Matthias Bauer

Mat Bauer is a writer and Director at ECIPE – Europe’s leading Think Tank on international trade and technology policy. His work examines how contemporary democracies translate ideals of fairness and economic progress into layers of regulation and bureaucratic control – and what this means for individual freedom, productivity, and trust in governance structures.

He asks: We know we need democracy – but what kind? Is it the ever-expanding technocratic model that measures virtue by the number of laws it writes? Or should democracy, to stay alive, rediscover direct forms of citizen participation and simplicity – fewer laws and clearer accountability?

Bauer grew up in Soviet-run East Germany, where the state owned everything and laws paid dividends to an authoritarian – and unproductive – few, until 1989 brought the system to an abrupt end. That experience left him with a lasting curiosity: how can societies founded on the desire to limit political and economic powers end up rebuilding it in more sophisticated forms?

Mat Bauer's recent book, The Deep State Wants a Hug – How to Lobby Like Crazy and Make Money by Law, is an entertaining yet deeply researched look at how modern bureaucracies and professional interest groups turn laws into dubious livelihoods. The deeper question this book raises is uncomfortable: what happens when representative democracy changes politicians, yet the real power quietly compounds in legal language, funding rules, and permanent bureaucracies?