options for redesigning how governments work. Large-scale retirement across OECD public services opens space for workforce renewal. And fiscal pressure, while constraining, also reinforces the imperative to prioritise and accelerate more productive ways of serving citizens and economies. The OECD’s Government Unstuck agenda offers a compass for the long-term transformation that lies ahead: rebuilding trust by ensuring that democratic governments continue to ensure prosperity by engaging, responding, and delivering for citizens in a fast-changing world. Future work across the different areas of public governance will serve to continue to refine and further develop this compass.